How The Mortal Kombat Movie Was Inspired By The Lord Of The Rings

The upcoming Mortal Kombat movie was inspired in part by another gigantic Warner Bros. property, The Lord of the Rings. Producer Todd Garner said in an interview that the filmmakers on Mortal Kombat turned to The Lord of the Rings early on in the process of mapping out Mortal Kombat. Just like Lord of the Rings has numerous characters with their own interconnecting stories, so does Mortal Kombat.

"When we really researched all of the lore and fantasy and rules and mythology to Mortal Kombat, we really looked at it like Lord of the Rings," Garner said, as reported by GamesRadar.

He added: "[Creators] John [Tobias] and Ed [Boon] have created this tone that's so thick and complex and amazing in terms of all the crazy, different characters--you have ninjas, and you have soldiers of fortune, and you've got clones and aliens and ex-police officers. There's so many different characters. The challenge, then, is: how do you bring them all together?"

The production team used The Lord of the Rings as a template for how to best go about this, Garner said. Similar to how the writers of the Lord of the Rings movies needed to cut things out and change the story to make it work on the screen, the same is true for the Mortal Kombat film.

"In a novel, you know, when you have 1,000 pages, and you have to distill it down into two hours, you have to make choices, and you have to be smart about the essence of what is happening," Garner said. "And so when we set out to make the movie, and to start developing it, that's how we began--it's being as respectful to the canon and to the rules and to the mythology as with a novel."

The Mortal Kombat movie premieres on HBO Max and in theaters on April 16. In other news, we recently learned why Johnny Cage is not in the film.