It's been over twenty years since cult actor Christophe Lambert starred as Raiden in the first Mortal Kombat feature film. Time is no barrier to the thunder god or the actor who played him, as he told Loaded in a recent interview during promotion for the Highlander 4K restoration.
Dominion: Lambert hasn't appeared as Raiden for 20 years, but remains attached to the iconic role.
Speaking about a long rumored third Mortal Kombat theatrical release, Lambert claims he's been in talks to reprise his 1995 role in a "very different" high concept movie.
The actor elaborated, "We are going to be travelling through time but in a very special way. So imagine characters having a battle in the middle of London and then whoosh, you smash through a window and find yourself on the hood of a New York cab."
The "great idea" is enough to lure Lambert back after he skipped 1997's much maligned sequel: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. "I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t think the script was very good," he told Loaded.
While the pitch sounds plausible of today's franchise mahandling Hollywood; Mortal Kombat co-creator and Creative Director, Ed Boon, cast doubt on the actor's involvement with a simple one-word tweet: "Nope."
A version of time travel was introduced to the Mortal Kombat canon with 2011's video game reboot: Mortal Kombat. The plot of that game took the story back to the original trilogy begun in 1992, playing with preconceived notions through Raiden's attempts to decypher and avert apocalyptic warnings sent from his older self.
[Related Article: From Sprite to Screen: Mortal Kombat versus the Movies]
On the success of the original film, Lambert downplayed the influence of storylines conceived by John Tobias and the game crew: "Mortal Kombat was an arcade game, a beat’em up and because of that they were forced to create a story rather than simply relying on the game’s plot."
The role of the films in defining Mortal Kombat's characters and plot was at the crux of legal action taken by Lawrence Kasanoff, in 2009. While Threshold Entertainment can be credited with creating an expansive extended movie universe; content from the original games. and comics published by Midway. establish much of what we know as iconic to the series.
I Don't Think So: The faithful Mortal Kombat remains an enduring success for video games adaptations.
Speaking to Mortal Kombat Online, series co-creator John Tobias was complimentary to the first movie: "I thought the first film did a lot of things right in capturing the mood of our games." The partnership wasn't always smooth sailing over the years, though: "We tried to have a positive influence where we could, but ultimately we didn't own the direction of the finished products. It was fine when it worked and frustrating beyond comprehension when it did not."
[Related Article: Lost Kontent: Defenders of the Realm Painted Cel Sheet]
New reports regarding the latest Mortal Kombat movie began back in 2010, and led to some truly bizarre plot rumors under the production guidance of Kevin Tancharoen. He directed two seasons of the sometimes controversial webseries Mortal Kombat: Legacy, before announcing his exit from the film.
Future Aquaman director James Wan (The Conjuring, Furious 7) became formally attached as a producer last August. Little has emerged since then.
A third live-action webseries was announced in 2014, but has not been released despite completion last year. It may suggest caution from Warner Brothers, who discovered the potentially lucrative popularity of the IP with the massive success of Mortal Kombat X [full story].
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