From the MMA cage to the movie sets, fans will now get to see Martyn Ford playing Formidable Villain Shao Kahn in Mortal Kombat II. Ludi Lin, who is also one of the stars in Mortal Kombat II, did not mince words when talking about the towering bodybuilder on the film's set.

Lin described him as someone he had never seen in his career. "You don't see people like Martyn Ford, man. You really don't. It's crazy. It's just crazy," Lin said on the Men's Health podcast on YouTube.

Lin elaborated further, pointing to just how rare Ford's build truly is. "If you could imagine trying to find a stunt double or a stand-in for Martyn, what a tall task that would be," he said.

Lin reminisced about arriving on set one day and spotting what he thought was Ford in the distance. When the figure turned around, it wasn't him. It was his stand-in. "It was someone who, dare I say it, might even be bigger than Martyn Ford," Lin said.

Lin rated the cast of Mortal Kombat II among the top three most muscular groups ever assembled in Hollywood, second only to the group of films featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. "I think it's unfair that Arnold's in so many movies because any movie he's in, we'll just count him as one category," he said.

It is perhaps the physical form that catches one’s attention, but the intentions of Ford were quite different from that point on.

Ludi Lin Praised the Size, Martyn Ford Did the Rest as Shao Kahn

Ludi Lin praised Martyn Ford's physique on the Mortal Kombat II set, which may explain why he was cast as Shao Kahn, but he put in a lot of effort to play one of the most demanding antagonist roles. This is a character that fans have been waiting to see on screen since 2021, after a brief tease.

Ford had a very straightforward approach towards it. "I feel it's very easy to overplay a bad guy and just try to make him bad for the sake of being bad. But then there's a lack of depth and interest in the character," Ford told Screen Rant.

Ford wanted to understand the depth of the character, "understand why he does what he does, and find a part of them that may act the same way."

Achieving something even close to it took a lot of effort. Ford went an extra step and spent long hours in full prosthetics and a giant armored helmet that concealed most of his face.

During a particular fight sequence, he was using a hammer with full weight, which made him sweat so much that the gloves did not provide any grip, and the hammer fell from his hands, breaking one of the set's lights. "And I just sort of looked at Simon and said sorry," Ford explained. "Well, what a day!"

For a character whose complexity in the video game only exists in being the last boss, the portrayal by Ford represents a change that questions whether or not a villain from a fighting video game is worthy enough for the big screen.

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Written by

Proma Chatterjee

Edited by

Ashvinkumar Patil