Fans have been saying it for years. Bosslogic even did fan art showing us what it would look like. Can we please have Keanu Reeves as Kenshi in Mortal Kombat 2?
A Deadly Alliance
Last year’s Mortal Kombat film managed to repeat one of its predecessor’s most admirable feats: being a movie based on a video game that isn’t terrible. The Warner Bros production could actually be considered one of the best of the genre, something that has fans already asking for a Mortal Kombat 2 to expand the mythology used in the film.
Of course, with every new Mortal Kombat title, the one thing fans are always looking forward to is the new characters being introduced to the story. Previous live-action Mortal Kombat adaptations have done a great job bringing every classic character to the big screen; that said, there’s been a distinct lack of modern characters present in these adaptations, with most filmmakers seemingly considering Mortal Kombat 3 as the last entry in the violent franchise.
Longtime fans, however, know that the game’s mythos took a massive leap in terms of quality and scope starting with 2002’s Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. That game introduced a ton of new characters into the mix, not to mention how well it expanded the lore of preexisting characters.
With eleven new characters to choose from (the largest number of new fighters introduced in a single Mortal Kombat game so far,) it’s easy to see why Deadly Alliance could be chosen as the next logical step into the new series of live-action movies.
A character that was introduced in Deadly Alliance was Kenshi: a blind swordsman who seeks revenge against Shang Tsung, Kenshi swore an oath to bring down the forces of evil by himself.
There’s also a peculiarity in the design of Kenshi that Mortal Kombat fans have been quick to notice: he’s a dead ringer for a young Keanu Reeves.
Keanu Reeves as Kenshi
Everything from the haircut to the iconic Keanu Reeves cheekbones is present in the design of Kenshi, which led us to think that the developers might have based some aspects of the character’s appearance on Keanu’s look; more specifically, Kenshi looks a bit like Keanu did when he was training under Morpheus’ guidance in the first Matrix film.
Now that the Mortal Kombat movies seem to be gaining some considerable momentum, it would be a great time to cast one of the most important action stars of our time in an upcoming sequel. After all, fans have been claiming for Keanu Reeves to join Mortal Kombat for a while now, with some claiming that Neo would have made a great addition to the Mortal Kombat 11 roster.
Having Keanu play Kenshi in an upcoming film wouldn’t just be an awesome gift for fans of the franchise: it could also give Mortal Kombat the rights to use his likeness in future games, like what happened with Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Shang Tsung in the current Mortal Kombat continuity.
Even though Kenshi covers his eyes most of the time, he’s different from some of the franchise’s most iconic characters in that he never completely hides his face. Kenshi isn’t like Scorpion or Sub-Zero: people would immediately notice it was Keanu hiding under the blindfold.
Another piece of trivia about the character that might benefit Keanu Reeves’ casting is that, in the games, Kenshi uses tai chi as one of his combat styles — which just so happens to be a martial art style that Keanu has been trained on. This would give the actor an edge when performing action scenes involving tai chi, giving the character a better sense of realism and elevating the quality of some of the film’s stunts as a result.
If Ed Boon is considering The Rock for Shao Kahn, he definitely needs to consider Keanu Reeves for Kenshi.
