Mortal Kombat II Star Wants to See the Adaptation of Shaolin Monks Video Game

Directed by Simon McQuoid and released in theaters last week, Mortal Kombat II not only introduced new characters such as Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford), Jade (Tati Gabrielle), and others familiar to game fans but also brought back many heroes and villains featured in the original film, including even those who had died.

Such a character turned out to be Kung Lao, played by Max Huang; with the help of Quan Chi's spells, he was resurrected to fight his longtime friend Liu Kang, which became one of the main highlights of Mortal Kombat II thanks to its color scheme and mind-blowing action, done in the best traditions of video games.

Recently, Max Haung spoke to IGN, where he revealed that he worked hard to return in Kung Lao’s role in Mortal Kombat II, despite previously being part of Jackie Chan’s stunt team. But more importantly, he expressed his desire to star in Mortal Kombat’s spin-off dedicated to Shaolin Monks, as you can check out below:

“I wanted to give Kung Lao more depth and I wanted to bring him back to his origin. In China, we used to have sometimes 16–18-hour days of nonstop working, and you would be lucky if there was coffee around on set. It's just like, ‘Boom, boom, boom, one shot after another. And I feel like when I come to Hollywood, it's almost like a vacation to be honest. You work with Jackie Chan and you're not surprised by any other action design or action team.

The philosophy in Chinese martial arts is always to enhance the weapon as part of your body. And I try to do the same with the hat. The approach was to bring it all together and make the hat become part of Kung Lao instead of being separate. I'm more interested in the connection between the two characters and what it is about. What do we want to express? I think that's part of the reason why this scene works so well, because instead of just moving in a fancy way, this fight is telling a story.

There are so many possibilities where this whole franchise can go. Something that I personally would love to explore would be a Shaolin Monks spinoff. Ludi has talked about it. I've been talking about it. It would be great to see those two characters' origins and how they were raised by Bo' Rai Cho and trained and exploring the White Lotus. Yeah, the lore of Mortal Kombat is huge.”

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks is the 2005 action-adventure video game and spin-off to the main franchise, where Liu Kang and Kung Lao travel across different worlds to prevent Shang Tsung’s plan to take over the Earthrealm. Considering recent words from Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon that we can potentially see more than ten movies based on the gaming franchise, the Shaolin Monks spin-off has to be one of them. About this and other possible spin-offs, in particular, Deadly Alliance, dedicated to the characters' team-up - Johnny Cage/Kano, Scorpion/Sub-Zero, and Sonya Blade/Jax—was also stated by the writer of Mortal Kombat II, Jeremy Slater, in a recent interview with Variety.

As for Mortal Kombat II, the film earned $40 million in the first weekend across the United States and Canada, and now the box office worldwide is more than $65 million.

Would you like to see a Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks movie adaptation? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Mortal Kombat II is available now in cinemas.