The 1 Dead Mortal Kombat Character Who Won’t Be Revived Officially Confirmed [Exclusive]

The new Mortal Kombat II movie has revived fan interest, and much of that has to do with the return of the tournament and several great returning characters. However, the third movie likely won’t see one of the popular characters come back at all, even though there has always been a chance to see some characters rise from defeat. Mortal Kombat II sees Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) take center stage. Joining him are several popular characters like Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Kano (Josh Lawson), Jax (Mehcad Brooks), Jade (Tati Gabrielle), and several more. However, there is one character from the first movie whom screenwriter Jeremy Slater said he won’t bring back.

In an exclusive interview with ComicBook, Slater said that he wouldn’t bring back Goro. “I don’t know if I would necessarily be chomping at the bit to sort of resurrect them, you know, just because they weren’t my version of the characters, and they don’t necessarily seem relevant or necessary to the stories that I’m trying to tell,” Slater said. “Goro is a good example, just because I think one of the things we have sort of discovered along the way is that watching two human martial artists fight is a lot of fun, and watching people shadowbox CGI monsters is not as fun.”

What Does This Mean for Mortal Kombat 3?

Jeremy Slater, Courtesy of Melissa Russell

One thing to note about the video games for Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter is that they have a strong mix of martial artists and monsters. However, Slater wants to make his Mortal Kombat movie scripts about the human fighters and eschew most monsters unless they can be done using prosthetics, where it is still two people physically fighting in the choreographed action. The first Mortal Kombat movie in this series from 2021 spent a great deal of its budget on Goro since he was completely CGI-generated. It was also something that didn’t always look right when Cole Young (Lewis Tan) was fighting the giant CGI creation.

By keeping his story on the page more grounded in physical combat between two actors, Slater has a point that it should keep people more interested in the story and not throw them out of the fantasy. “We’ve really sort of learned that you can make the fights a lot more visceral and a lot more satisfying when it’s human versus human. So I think Goro is a tough one because he’s very hard to do without incorporating a lot of CGI,” Slater said.

While there is no word on who could appear in Mortal Kombat III, it looks like giant CGI monsters are out of the question. Slater did admit that the Goro from the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie could work. In that film, he was played by Tom Woodruff Jr. and voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson. Slater said that when you put him against someone like Joe Taslim (Sub-Zero) or Max Huang (Kung Lao), the “fights are so much more fun because these guys are doing these moves.”

It seems that fans are a lot more on board with the more human vs. human fighting action of Mortal Kombat II than with the first movie in this rebooted series. The new movie has an 89% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 65% critics’ score, which are both up from the first movie in 2021. Mortal Kombat II is also only $21 million away from eclipsing the first film’s box office take after only one weekend in theaters.

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