Just a day after we reported that Lewis Tan from Deadpool 2 would be playing an “undisclosed lead character” in director Simon McQuoid’s new Mortal Kombat movie (an announcement that seemed baffling to us, since there are only so many Mortal Kombat characters), New Line has filled out the kast of kombatants even further: According to Variety, Chin Han has joined the cast as the immortal, soul-stealing, and island-owning martial arts master Shang Tsung, with Hiroyuki Sanada getting over here to play the also-immortal, spear-slinging, and fire-breathing ninja Scorpion. We had guessed yesterday that Tan might be playing Scorpion, so now we can toss that theory out, but he could still be Kung Lao or Johnny Cage or… Goro, the monster with four arms. We don’t know, and we’re going to stop guessing.
If Han and Sanada look familiar, it could be because you’ve seen a comic book movie in the past 11 years. Chin Han played Lau, the mob accountant who Batman kidnapped from a skyscraper in The Dark Knight, and Sanada played Akihiko, the Yakuza boss who got his ass chopped up by angsty samurai Clint Barton in Avengers: Endgame. Sanada also played Musashi, the Shogunworld version of the gunslinger Hector on Westworld. Basically, he should be a pretty cool Scorpion. As for Shang Tsung, he just has to say “Your soul is mine!” and get beaten up by the good guys in the end (he’s the big villain), so it doesn’t require as much heavy lifting.