MORTAL KOMBAT!!! A blood-slicked reminder that, in arcade fighter games and Hollywood blockbusters alike, no fatality is ever truly permanent. Simultaneously, he’d been writing, shooting and producing his own projects — most of them not in the action genre, but dramas, comedies and even a silent film inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s nouvelle vague classic “Band of Outsiders” — aiming to build a reel and take his career into his own hands. Then, a few years ago, he sat through the longest plane ride of his life. Tan had finished filming “Wu Assassins” and was on a flight to Japan when he heard that he’d lost out on the massive Marvel role he’d been reading for. “I was in a terrible state of mind for 12 hours straight,” he says. “Didn’t sleep, landed in Japan and was like, ‘I’m going to get off this plane and I’m never going to think about this again. I’m going to not only move forward, I’m going to move forward with more ferociousness.’”