his words, "kind of bluffed my way in." Cameron Diaz was originally cast as Sonya Blade, but dropped out due to a wrist injury and was replaced by Bridgette Wilson. Wilson had accepted a role in Billy Madison after being passed up in the Mortal Kombat auditions in favor of Diaz, and so had to fly out to the set the morning after her last day filming Billy Madison. Steve James was originally cast to play Jaxx, but he died from pancreatic cancer a year before production on the film began. Goro was portrayed by an elaborate $1 million animatronic created by Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis of Amalgamated Dynamics and operated by 13 to 16 puppeteers. This advanced construct proved a continuous source of problems on the set; Goro frequently broke down, and the person operating Goro from inside could only do so for two minutes at a time due to lack of oxygen. Though Anderson did his best to block and shoot Goro in a way that worked around the animatronic's limitations, ultimately Goro's screen time had to be severely reduced from what was originally planned. Filming began in August 1994 and ended in December 1994. The Outworld exterior scenes were filmed at the abandoned Kaiser Steel mill (now the Auto Club Speedway) in Fontana, California, while all of Goro's scenes were filmed in Los Angeles. Shooting locations in Thailand were accessible only by boat, so cast, crew and equipment had to be transported on long canoe-style vessels. Location manager Gerrit Folsom constructed an outhouse in a secluded area near the set in order to alleviate the problem of repeated trips to and from the mainland. Filming locations in Thailand include the Wat Phra Si Sanphet, Wat Chaiwatthanaram and Wat Ratchaburana temples. The arrival of Earth's contestants via boats, Liu Kang's meditation scene and the fight between Liu Kang and Kitana were filmed at the Railay Beach and the Phra Nang Beach, respectively. The bows of the boats were fitted with ornamental dragon-head carvings and used in the movie as the fighters' secondary transport to Shang Tsung's island from his personal junk. At Anderson's encouragement, the actors ad-libbed much of the film's dialogue, including the quips "Thank God I didn't ask him to park the car." and "Those were $500 sunglasses, asshole." Most of the cast had several weeks of training for the fight sequences prior to