They should leave out even more characters in the 3rd one. Remember how long everyone was in the 2nd movie? "high I'm nightwolf-bye"

The only people they should have are everyone from the 1st and 2nd MK game and the main characters should only add up to 6 or 7 Thats all, If they go overboard...they pull an MKA....an OMFG we don't want that, do we?

I believe in both the Movie's plot and the TV series plot Liu Jung is Kung Lao's decendant, thus KUng Lao is supposedly old/dead in both!
HOWEVER th Kung Lao in the games now maybe another decendant with the same name i don't personally know!
Kabal and Stryker, great characters but sadly they didn't fit well with the other characters in the movie, but then they should of considered that when they bunged in Cyrax and Sektor, they couldn't ressurect anyone without being silly either!
People who like movies are different to people who like games, they prefer a plot that makes sense!

In the next movie you can only realistically expect characters from the current game and maybe some cameos from old ones!

Though i'm hoping they'll start again in a kinda xmen way! Use only a few characters, write a decent story, make sure some good fights will occur, stabilise a good intro for all the characters but don't go over board, then if they do it right they'll get peoples attention and everyone we'll be crying out for the sequel to carry on the story!

Also i jsut realised, the first movie is clearly about mortal kombat, saving the earth and such, the second movie was about shao khan beating the system and invading before hand!
I believe Mortal kombat comes around every 500 years or thousand, whatever, so it being mortal kombat can't happen, realistically i think they'll have to go for Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, killing Shao Khan and opening a portal and organising a tournament early Something like that!
I believe they will find a way to bring back shang tsung for ths movie, it makes sense, to me atleast! Pure speculation though ofcourse!

To answere your question about the video game Kung Lao. That Kung Lao is a decendent of the Great Kung Lao who was killed by Goro. So NO they are not the same. It was mentioned in the Modern Kung Lao's Biography in MK2.
So were you saying they didn't have the modern Kung Lao in the MKA b/c they wanted it to seem like there was only 1 Kung Lao around?
But now that the modern Kung Lao is shown to be the chosen one in MKDA he is gonna have to be in the MK3 movie as a new main character, since it will follow MKDA.
One last thing, there were some sources that mentioned Kung Lao was one of the missing characters who was originally meant to be in MKA. Did anyone know that?

well, it's good that they didn't resurrect anyone in MK:A.

in the next movie, you can mainly expect characters from MKM: SZ or MK4. NOT MKDA (perhaps precious few characters)

MK: Movie was good, everyone was looking forward to a sequel. Been there, done that. Now we can make another sequel. If a good movie can have bad sequel, there is absolutely no reason, why a bad movie couldn't have a good sequel. MK:A would not make MKD bad.

MK occurs every 50 years. Shang was to get his 10-in-row full within 500 years.

Sub-Zero will be the main character.

something they left out of MK: Movie - they wanted to add a scene with Kung Lao's grave, which would be altred version of the Warrior Statues.