The Mortal Kombat creators have given us some of the coolest fighters in gaming history. You have ninjas, sorcerers, demons, zombies, special forces, and literal Gods…..so why did the base the future movies around a brand new character?

When I put it on for the first time, I completely missed Cole’s name and was thinking “Oh cool this is a new take on Liu Kang’s story” and then when Liu Kang showed up I thought, “Oh I guess this is Kung Lao,” and then Kung Lao showed up in the next scene so I didn’t know who Cole was anymore.

Now Cole is leading the franchise going forward. I wasn’t a big fan of Cole, but since he’s here to stay I’m gonna give me 2 cents to make him better.

The first issue I had with Cole was he had such a positive family life. Usually, characters in these situations are “lone wolves” who don’t really have a solid family dynamic. The family wasn’t really seen struggling to survive. Sure, Cole was losing cage fights, but it wasn’t like Cinderella Man where the family was filling jugs of milk with water to make it last more. For the sequel, someone has to die.

Cole has to experience some sort of lose to change his world view. Maybe even corrupt one of them to become a popular Mortal Kombat character. It might be a stretch, but making Allison into Frost and fighting along Subzero might be an interesting idea. Cole would then have to kill Allison, giving his character more depth and maybe making him resent his position in protecting Earth Realm.

Another thing I didn’t like was Cole’s powers. The magical armor and weapons he conjured seemed lazy and didn’t look appealing onscreen. I guess the hidden meaning was that he was a protector and giving him armor was some kind of symbolic way of showing that.

The opening scene of the sequel should have Cole practicing his powers, maybe have the armor do more things than take endless blows. The armor could have similar properties to the T-1000 or Venom orIron Man in Infinity War, where they are a living weapon able to manipulate their bodies to help them in certain situations, creating new and exciting ways to solve problems and defeat their enemies.

Might be alittle overpowered, but if they do a good job establishing the parameters of the powers early, they can derail any fan complaints. All that can easily be done in a few short lines telling his daughter what he learned or even having Raiden say something like “You’ve been practicing”.

Overall, I thought the new Mortal Kombat was a fun movie. It wasn’t perfect and a lot of scenes could’ve been redone, but ultimately it was a good first movie of the series. It didn’t do an info dump of the world and a lot of the questions I had early on were answered organically. Out of all the big named series out now, I feel the most confident about Mortal Kombat.

Let me know what you guys think about the changes I had for Cole and the franchise moving forwards.