The crews, the stunt teams, the grip department … they are all phenomenal."Based on the popular video game series, which started a moral panic in the 90s over its graphic violence, the modern Mortal Kombat movies follow in the footsteps of their gory inspiration.The first film in 2021 introduced the fantastical realms, full of uncanny inhabitants all competing for planetary freedom in a series of tournaments called Mortal Kombat.While the original lasered in on MMA fighter Cole Young (Lewis Tan), Mortal Kombat II shifts the camera to Katana (Adeline Rudolph), an Edenian princess with fatal blade fans, and Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), an all-American action hero — on the big screen at least."In the games, there's a very specific perception of the character and what Jeremy [Slater] has written was actually very smart because it stripped away that perception," Urban says."Johnny Cage that we see in the movie initially is not that sort of ego-fuelled, larger-than-life character We are very lucky here, I'm very excited for the future."Lawson, who has been a fixture on both Australian and international screens for more than two decades, is keen to see the good work keep going."Hollywood knows this is a great place to come but in order to stay that way and indeed even improve, that's going to be up to the government to make sure that it continues to prioritise this, because the effects of this are felt far beyond the industry," he says.It wouldn't take much to get Lawson rushing back to the Gold Coast for the rumoured Mortal Kombat III, all they'd have to do is ask."And find some studio space for us here because it seems like it's pretty jam-packed," he says."I think Baz Luhrmann might be stealing all the stages."Mortal Kombat II is in cinemas now.