You can easily watch all three live-action Mortal Kombat movies without questioning Jax as a character. He’s big, muscly, and his big, muscly arms are made of metal — that’s a fine place to stop digging into Jax and just accept his presence among the magic ninjas and elemental sorcerers. But the more you watch the movies, the more you’re left questioning exactly what the deal with those arms really is — and the 2021 film only makes the questions even more baffling.
1995’s “Mortal Kombat” ignored the topic of Jax’s mechanical arms completely, leaving it up in the air whether or not they are a power, powered armor, or prosthetics — and if the latter is the case, did Jax lose his arms due to injury and require the replacements, or did he purposefully remove them to add the robotic arms as weapons? “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” reveals a bit more, at least, as it shows Motaro referring to the arms as weapons and ripping one from Jax’s body. Jax himself then tears off the other, revealing two intact (and jacked) arms.
The 2021 “Mortal Kombat,” however, shows Jax lose his arms, receive simple, mechanical replacements, and then activate his Arcana power in order to upgrade the arms into more sophisticated cybernetic constructs. We can only guess that his power is some form of technomancy, but the specifics remain completely unknown.
