I have always been sceptical of sequels since I developed my own brand of cynicism over producer’s zest for milking something great into bare bones and skeletons.
Jumanji was one of my favourite movies since I started developing my own taste and critique in moving pictures. For me from the scene a kid was sucked into the game, to plot points where someone is surfing down the street on a main entrance door next to a croc; or expecting the worse from the thumping sound of stampede bursting through the library walls, Jumanji had sucked me into its world. The performance from the great Robin Williams for me was unmatched. It opened me up to the new possibilities of films. Jumanji always has a special place in my heart and I have seen it many times on both the large LDs and later DVDs.
When they announced Jumanji “Welcome to the Jungle”, I thought: why can’t they let good things stay as good things? Why must this be milked? And when I saw the initial production pictures, I was totally sickened by Karen Gillan’s “outlandish” outfit in a jungle. I thought do they have to downgrade this once loved movie to something sexist and irrelevant? Then came the first trailer, which provided a bit more context to the premise. Yet I was still sceptical. I wondered how much difference could you make to the story when you simply updated the premise from a board game to a video game? Where is the tension from the dice rolling and don’t know what is going to happen next?
Nonetheless, I decided to cast my scepticism aside and went into the cinema to see it. I believe if I want to make a fair judgment of this movie, the cinema is the only place to do so.
I was glad that I did.
Jumanji managed to redeploy the same formula with updated concepts. You can spot the similarities in structure and story with the first one but the experience was different. In this instalment, players were sucked into the original board game that transformed itself into a video game. The original board game self-consciously transformed itself into the new form to attract a new generation of players. As per usual, it claimed its first victim within the first 10 minutes and the plot fast forwarded to the modern times. And this is the part things changed and got modernised.
The new generation of players now take up “Avatars” in the game, and this completely explained Karen Gillan’s outfit and everything made sense. As a video game player myself, I appreciate how they sarcastically discussed how ridiculous a lot of video games have female players dressed in ways that are totally inappropriate for the adventures they are about to go through. Also the mix of characters against their avatars added additional layers to character development, as sometimes the true identity retained its own character but then other times they need to play along involuntarily the function or place of their in-game avatars. That made the movie very entertaining to watch. I personally think the Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black (whom I usually did not like) and Karen Gillan did exceptional jobs for their characters.
There are lots of modern video game references in the movie, from pop up characters stats, NPC (Non-playable characters), to involuntary cutscenes and level building etc. As a gamer they are all good laughs and Easter eggs. What I appreciate was how they deployed these gags in relation to the story plot, which made them make so much more sense than just simply throwing them out for the sake of referencing them.
The movie also smartly employed time stamped related gags to depict the shift of what was considered as popular culture across 20 years. It was not kind to some of the characters, but then this nod to the older periods enriched the story context making it more multi-dimensional than being just a pure video game adventure movie. Both Tron and Jumanji are “sequels” to the original but by allowing Jumanji to go wild with imagination based on the video game culture, it trumped the Tron sequel which was just a flashier version of the old thing.
Jumanji is by no means without flaws. For example the splitting of worlds and avatars sometimes left me feeling not knowing enough about the avatars because apparently they have their own stories and parts in the video game story, but that was never really more extensively investigated as it focused heavily on how the real life players finally worked together to overcome their trials. Also the fact that the game transformed itself made it a bit more sinister than something that was unknown and triggered, as it was in the original movie. Further I don’t understand how the game landed back on the American shores as it was quite apparent (to me at least) it landed in a French speaking territory when the last movie ended post credit. But probably a lot of people did not remember that or haven’t seen the original.
In all Jumanji “Welcome to the Jungle” was quite an entertaining movie for the holidays. I enjoyed my ride with the characters and laughed out loud in certain places. But then since it was very heavily culturally referenced, I do not know whether non-gamers would be able to enjoy it as much as I did. Surely they explained certain video game concepts along the way, but then I do not know whether that would be too much for non-gamers to absorb them while trying to understand the gags.
But in the end I enjoyed it and I am glad that I did not go into the theatre with preconceived assumptions. Guess it always worth opening your eyes and mind a bit.
