The Joker and his deadly bag of tricks get a madcap close-up in the latest Mortal Kombat 11 trailer. The Clown Prince of Crime, fresh off picking up 11 Oscar nominations, arrives in a couple of weeks, the fifth of six fighters in the Kombat Pack’s rollout.
Joker packs all kinds of jack-in-the-box, cuckoo-clock toys that stun, juggle, and bludgeon his foes. The extend-o boxing gloves are a given, but the best/funniest has to be the Batman hand puppet with a gun in its mouth. Joker speaks for him, like an imaginary friend, in a voice mocking Christian Bale’s gruff take on the Caped Crusader. The Joker is voiced by Richard Epcar, not Mark Hamill, though Epcar supplies a virtuoso performance that had me checking just to be sure.
Should the booby traps and surprises be too elaborate or time-consuming, there’s always Joker’s cane and good ol’ knives to get the job done quickly, if less artfully. I won’t spoil Joker’s fatality, but suffice to say DC Comics and Warner Bros. are a lot less squeamish about his appearance in MK11 than they were in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe 12 years ago.
The Joker joins Mortal Kombat 11 on Jan. 28. via the $39.99 Kombat Pack. (Those who bought Mortal Kombat 11’s $99.99 Premium Edition got the Kombat Pack with their purchase.) Shang Tsung, Nightwolf, The Terminator (T-800 model), and Sindel have all been released, leaving Spawn to complete the Kombat Pack lineup on March 17.
