I'm not a fan of older Cage either, for the simple reason it gives me bad vibes to another instance of a franchise randomly aging up one of its core characters: DC Comics' in-universe reboot the New52, back in 2011, randomly retconned Batman into being active for like a decade more than the "current" five year timeline all the other major heroes were active in, so they could scoop up all his sidekicks into the timeline and trademark purposes...which meant he was suddenly the experienced super-speshul seen-it-all-guy even more than he usually was and no longer feeling like a genuine peer to his Justice League counterparts. While that's finally been retconned back of a sort (mostly giving everyone their fuller histories back to the point of "who cares anymore they're all the same age cohort again I guess"), Cage also isn't really supposed to be like this vis-a-vis the others. He's pound for pound probably the most-skilled/techniqued martial artist in the MK universe to be able to be randomly dropped into this world of magic and monsters and compete with them on an even level, so being a past-his-prime has-been just forces reliance on his god-killing green magic even more... to say nothing of making an eventual romance with Sonya feel weird or garnering the eventual respect of his counterparts in Jax, Sub-Zero, the Shaolin monks, etc. Because they all see him firsthand grow and mature into a true hero whichever timeline he's in.
