Mortal Kombat 1 has never shied away from using real actors’ likenesses to portray its characters, but Megan Fox playing Nitara takes that to a whole new level. Since the beginning, the Mortal Kombat series has had close ties to real-world actors. It grew out of an attempt to adapt the 1992 Jean-Claude Van Damme film Universal Soldier into a video game. The upcoming installment finally fulfills the game’s original intent by including Van Damme himself as a skin for Johnny Cage, along with several characters from the TV series The Boys, Invincible, and Peacemaker in Mortal Kombat 1‘s first Kombat Pack DLC.
Megan Fox rose to fame for her role as Mikaela Banes in the Transformers film series, but perhaps more relevant to her role in Mortal Kombat 1 is her iconic turn in Jennifer’s Body. A teen horror-comedy that’s since become a cult classic, Fox has a penchant for characters with a darker side, so she’s right at home as the vampire Nitara. This is her first video game role since the Transformers adaptations – but an actor “playing” a character in a video game can mean many different things. Is Megan Fox just voicing Nitara, or does her contribution to the game go beyond that?
Mortal Kombat 1’s Nitara Looks Just Like Megan Fox, With A Few Differences
Nitara is the spitting image of Megan Fox in Mortal Kombat 1, but with just a couple of minor differences that draw attention to her vampiric origins. Character designers nailed her arched brows and almond-shaped eyes. They also added a row of razor-sharp fangs, glowing red eyes, and a pair of bat-like wings to match the original Nitara’s design and make her look appropriately terrifying. In an interview as part of a Mortal Kombat 1 trailer, Fox says she feels more connected to Nitara because she contributed her likeness to the character, not just her voice.
Mortal Kombat 1 References Megan Fox’s Film Roles
Voice lines in Mortal Kombat 1 pay homage to Megan Fox’s greatest roles on film. In the same trailer, there’s a scene where Nitara and Kung Lao butt heads in the lead-up to a battle. Kung Lao asks Nitara, “What did you do with Jen’s body?” This is a sly double entendre, an in-universe reference to the character Jen Reyland from the live-action TV series Mortal Kombat: Conquest. Jen was Kung Lao’s girlfriend in the series, which aired for one season in 1998. However, this also nods in the direction of Jennifer’s Body, in which Megan Fox plays a succubus who must feed on humans to survive, much like Nitara.
Mortal Kombat 1 is a reboot for the series in every sense in the word, and Nitara’s new look falls right in line with that. It’s thrilling to see so many real-world actors signing onto the project, and there’s ample reason to expect those pre- and post-battle lines to hit hard. Megan Fox as Nitara is one to watch out for when Mortal Kombat 1 launches on September 14, 2023.
