Why Tom Cruise Was Kicked Off Of The Original Mortal Kombat's Set
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Tom Cruise is as big as movie stars get. It's been that way for a long time. The actor scored many of his biggest hits in the 2000s, including the "Mission: Impossible" movies and "War of the Worlds," but even in the 1990s, he was at the top of Hollywood's A-list. Nevertheless, he got kicked off the set of 1995's "Mortal Kombat" movie.
The awesomely bad bargain bin blockbuster that is "Mortal Kombat" was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, and it brought the bloody video game to the big screen. In a 2015 oral history covering the movie's production by Yahoo Movies, actor Linden Ashby, who played Johnny Cage, revealed that Cruise tried to visit the movie's set during production in Los Angeles. Per Ashby:
"We started out in Santa Monica Airport, where we shot a lot. We had big sets. There's a bar down there on the south side of the field, and we used to go there Friday when we'd wrap. Oh my God. Just crazy stuff. There was a medic who was a funny guy, quirky. He was very into security on the set. He should have been a security guy instead of a medic."
This medic also blocked Cruise from checking out the set. It doesn't matter that he was talking to future honorary Oscar winner Tom Cruise. The actor wasn't part of the movie, so he wasn't getting on the set. As Ashby recalled:
"Tom Cruise had a hanger nearby and came over and was like, 'Hey what are you guys shooting? Can I check it out?' And the medic goes, 'You're not in this movie. Go away!' And Tom Cruise goes, 'I just want to see,' and he goes, 'I don't care who you are, get out of here!' He turned away Tom Cruise."
Tom Cruise couldn't use his star power to infiltrate the Mortal Kombat set
It's worth remembering that this was after Tom Cruise had starred in "Top Gun," "A Few Good Men," and "The Firm" in the previous years. He was on top. All the same, that medic-turned-security-guy didn't care. Cruise has always had a curious mind when it comes to making movies. He even has a secret behind-the-scenes role in the upcoming "Star Wars: Starfighter," one that resulted from him just popping by the film's set. Evidently, he's been doing (or trying to do) these sorts of things for decades.
What makes it all the more wild is that, when the production moved to Thailand, it sounds like protocols loosened more than a little bit. Linden Ashby recalled what it was like when filming shifted to that country, telling Yahoo Movies:
"In Thailand, there were some guys that went up river in a big way. It was so hot. And you're shooting in the tropics and the amount of alcohol that was consumed — you'd stand there and people would be sweating and it'd smell like a distillery. You'd be standing next to somebody and they'd just drop down in the dirt. They were out. Everyone is hurting so badly at this point. You just look at the guy laying there and you'd be like 'Oh. Cut.' Nobody even got worked up about it."
Even without Cruise, "Mortal Kombat" became a box office hit that kind of doomed video game movies for decades. It wasn't high art, but it turned a profit, so studios used the film as a template for video game adaptations for years. Cruise likely would have had some thoughts, provided the opportunity to express them.