The new Mortal Kombat reboot is out in the wild, available to watch in theaters or on HBO Max (at least for the next month or so), but people are already talking about sequels. That might be because the final moments of the film not so subtly name drop one of the series’ core characters, Johnny Cage. Now, the wrestler and actor known as The Miz has a suggestion for who should play the arrogant martial artist: himself.
One of the biggest questions for Mortal Kombat fans ahead of the film’s debut was, “why isn’t Johnny Cage in the movie?” The director had a simple answer: there’s only room enough in the movie for one arrogant jerk, and the story centers heavily around Kano. Kano is an arrogant jerk. Johnny Cage is all but guaranteed to appear in any (currently unannounced) Mortal Kombat sequels, but the movie didn’t go so far as to give him a face.
Michael Mizanin, who wrestles as The Miz, put his name in the hat, saying “I AM the special effects. Let me do the casting for you” in a tweet accompanied by a picture of Cage from the games. Mizanin has been wrestling for almost 20 years and has a few films to his name, including direct-to-video films The Marine 3: Homefront up through The Marine 6: Close Quarters. In other words, while he may not be a superstar on the level of John Cena or Dwayne Johnson, he’s no stranger to being in front of the camera.
Ed Boon, one of the creators of Mortal Kombat and the current Creative Director of Mortal Kombat game developer NetherRealm Studios, backed up Miz’s self-promotion saying that the “guy makes a compelling case” in a retweet.
Commenters have responded to Boon’s retweet with varying levels of enthusiasm, with some suggesting that better casting than this would be impossible. Others, meanwhile, have dropped names like Arrow star Stephen Amell, who has extensive stunt fight experience thanks to his CW superhero show, and is currently filming a wrestling show called Heel for the Starz network; other fan-suggested names include actors like Channing Tatum and Ryan Reynolds, both of whom have extensive action resumes of their own.
Mortal Kombat is in theaters now. If you haven’t read any reviews, you can check out our review and see what other critics are saying about the film, which is helping the US Box Office reach new highs since last March when things began to shut down due to COVID-19. We also have covered a major change that’s throwing more than a few fans off, and of course scoured the movie for every single Easter egg.
