Many people remember "Gamergate", and it looks like games may be back in the news. The gaming community seems to have their controllers in a knot over a character's ending from the most recent incarnation of Mortal Kombat.
Apparently the lead villain is a villainess. The cast of warriors, old and new, are fighting Kronika. She wishes to use her ability to manipulate time to remove Raiden from the timeline. According to
Kotaku, in one of the game modes, defeating her gives the victorious character an opportunity to reshape time the way they see fit. Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs, who is African-American, decides to go back and bring the American slave trade to an end. Many reviewers are not happy. But what does his ending really say. Why not go to Jax's own words:
I’m lucky. My family and I lived the American dream. But most people who look like me haven’t had that chance.
I owe it to them to put things right, and I’m not waiting centuries for people to get woke. . .
As he speaks these, we watch images of Africans being led away in chains being replaced by European Men meeting with African Diplomats. As the ending continues Jax even admits "I don't get it right the first time, or the second, or even the third time, but eventually I knock it out of the damn park. . . "
That could imply a lot of things, that Jax realizes that the Slave trade isn't the only evil that needs to be undone. Maybe he realizes he needs to also stop Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, etc from being assassinated or slows the tide of mass incarceration. Perhaps he realizes that one event changing leads to others.
What I wonder if he would realize that at some point, that the issue is capitalism. The need for cheap labor for cotton and tobacco that created the need for White plantation owners to seek exploitable labor. The need to colonize Africa to plunder it's resources. The need to keep private prisons full. The question then may become, how "Woke" might Jax get.
