A popular video game series comes to life in Director Simon McQuoid’s martial arts dark fantasy, Mortal Kombat II.

In the sequel to his 2021 feature, Mortal Kombat, McQuoid’s film follows Johnny Cage, a martial arts actor who is recruited to join a group of real fighters in an interdimensional tournament against alien warriors to stop a tyrannical emperor.

On May 24, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, McQuoid discussed the making of Mortal Kombat II during a Q&A moderated by Director David Sandberg (Until Dawn).

During the conversation, McQuoid spoke about what he had learned from directing the film's 2021 precursor.

“There’s two pieces to it, the fights and the action. Kyle Gardiner – the stunt coordinator – and I did the first film together. We worked out our process through that first film. When we came to the second film, we both realized we knew how to make this more efficient. We knew how to make this better for the film. What I wanted was to feel the characters and the story even more within the fights. So, during the first part of pre-production Carl and I went through the whole script and plotted these characters’ journeys. Where they start and end.”

Beyond Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II, McQuoid’s other directorial credit is the video short The Night-Time Economy. He has been a DGA member since 2003.