VGFlicks: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Part 1)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

You can feel the contempt towards gamers in every single
minute of the Super Mario Bros. Movie.
I am so sorry for the late Bob Hoskins.

I touched up on that a bit back in my review of Ready Player One, but I’ll expand on this here: There’s been a gradual change of mentality in Hollywood when it comes to video games. The earlier movies based on games oozed a sort of disinterest for the source material, either misrepresenting video games badly, or doing away with any sort of established canon. Earlier movie adaptations of games, like The Super Mario Bros. Movie, ditched what we know of the series to instead do… well, whatever nonsense they wanted, because it’s just nonsense in those games, right? Some Italian plumber grows big by eating mushrooms and has to fight some dinosaur monster who kidnaps princesses! (Not that there was much plot in those games to fill 90 minutes of movie back then, mind you.) The trend often peers today as well, though it’s gotten much rarer.

But the times, they are-a changing. The old, non-gaming-savvy Hollywood execs are replaced by the crowd that grew up with Atari, Nintendo, SEGA, PlayStation or Xbox. The kids who loved these pixelated or polygonal heroes then are now grown adults producing, directing, script-writing or acting in movies. It’s not uncool nowadays to be a gamer. Geeks are at the helm of some of the most beloved and profitable franchises in the history of cinema. They know gaming. The odds are much higher that they’ll accurately represent video games or gaming franchises.

Even Lady Gaga recently tweeted about playing Bayonetta!

When you beat Chapter IV of Bayonetta and then realize Chapter V is going to kick your ass ☠️😂 secret #gamergirl THE SHADOW REMAINS TOUGH!!!!!!

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) 4 novembre 2018

I gotta go back to listen to her music now. I just have to.

The idea of “people getting trapped within a game” isn’t new. Virtualization is a topic I touched upon before as a common trope of works about video games or virtual worlds. This movie, however, puts a new spin on the formula.

Remember Jumanji? That 1995 classic film starring the late Robin Williams in a crazy adventure about a board game bringing the terrifying dangers of the jungle into a peaceful neighborhood? Okay, it’s more complex than that, but the base concept is a magical board game. There was something similar in Zathura, released in 2005, trading jungle adventure for science-fiction. And here, more than 20 years after the original film, we have this sequel, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Get your Guns N’ Roses jokes out of the way right now.

This one features the eponymous board game of the original, but in a new flavor. It’s always a risky bet to make a sequel to an adored classic, especially so long after the original, and especially if you’re going such a different route from the original. Did this risky bet pay off? Let’s find out.

Board games, huh? No thanks, last time I played
Monopoly, it ended in disaster.

This movie begins in 1996, as the board game is found on a beach in Hampford, New Hampshire. A father brings it to his son, Alex Vreeke, who puts it aside to play some more Twisted Metal. Who cares about board games in 1996, amirite? If it’s not DnD, I’m not interested! The game, however, in all its… er… magical-ness, records what it sees and takes note. That night, it transforms into a game cartridge and plays its iconic African drum sounds, awakening Alex. He decides to put the cartridge in his console, and starts playing. Cue to outside the house, with blue light emitting from Alex’s room, and then… nothing.

Some weird thing has to have happened in that boarded-up
house.

Cut to 2016, we meet Spencer Gilpin (portrayed by Alex Wolff), a smart but awkward A student in high school, a germophobe with a scared mother who’s encouraging his fear of everything in the world. …In hindsight, I can’t entirely blame her, but it’s done so blatantly that it feels like cheap satire. Getting some texts from his friend Anthony “Fridge” Johnson (portrayed by Ser’Darius Blain), he schedules a meeting and hurries in putting the last touches to a school paper. They meet by the Vreeke home, now boarded up and looking abandoned (it isn’t, Alex Vreeke’s father still lives there, and has become creepy like an announcer of imminent doom). Turns out Spencer has been writing Fridge’s school papers so that the latter doesn’t have to worry about them while he keeps his place on the high school’s football team. I sense trouble brewing from that.

Oh, Bethany is smart. But also incredibly self-centered,
and phone-obsessed.

Now at school, we meet the last two protagonists of this story as they, and the previous two mentioned, each get detention for various offenses. Of note, none of the offenses sending these kids to detention are cheap, or tacked on, or unbelievable. Each one breaks actual high school rules, unlike some bad high school films that would just have a spiteful teacher sending kids to detention regardless of whether they did anything wrong.

"I guess I'll be writing 'I must not insult the gym teacher'
on the blackboard?"
"We stopped doing that, the Simpsons made it passé."

Stock popular girl, blonde Instagrammer and smartphone addict Bethany Walker (portrayed by Madison Iseman) gets it for talking to her friend on the phone, during an exam in class, acting as though there wasn’t anyone else in the room needing to concentrate. Later, Martha Kaply (portrayed by Morgan Turner) refuses to participate to the gym class, and accidentally insults the class teacher as she explains why. That’s a direct trip to detention, right there. Meanwhile, Spencer and Fridge get caught for the former doing the latter’s schoolwork. It turns out that Spencer self-plagiarized a couple lines from previous assignments. As for Fridge, he gets kicked off the team. Nice job.

Spencer and Fridge. Getting punished for something that
they knew could go wrong.

Here they are, the four winners of the "Who is Jumanji going to put
through Hell today" lottery!

Hey wait, how come one character has been picked already?

All four are taken to detention and tasked with cleaning up a basement room that will be made into a computer class. Bethany refuses to help, too busy using her phone. While uncovering various items in the room (who left a bowling ball in there?), the teens find the weird console with the Jumanji cartridge in it. Spencer decides a short break wouldn’t hurt, so he plugs in the comsole, starts the game, and the others join in reluctantly. They each pick a character based on the description (Spencer goes for Smolder Bravestone, Fridge goes for Franklin Finbar, Martha picks Ruby Roundhouse, and Bethany picks Shelly Oberon).

When the proper game starts, with an ominous intro (“A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind”), the four players find themselves sucked into the game, dissolving into it. Please, I’ve had enough last year with characters dissolving this year… I still got Infinity War PTSD…

Looks only a tad bit better than when Alan was taken into
the game back in the 1995 film.

Upon landing in the jungle, Spencer takes a moment to assess the situation. Where is he? What’s going on here? …Where’s his hair? To his complete and utter shock, he has transformed into Dwayne Johnson! The others fall down after him; Fridge is now Kevin Hart, Martha is Karen Gillan, and Bethany is… Jack Black. You heard that right. She’s now in the body of a 50-something, overweight dude. Things are gonna get awkward.

Clockwise: Spencer (as Smolder Bravestone), Martha (as Ruby Roundhouse),
Bethany (as Prof. Sheldon Oberon) and Fridge (as Franklin Finbar).

However, it's all going to be there for the sake of comedy. There is no underlying message to be had there about gender change or anything of the like. Even the set-up is a joke, as Bethany chose the character because it said "curvy scientist", so she imagined one of those sexy scientists, not that. This is entirely tongue-in-cheek, comedic, without secondary implications. As a matter of fact, these four actors right now aren’t playing their usual selves; they’re playing the teenagers from earlier, thrust into this situation, which adds a very interesting layer to these roles.

He's not just the Robin to Dwayne's Batman. He's the Robin
to everybody else in the story.

I will however, take issue with the one black character, Kevin Hart’s Franklin "Mouse" Finbar, being basically the sidekick for the rest of the team, and especially to Smolder Bravestone. He’s not a slave per se (though some translations use words that imply this dynamic, for lack of a better word for “sidekick”), but for a big part of the story he’s just the backpack guy who drops funny lines. Oh, and he  spouts exposition, per his zoology skill. I don’t really like the implications of the character. You could say it’s Jumanji’s fault, but that’s a pretty poor excuse.

I will also point out that Jumanji, in mimicking the style of older games, has given the sole female character a sexy outfit completely inappropriatefor jungle exploration, something Martha complains about for a moment. She’s right to complain, those fanservice outfits don’t make sense. They’re there for eye candy, logic be damned. It could have been a sort of commentary on that trend of video games, but not only does Martha do nothing afterwards regarding what she wears, the film certainly likes to linger on her character… For the record, it was apparently a pain for Karen Gillan too, as the makeup tan added for filming attracted more mosquitoes to her, while she also had the most exposed skin of all the actors.

The four teens take a moment to recognize each other, now that they’re completely different people. They figure out that they’re inside the game and Bethany panics, because she doesn’t have her phone – oh honey, I don’t think you’d get a signal here. Then Bethany, as Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon, gets too close to the water and gets eaten by a hippo, with the others looking in shock.

Can we throw this guy out and keep the jeep?

Don’t worry, she’s fine, she just falls down from the sky five seconds later. She lost a life, which they don’t seem to understand yet, but they will eventually figure out when they realize the bars tattooed on their wrists represent their remaining lives. Fridge, as Franklin Finbar the zoologist, explains that she got eaten by a hippo, and he rattles off information on hippos as if he always knew it, then wonders how the Hell he knew all that. Turns out, they’re not just in the bodies of these characters, they also have these characters’ abilities and talents. …And just as they’re about to be attacked by more hippos, a jeep turns up and the driver tells them to embark. They get in and the driver, an NPC named Nigel, brings them away.

"[reader]? Welcome to Jumanji!"

In the game’s plot, this is the guy who asked them to come to the island of Jumanji. While driving, he greets the four players with the same phrase (“[name], [occupation]? Welcome to Jumanji! I’ve been so anxious for your arrival!”) They could literally ask this guy 2+2 and he’d say the same thing, I could probably call him the worst insult I know and he wouldn’t budge from his script!

Hey, Nigel! Your mom sleeps with the person of bad reputation of your choice!

“Nicolas Hamel, reviewer? Welcome to Jumanji! I’ve been anxious for your arrival!”

…I should’ve guessed.

Nigel then explains that the island is in danger, and that he told them about the situation in a letter he sent to Smolder Bravestone. Spencer realizes he’s holding a letter, and reading it, the four see like a movie play in their heads. Or, well, that's what we see. It’s a cutscene. Damnit, where’s the Skip button in this world…

Oops, the villain got the almighty MacGuffin.

In the cutscene, Nigel explains that he was part of an expedition led by Russel Van Pelt, Smolder’s former work partner. This Van Pelt wished to find the Jaguar’s Eye, a mystical stone in the heart of Jumanji. They found it, and when Van Pelt took it, he gained control over the animals of this island. And he lost most of his sanity points in the process. Nigel managed to steal the stone from Van Pelt and has brought it to the heroes, who are tasked with bringing it back where it belongs… That is, on the forehead of a giant cliff shaped like a jaguar’s head. He drops the four in a clearing with a map, and wishes them goodbye with a rhyme recapping their mission. Nigel also says that the group should get to the bazaar on the island to find “the missing piece”.

"The goal for you I'll recite in verse
Return the jewel and lift the curse
If you wish to leave the game,
You must save Jumanji and call out its name.
The goal for you I'll rec..."
"...Shut up."

The four begin walking, with Spencer explaining that since this is a video game, it should have levels that get harder as they progress. Um… no. Admittedly, Jumanji took a lot of inspiration from Twisted Metal, a game that came out in 1995, but as a world to explore it behaves a lot more like a modern wide-open sandbox. The characters are free to explore as they please, though they follow a path recommended by the game through the map, which updates as they reach new areas.

Speaking of, Spencer finds the map blank, but Bethany manages to read it. As it turns out, they need to help each other by using their various skills so they can beat the game. By putting their hand to their heart, they can even see their character sheet! Let have a look at that, shall we?

No weaknesses, huh? That's not fair. I call balancing issues.

-Spencer Gilpin as Smolder Bravestone: His strengths are Fearless, Climbing, Speed, Boomerang and a “Smoldering intensity” (which just means “Takes on a deep facial expression while saying something dramatic”). No weaknesses. Well, okay – he does have weaknesses, actually; he’s strong and all, but he’s a strict action character. Physical work and combat and all that. For everything else, he needs to rely on the abilities of the others. He can’t read the map because Bethany has that as her ability, he doesn’t know the animals because Fridge has that as his ability. But when it’s time to kick ass, he will kick ass.

-Martha Kaply as Ruby Roundhouse, “Killer of men”: Her strengths are all combat-based (Karate, Tai chi, Aikido and… dance fighting), just about the worst selection for a girl who hates physical activity. Her weakness to venom is… mundane. Tell me you haven’t got a weakness to venom. I bet you have! It’s poison for a reason, it should be killing these characters even if it wasn’t a weakness.

-Bethany Walker as Sheldon Oberon. Strengths: Cartography, archaeology, paleontology. Weakness: Endurance. Can’t run for crap, but if you need someone to read maps or study old artefacts or fossils, he’s… er… she’s your man… er… Okay, this might be getting confusing. Either way, Sheldon is necessary to the adventure since nobody else can apparently read the map, so while Bethany can defend herself (even in this weird situation) and is actually quite smart, the team better look out for her.

It's really weird to address a character played by Jack Black with female pronouns.

"I hate this game."
You and me both, man.

-Anthony “Fridge” Johnson as Franklin “Mouse” Finbar: Three weaknesses, namely cake, strength and speed. How is… How can cake be a weakness? Is he more at risk of cavities? And strength? Does that mean he’ll lose a life if someone beans him too hard on the shoulder? On the other hand, strengths: Zoology and weapons valet. Dude. In Jumanji, zoology is probably the most OP skill one could have – you know everything about every animal, including how to deal with them! That’s literally the best ability on the island. And weapons valet? Sounds lame, but it basically means your backpack is a Bag of Holding with literally everything inside of it. You could fit a bicycle in there! No wonder you got so many weaknesses, the game is poorly-balanced!

I guess now is as good a time as possible to end Part 1. This will resume in Part 2.

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