| Jax | |
|---|---|
| Mortal Kombat character | |
 Jax inMortal Kombat 11 (2019) | |
| First appearance | Mortal Kombat II (1993) |
| Created by | Ed Boon andJohn Tobias |
| Designed by | |
| Voiced by | Various
|
| Portrayed by | Various
|
| Motion capture | Various
|
| In-universe information | |
| Full name | Jackson Briggs |
| Family | Jacqui Briggs (daughter) |
| Origin | United States |
| Nationality | American |
Jackson Briggs, knownmononymously asJax, is a character in theMortal Kombatfighting game franchise byMidway Games andNetherRealm Studios. Introduced inMortal Kombat II (1993) as the leader of aSpecial Forces unit, he became a mainstay of the series, including as the protagonist of theaction-adventure spin-offMortal Kombat: Special Forces (2000). The character is distinguished by his metalbionic arms, which he first received inMortal Kombat 3 (1995), and his abilities are based around his upper-body strength.
In the games, Jax is first depicted as the commanding officer of Special Forces operativeSonya Blade and subsequently becomes one of the warriors defending Earthrealm from various threats. He is also depicted as a primary hero in various related media, including the 1996 animated seriesMortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, the 1997 filmMortal Kombat Annihilation, and the 2011 web seriesMortal Kombat: Legacy. Reception to the character has been generally positive for his appearance and special moves.
Jax was originally named "Kurtis Stryker," and was to be in the roster of the inaugural 1992first game of the franchise while possessing the storyline of pursuing Kano and his entrapment on Shang Tsung's island. The character was ultimately postponed upon the developers' realization that there were no female fighters in the game, which resulted in Sonya Blade taking his place instead and inheriting much of his originally intended storyline.[3][4] Stryker was officially added intoMortal Kombat II, where he was the first character made for the game,[5] but renamed "Jax" during the development process.[6]
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Played bybodybuilder John Parrish, Jax was originally conceived for the game as akickboxer dressed in shorts and a headband, but this concept was nixed due to potential similarities toStreet Fighter's boxer characterBalrog.[7] Jax was then outfitted in a yellowgi with metal forearms that clanged upon impact.Digitized game footage of the character in the costume was shot over two days, during which Parrish accidentally split the pants. The design was aborted thereafter by the developers as they felt the character did not look big enough, so Parrish was called back by Midway several months later for a re-shoot, for which he went shirtless with simple black tights.[8] ForMortal Kombat 3, he had Jax's bionic implants painted onto his arms, a process that took six hours.[9]
In early development screenshots ofMortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, released to the public in 2001, Jax was seen facing off againstScorpion while wearing hisMK3 costume,[10] but he was given a complete makeover for the finished product with a military-themed, while inMK vs. DC Universe and the 2011 reboot, he sported a pair ofdog tags around his neck. Jax has gone shirtless in all iterations of his main costumes in theMortal Kombat fighting games, with the exception ofMKvsDC, in which he was fully clothed with no skin exposed save for his head and face, and his bionics were adorned with greenLED lights.[11]
Jax's first game appearance came inMortal Kombat II (1993), where he is on a mission to find his Special Forces partner, LieutenantSonya Blade, who had gone missing in Outworld while attempting to apprehend Kano. Though he succeeds in rescuing Sonya, Kano manages to evade capture.
When Outworld emperorShao Kahn invades Earthrealm inMortal Kombat 3 (1995), Jax is among the thunder godRaiden's chosen warriors to help save Earthrealm; preparing for battle by fitting his arms with metallicbionic implants. After helping foil Shao Kahn's attempt to permanently claim Earth as his own, Jax and Sonya found the Outer World Investigation Agency (OIA), which specializes in exploring and mapping other realms as well as the destruction of interdimensional portals that could lead to Earth.
Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs makes his first chronological appearance in the 2000 action-adventure gameMortal Kombat: Special Forces, in which he attempts to stop Kano and the Black Dragon crime organization from stealing an artifact capable of opening portals to other realms.
InMortal Kombat 4 (1997), Jax and Sonya arrest Black Dragon member,Jarek, but they all end up joining forces with other Earthrealm heroes to stop fallen Elder GodShinnok and his Netherealm forces. After witnessing Jarek attack Sonya, Jax saves her and throws him over a cliff.[note 1] While returning to Earthrealm, Jax and Sonya find the malfunctioning Lin Kuei cyborgCyrax stranded in a desert, and bring him back to the OIA headquarters, where they restore his humanity and recruit him as an agent of the Special Forces.
InMortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), Sonya and Jax have added the blind swordsmanKenshi into their ranks, but the OIA's underground facility is destroyed byHsu Hao, who reveals himself to be part of the evil Red Dragon clan; bitter rivals of the Black Dragon. When Hsu Hao is later sent by Red Dragon leaderMavado to kill the sorcererShang Tsung, Jax intercepts and kills him. However, in the battle against the titular Deadly Alliance of Shang Tsung andQuan Chi, Jax and his allies are killed and resurrected by the Dragon KingOnaga to become his slaves.
While Jax is not playable inMortal Kombat: Deception (2004),[note 2] he plays a minor role in the storyline when Shao Kahn's enforcerErmac and the spirit ofLiu Kang break Onaga's mind control over Jax and his comrades. He returns inMortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), in which Jax becomes playable again. Sonya sends Jax to lead a unit in search of survivors after destroyingSektor's Tekunin warship.
Jax is one of the eleven characters representingMortal Kombat in the non-canonical 2008 crossover fighting gameMortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. In his ending, he underwent further mechanization to increase his power, though at the cost of his humanity.[13]
In the 2011Mortal Kombat game, which is areboot of the first three games, Jax is present at the start of the Shaolin Tournament and works with Sonya to bring down the Black Dragon. While they succeed in seizing many of their weapons caches, the Special Forces' key informant, Kano, is discovered to be a high-powered member of the organization, causing Jax and Sonya to focus on Kano's capture following the deaths of many of their comrades.[14][15] This leads them to the Mortal Kombat tournament on Shang Tsung's uncharted island, where Jax is captured and imprisoned, forcing Sonya to participate in the tournament to spare his life.[16] Raiden later enables Sonya to free a wounded Jax, but Shang Tsung destroys their extraction transport, stranding them on the island. Raiden reappears to heal Jax's injuries, which makes Sonya and Jax aware of both his presence and their crucial role in defending Earthrealm alongside Raiden's other chosen warriors.[17] After Liu Kang's victory over Shang Tsung, Sonya is held captive in Outworld before being rescued by Jax, who does not take part in the second tournament after his arms are psychically obliterated in a confrontation with Ermac and he is transported back to Earthrealm for medical attention.[18] Sonya and Jax, now with newly outfitted cybernetic arms, reunite with the other Earthrealm warriors to repel Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm. While Raiden and Liu Kang commune with the Elder Gods, the Lin Kuei ninja clan and Shao Kahn's wifeSindel attack. While Sonya survives, Jax is killed and resurrected by Quan Chi in the Netherealm as one of his undead revenant slaves.[19]
Jax returns as a playable character inMortal Kombat X. Two years after he was enslaved by Quan Chi, Raiden and Sonya manage to resurrect him. Due to his traumatic experience as a revenant, he retires from the Special Forces, marries a woman named Vera, and becomes a farmer. A further twenty years later, his adult daughterJacqui followed in his footsteps and joined the Special Forces alongsideCassie Cage, the daughter of Sonya andJohnny Cage; albeit against her father's initial wishes, though he eventually came around to support her. Jax,Sareena, and Kenshi are assigned to capture Quan Chi in the Netherrealm to use him to revive their friends. He loses most of his men in the battle, but soon captures Quan Chi and transports him to Earthrealm.[20]
Jax returns inMortal Kombat 11. Two years after the previous game, Jax has secluded himself on his farm following Vera's death and his honorable discharge from the Special Forces. AfterKronika, the keeper of time, fractures the timeline in an attempt to start anew, a younger version of Jax gets brought to the present. She also recruits the present Jax to her side after promising him a new life in her new era,[21][22] which brings him into conflict with Jacqui and his younger self.[23] While leading an attack on Kronika's keep, Raiden encourages the present Jax to fight for Earthrealm once more after telling him Kronika is Shinnok's mother.[24][25] In the DLC story expansionAftermath, a time-travellingFujin helps bring the present Jax to his senses, leading to him abandoning Kronika's cause before the final battle.[26]
While Jax isn't playable in the base roster ofMortal Kombat 1, he does appear as an assist-based Kameo fighter. During the climax of the game's story, multiple timeline variants of Jax can be seen during the final battle.[27] In Kenshi's tower ending, Jax in Liu Kang's new timeline is revealed to be an FBI agent who helps Kenshi take down the Yakuza. After the battle, they are confronted by Shang Tsung. Following the incident, he learns from Kenshi as well as Johnny Cage's movies about the threats Outworld poses to Earthrealm and got his superiors to form the Outworld Investigation Agency and hire Kenshi as an agent.[28]
As in the games, Jax often appears in alternateMortal Kombat media as one of thunder godRaiden's warriors chosen to defend Earthrealm from Outworld forces. He is briefly seen in the 1995 filmMortal Kombat where he and Sonya are pursuing Kano. He was played by Gregory McKinney, while his name was misspelled as "Jaxx" in the closing credits.[29] Jax was among many characters recast for the 1997 sequelMortal Kombat Annihilation, in which he was played by formerAmerican Gladiators actor Lynn "Red" Williams.[30]Mehcad Brooks played the character in the 2021 reboot filmMortal Kombat.[31]
Jax was a featured character in the 1996 animated seriesMortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, in which he was depicted as cool-minded and regularly in an amiable mood. He was voiced byDorian Harewood.[32]
InKevin Tancharoen's 2010 short filmMortal Kombat: Rebirth,Michael Jai White played Jax as a police detective in the fictional location of Deacon City,[33] and reprised the role for the first two episodes of Tancharoen's 2011Mortal Kombat: Legacy web series.[34] White said in a 2011 interview withMTV that he was originally to play Jax in the firstMortal Kombat film, but he turned it down in order to star inHBO's 1995Mike Tyson biopic. He was again cast as Jax inAnnihilation before ultimately dropping out upon being cast in the title role ofSpawn.[35]
Ike Amadi voiced the character in the 2020 animated filmMortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge and the 2021 sequelMortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms.[36][37]
Jax is a featured character in the 1994 Midway-producedMortal Kombat II comic book that was written and illustrated by series co-creatorJohn Tobias, which introduces the game's new characters and is used to set up the events leading to the second tournament.[38] He makes a single-panel appearance in the special-editionMortal Kombat 4 comic packaged with the 1998 PC release of the game, contacting Sonya by radio as she pursues Black Dragon memberJarek.[39]
InMalibu Comics'Mortal Kombat comic series, Jax first appears in the September–November 1994 "Goro: Prince of Pain" three-issue miniseries, which featuredMKII characters and tied into the 1994 "Blood & Thunder" six-issue story arc that covered the tournament from the first game. In the miniseriesU.S. Special Forces, released in two parts in January and February 1995, he and Sonya work to capture an original Black Dragon character named Rojack.[40] Jax then featured in the six-part "Battlewave" miniseries that year, where he is brutally attacked by Goro and left in a coma, but awakens to fight off an assassination attempt and joins Cage on a mission in Outworld,[41] where the Earthrealm heroes succeed in breaking up a wedding between a brainwashed Sonya and Shao Kahn.[42]
Anaction figure of Jax was released by Toy Island in 1996 as part of theirMortal Kombat Trilogy line.[43] He andReptile were featured in an "X-Ray" pack of two six-inch figures with transparent upper bodies that were based on the 2011 reboot and produced byJazwares.[44] The company also released a four-inch Jax figure in 2012 that was packaged with anUzi submachine gun (which was not in the game), but the figure was discontinued after only several months in release.[45]
Jax's noncanonicalMortal Kombat 11 ending, in which he manipulates time in order to end theAtlantic slave trade, drew online criticism from players for its perceived "woke" political agenda,[46][47][48] and resulted in the game beingreview bombed.[49] Michael McWhertor ofPolygon nonetheless praised the ending as "the best and boldest in the game",[50] whileThe Mary Sue criticized the backlash: "Why is this 'too woke'? Why is this threatening to people, when all it does is offer an alt-reality where we didn’t have 400 years of race-basedchattel slavery?"[47]Kotaku noted, "There is no mention [therein] of 'black power.' There is no indication that ... developer Netherrealm Studios is promoting 'white genocide.'"[46] Joseph Knoop ofThe Daily Dot said: "It’s a ridiculous reaction to an already ridiculous story — and something tells meMortal Kombat wouldn’t have it any other way."[48] While Wes Fenlon ofPC Gamer was also supportive in that the ending "tackles a heavy subject in its short running time", he considered it "unsurprisingly vague on the details."[51]TheGamer commented, "Jax’s ending has been blown so far out of context in a negative way that one would believe it to have been some explicit declaration of a political statement. Instead ... it is clear how ridiculous the outrage is."[49] In his 2022 bookMortal Kombat: Games of Death, author David Church wrote that the "outsize response to a common trope of alternate-historyspeculative fiction supports [a] caveat that racist attitudes brought into the game's reception by a subgroup of angry gamers may be a stronger force than in-game representations themselves."[52]
In 2021,Wired cited the debuts of Jax ("the all-American soldier") inMortal Kombat II andBalrog inStreet Fighter II (1991) as "lead[ing] the mainstream charge in terms of casting a variety of genders and races" in fighting games.[53] That same year, Alex Miller ofInverse wrote: "Playing as Balrog and Jax inStreet Fighter II andMortal Kombat II completely blew my mind. ... It was satisfying seeing characters of color being on equal footing with the likes ofRyu andScorpion, and if you were skilled enough, you could manipulate them to kick anybody’s ass in the game. It felt fair — finally."[54]Game Informer cited Jax among its "Respectful Representations of Blackness In Gaming" in 2022, commenting that while he "suffers from a stereotypical 'big, angry black man' musculature ... most black fighters (like Balrog andBruce Irvin) are shackled by their shady pasts and antagonistic tendencies, [but] Jax stands atop the heap as a captivating leader, loyal friend, and protective father."[55] However, in describing black characters in video games as "over-reliant on outdated, one-dimensional stereotypes", Laura Francis ofGamesRadar+ remarked that Jax's "huge bulging biceps and loud demeanour are his primary defining traits."[56] Game designerBrenda Brathwaite, writing forThe Escapist in 2008 on the stereotyping of African-American video game characters, criticized the "ridiculous" attributes of black characters from "violent" fighting games such as Jax's "Machine Gun" special move (fromDeadly Alliance andMK vs. DC Universe) andT.J. Combo's "Target Practice" finisher fromKiller Instinct 2 in which he pulls out a gun and fatally shoots his opponent.[57] Kyle A. Harris ofSouthern Illinois University Carbondale, in a 2016 study titledThe New Blackface: The Transition of Black One-Dimensional Characters from Film to Video Games, categorized Jax along withFinal Fantasy VII characterBarret Wallace and Balrog andDee Jay fromStreet Fighter as "hulking figures over six feet tall with extremely huge muscles and brash personalities." Harris further opined that Jax and Barret's cybernetic enhancements further perpetuated and emphasized their physical strength.[58]
Jax has received a mixed to generally positive reception over the course of his in-game appearances. While hisMortal Kombat II appearance has been criticized,[59][60][61] his design fromMortal Kombat 3 and onward have met with praise.[62][63][64]GameFront called him "a character no one cares about,"[65] butDen of Geek ranked Jax 35th in their 2015 rating of the series' 77 playable characters for his role as the "cool as hell ... super-strong Army dude".[66]
Jax was widely seen as a top-tier character ofMortal Kombat II. He was considered as such byGamePro in their 1993 character rankings, in which they placed him second out of the game's twelve playables behindMileena: "It’s hard to fight against a good Jax [player] that knows how to control space and use his projectile well."[67] According toCU Amiga, Jax was "the best all-round character," but "not quite as nimble on his feet as [the] other characters."[68]Sega Visions opined that Jax "had the best offense" in the game, while "his slow movement and less-than-powerful uppercut are his weaknesses."[69] According toTotal 64, Jax inMortal Kombat Trilogy was a "top fighter, that is equally good in the air as on the ground."[70] According to Alex Vo ofGameSpy, he was a "versatile" character but histonfa weapon style in the game had "no range," while he was best utilized only in distant or up-close combat.[71] In Prima's official guide for the 2011Mortal Kombat reboot, Jax "has generally changed over the years from a defensive machine to an offensive powerhouse," and displays no particular advantage over other characters but is very disadvantaged when playing against Shang Tsung.[72] The publisher additionally considered Jax fromMKII to be one of the "cheapest"Mortal Kombat characters, citing his specials such as his unblockable "Ground Pound" and "Quadruple Slam" while opining that the first game had no such unblockable specials but "that line of sensible thinking was thrown out the window whenMortal Kombat 2 came around."[73] Den of Geek noticed that across the franchise Jax been given mechanical arms in different forms, often resulting in noticeable gore in order to simply add them. In his debut as a main character,Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, it comes across instead as a "a trial run for what would one day become a permanent upgrade".[74] Director McQuoid talked about changing the usage of mechanical arms with Sub-Zero instead being the one takes Jax's arm in order to further mixed him in the narrative with the main cast as Sub-Zero acts as a major antagonist in such reboot film.[75] With the new reboot game coming in 2023, GameRant noticed several fans were questioning how Jax would lose his arms inMortal Kombat 1.[76] GameSpot felt that while the 2023 reboot takes several liberties, Jax instead keeps wearing his most iconic outfit alongside other recurring characters.[77]
Reaction to Jax's Fatalities has been mixed. His finishers fromMortal Kombat II have been well received,[78][61][79][80] with the "Arm Rip" Fatality additionally voted by readers ofGamePro as the bestMortal Kombat finisher in 1995.[81] His "Giant Stomp" fromMortal Kombat 3, in which he grows off-screen to a gargantuan height and then crushes his opponent with his foot, was included inIGN's 2010 ranking of their "Unofficial Top 10 List" of the best series finishers,[82] but made GamePro's 2008 list of the 12 "LAMEST" Fatalities: "If you have the ability to grow to 200 feet tall, you should probably unleash it at the beginning of a battle instead of the end."[83]Game Informer called it one of the game's "most confusing" finishers.[84] Jax has additionally received negative attention for hisMortal Kombat 4 ending, in which he kills Jarek after the latter drops Sonya off a cliff.[66][85][86][87]
Response to Jax's alternate-media representations is mixed. Eric Snider ofFilm.com said of Williams' performance inMortal Kombat Annihilation, "Since he’s The Black Guy, the movie makes him say things like 'That’s what I’m talkin’ about!' and 'Let's do this!'"[88] Blair Marnell ofCraveOnline praised White's performance inMortal Kombat: Legacy: "White really carries the piece as Jax ... this is a Jax that I can buy as a main character."[89]IGN described White in the series as "doing what he does best—kicking some serious ass."[90]
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