The reason Raiden chose not to interfere even though Shang broke the rules, was to push Cole to get his power.and I guess be ready to win the Tournament in the next movie. There is a ton more, like the reason Raiden was a useless dick the whole move was because, 1) he needed to inspire Cole's arcana to manifest, and 2) well there may not be a 2 as Raiden literally thanks Shang at the end of the movie awakening Cole's arcana and only after that happens is he ready to help his champions. In the end, Kung Loa's life was "sacrificed" so that Cole could take his place as the hope of the tourney. Liu Literally says that Kung Lao is Earth's only hope because of his blood line, which is why Kung and Cole's fight/training session was so important to the movie.
* Kung Lao and Liu Kang's role in this Cole origin story is the one that pisses me off the most. With no Arcana, that MMA fighter beat his ass, Sonya beat his ass, and Kano beat his ass.though Cole wasn't fighting back on that one. The only reason Kung beat Cole was because of his Arcana. Pre arcana, Cole got his ass beat by everyone he fought (which was EXTREMELY dumb).except for Kung Lao.Cole's trainer LITERALLY says that Cole has great offense, but no defense, and this is his theme through every fight in the whole movie.hence his arcana.Subzero didn't kill Scorpion in his trade mark way, rather choosing to kill Hanzo with his own Kunai so that Cole could be given Hanzo's weapon at the end of the movie.The movie started with Scorpion for no other reason than to set up Cole as his descendent.One of these days I'm going to write out my own review, but in the meantime, know that EVERY decision made by writers in this story was made to serve Cole in some capacity. An origin that that they could build off of for future movies. Click to expand.Thing is, it wasn't their goal to have a character to walk the viewer through, they wanted to create a ground floor story for THEIR MK movie.