History has a way of “working itself out” regarding big desires for certain video game properties. For example, many Nintendo fans know that a certain “key wielder” was a long-time request for a certain fighting game, and then, right at the end, Sora was announced in a trailer that broke the internet. But that’s not the only fighting game with a “wish list.” Ed Boon has said for his series that he’s been trying for decades to get Jean-Claude Van Damme into the game, and thanks to Mortal Kombat 1, we finally got him.
Yesterday, a small teaser for Jean-Claude’s skin for Johnny Cage was shown off. But today, a full-on trailer was released, highlighting JCVD’s look and voice alongside Johnny Cage’s moves. For those paying attention, the outfit JCVD’s skin is wearing refers to the original game, as that was one of Johnny’s original gear looks. Remember, JCVD was the original inspiration for the franchise and was even supposed to be named after him. When that didn’t happen, they decided to make Johnny Cage in reference to him, complete with the actor backstory, legendary moves, and, yes, doing the splits and punching someone in “no man’s land.” Enjoy the trailer below:
As you can see, the Mortal Kombat 1 team clearly had fun making this trailer, including coming up with that completely brutal fatality featuring Johnny’s car. The irony is that this is only one of several celebrity reveals for the game in recent weeks. Just a few days ago, we got the reveal of Megan Fox as Nitara, leaving only a few roster slots on the main card. Then, Dave Bautista was revealed to be the star of the live-action commercial for the game, which paid tribute to the original Mortal Kombat commercial from decades ago.
That doesn’t even mention getting people like JK Simmons and John Cena to reprise their roles as Omni-Man and Peacemaker. So, the game is getting stacked with celebrity cameos. Going back to Johnny Cage, while we have seen his move set quite a bit between his “standard version” and the Jean-Claude Van Damme skin, we haven’t heard much about his personal story within the game. We bring this up because the point of this “reset” is that Liu Kang is “rewriting history” and changing many backstories, yet Johnny seems mostly the same.
Of course, we could be in for a big surprise once the game releases on September 19th.
