Mortal Kombat II vs. Devil Wears Prada 2: Box Office Showdown

It’s a full-on brawl at the multiplex this Mother’s Day weekend — and not just on screen. Mortal Kombat II opened May 8 swinging, but it’s immediately running into a surprisingly fierce opponent: The Devil Wears Prada 2, which is already two weeks deep and pulling in audiences who want something a little more Meryl and a little less fatality for their holiday outing. Both films are projected to earn around $42 million domestically this weekend, with Prada’s running total closing in on $141 million. It’s genuinely too close to call.

For Mortal Kombat II, the timing is everything. It’s a new release with the full force of opening-weekend momentum behind it, and it’s carrying serious fan anticipation. For the Prada sequel, Mother’s Day is practically a gift — a built-in reason for families to revisit Miranda Priestly one more time. Whoever blinks first loses the weekend.

Karl Urban Walks So Johnny Cage Can Fly

Whatever else critics are debating about the film, there’s near-universal agreement on one thing: Karl Urban was exactly the right call for Johnny Cage. The The Boys star plays the role as a gloriously washed-up ’90s action star — think Nicolas Cage energy crossed with Tom Cruise swagger — and his dry wit gives the film a levity it desperately needs between all the bloodshed. “It allows the film to have a bit of fun,” CBR noted in their review, adding that Cage’s contradiction — loud mouth, questionable skills, somehow one of Earthrealm’s best hopes — is “what makes Mortal Kombat II so enjoyable to watch.”

Urban himself has been openly enthusiastic about the project. “I’m so excited for you guys to see Mortal Kombat 2,” he said ahead of release. “I think it’s probably, to my mind, the best video game adaptation that’s gone to film yet. This one fires and fires in a really good way.”

There’s a fun early moment — a Big Trouble in Little China nod during Cage’s introduction — that even the film’s harshest critics admitted landed. One reviewer called it the only moment that genuinely made them smile. That’s something.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=b24oG7qCwp4%3Fsi%3Dbzje6cMUV1xMpwSW

What’s Actually in the Movie

Director Simon McQuoid, returning from the 2021 original, opens with a flashback prologue set in the Kingdom of Edenia — a lush, idealistic realm that’s about to have a very bad day. The ruthlessly ambitious Emperor Shao Kahn, played by an imposing Martyn Ford, murders Kitana’s father, takes over her realm, and forces the young princess (Adeline Rudolph) into his army. It’s a strong setup, and Rudolph shows real promise in the role.

Then the film jumps 20 years to the present, where Johnny Cage enters the picture and becomes the de facto center of gravity for the story. Alongside him, the Earthrealm team reassembles: the quietly commanding Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), bionic vet Jax (Mehcad Brooks), his partner Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), and a returning — though notably reduced — Cole Young (Lewis Tan). Franchise favorites Hiroyuki Sanada and Joe Taslim are back as Scorpion and the resurrected Bi-Han/Sub-Zero/Noob Saibot, and their sequences reportedly pushed the visual effects team to its limits. There’s also a cameo from Mortal Kombat franchise creator Ed Boon, a detail that’s gone over well with the fanbase. Josh Lawson’s Kano is back too, and apparently still hilarious even when a character is getting eviscerated in the same scene.

The film’s mission statement is pretty clear: honor the game, deliver the carnage, keep the popcorn moving. By that measure, most reviewers agree it succeeds. The fight sequences are brutal and relentless, the fatalities are creative enough to keep even genre veterans on their toes, and the visual effects — while occasionally uneven — are largely spectacular. McQuoid and screenwriter Jeremy Slater are sprinting through the lore of the first three games, which means the plot moves fast and character moments get squeezed. Whether that bothers you depends almost entirely on what you came for.

The Critics Are Split — But the Fans Are Loud

Mortal Kombat II has officially cleared the bar its predecessor couldn’t, landing at 68% on Rotten Tomatoes — “Fresh,” and a meaningful jump over the 2021 film’s 55% “Rotten” score. That said, the critical conversation is genuinely divided.

On the positive end, reviewers praised the film’s self-awareness, its willingness to lean into camp, and Urban’s performance as a genuine upgrade to the ensemble. One reviewer gave it a B, calling it “cinema’s version of fast food” — satisfying while it lasts, and clearly engineered for a third installment. Another called it “a reminder that sometimes movies are meant to simply give us a break from the world and bring us joy through all the chaos.”

On the other end, one of the more scathing takes argued the film feels less like a movie and more like “a supercut some fan has uploaded of a bunch of disparate, disconnected cut scenes.” That critic took particular issue with the film’s structure — Kitana set up as a protagonist in the prologue, then essentially sidelined when Cage takes over — and with the way side characters are introduced through clunky exposition dumps rather than actual storytelling. The harshest review called it “excruciatingly dull,” which feels like it might be written for a different audience than the one buying tickets.

Slater, for his part, had set high expectations before release — he told IGN that test screening audiences reacted the way he reacted to Avengers: Endgame. “They were cheering and jumping out of their seats,” he said. “Every joke is landing and they are loving it.” That quote has become something of a lightning rod in the critical conversation — a Rorschach test for whether you think this film delivers on its ambitions or just mistakes enthusiasm for craft.

The audience scores, though, are hard to argue with. Preview night viewers handed the film a 90% positive rating — the people who showed up opening night ready to love it left satisfied. That’s the core audience, and they got what they came for.

Mortal Kombat II is in theaters now. The Mother’s Day box office verdict drops Sunday — and at this point, both films deserve to win.