The lit path is probably a trap. |
Oh crap. With this
turn of events, most members of the team are down to their last life. Spencer
panics and takes Fridge aside to tell him how afraid he is to face the dangers,
now that he has only one life, but Fridge reassures him. The two return to the
group, and with his knowledge of football and team strategies, Fridge devises a
plan that should allow the team to fight both the jaguars on the path and Van
Pelt’s men, who are coming.
Martha is just killing mooks left and right! That's okay, they're just programmed code. |
Her bio says “dance
fighting”, but really Martha is just really good at fighting while there’s
music playing, she’s not fighting while dancing. This game is bad at explaining
things! 3/10!
"Give me the stone, or Professor..." "Bethany..." "...Bethany? ...Really??? ....of the Professor gets a bullet!" |
Abusing the game's system to win? Yes. All of the yes. |
JUUU-MAN-JIIIIIIII!
Gee, what a
narcissist, this game.
Also, they manage to
do that just as the sun rises on the island. The shockwave caused from this
victory makes Van Pelt explode into rats (somehow) and brings back the jungle to its
original lush state. On the morning, when the team is back together, Nigel
arrives in his jeep and thanks the group for saving Jumanji. Yeah, they did the
job that you seemed perfectly able to do in the first place, Nigel.
"It's good to be home; it's good to have hair again." |
Of course he remembers them 20 years later. You don't just forget an adventure like that one. ...all those hours of therapy... |
Okay, this is
something that has bugged me about the first movie, and bugs me about this one.
It’s been theorized that Jumanji seeks kids who need to learn things about
themselves. It puts them through these trials so that they can learn the
lessons they need. And both times, it either sucked in one or multiple people,
or brought things out into reality, endangering these kids – and sometimes others. And both times, someone gets sucked in for two decades or longer (Alan
Parrish in the first film was stuck in Jumanji for 26 years). So, let’s see…
This game with reality-warping powers puts people through mortal danger, rewrites
time and space over decades, not to mention its big ol' reset button, all to teach a handful of kids a lesson? Worst.
Teacher. Ever.
Also, in the original
Jumanji, the introduction lets us know that Alan had issues with his father and
was afraid of facing his problems, traits that he both worked on throughout
the film. The other characters also had issues they worked on when the board
game resurfaced 26 years later. And the four teenagers in the sequel, in 2016,
all had issues to work through and managed to do so while adventuring in the
Jumanji video game. We get time to know them before Jumanji ropes them in. We
don’t actually get that with Alex, at the start of this film. We don’t spend
enough time with him to see why he had to be sucked in. Which is especially bad, considering the consequences of that disappearance.
And it's the teenagers who get to do the big Hollywood kiss. |
Roll credits, cue… Ah, there it is! Guns’n’Roses, I
was worried you’d never show up!
Well! That’s the movie. It’s a lot better than I make
it sound, really. It’s certainly a well-made movie, with great acting, great
special effects and a nice soundtrack. On the topic of the actors, the
“teenagers” of the movie play their roles quite well. I put that word between quotes
because, while the actors for Spencer, Martha and Bethany really were
teenagers, Ser’Darius Blain, Fridge’s actor, was 29 during production –
actually older than Karen Gillan, who plays Martha within Jumanji. Dwayne
Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Nick Jonas offer very good
performances not as the characters they appear to be, but as the teenagers
embodying those characters as avatars. Dwayne acts all shy and scared, Jack
Black had the tone and mannerisms of a teenage girl at the ready… you get the
idea.
The special effects are almost absent from the film
for most of the real world scenes, which almost gives the film a made-for-TV
feel up until the four teenagers are taken into the game. I like the little
touches, such as the teenagers getting detention for valid reasons (I saw too
many high school stories where that isn’t the case). When the special effects
kick in, they’re very well-done. I like that the characters figure out the
details of their adventure as they go, such as how their lives work, how they
use their abilities, and how to progress. Although for a gamer, it sure takes
Spencer a lot of time to figure those things out for the rest of the team.
It’s also great that each member of the team grows
into a complete badass by the end. Spencer and Martha already had the
abilities, but use their smarts and wisely utilize the game mechanics to their
advantage. Fridge takes full advantage of his zoology skill, even
taming an elephant. Badass. Bethany is the first to lose a life, and is in the
least physically-fit body of the group, yet she doesn’t lose another life for
the whole duration of the game, merely gives one of them to Alex later.
Speaking of, Alex becomes a badass too when he chooses to help the team, and
does so spectacularly even though he only has one life.
As much as I do enjoy the story, I have slight gripes
with it. Like I said, this Jumanji adventure doesn’t feel quite as crazy as the
original Jumanji, in part because the original was so creative and had so many
different threats for the heroes to overcome. Here, it feels a tad bland as the
main threat is a psychopath, his henchmen, and whichever animals he has control
of. It’s also pretty different in that this time around, the kids facing the
game are given talents and abilities, along with extra lives to fight off the
threats. These characters have obtained from the video game the talents to be
awesome, while the characters of the original had no such advantage, which
dramatically increased the stakes.
The story does take a chance at highlighting and
mocking multiple video game tropes, but even there the jokes remain fairly
tame. It pokes fun at the limited and often silly information players get, at
the lack of responses from NPCs, and so on. It also notes the tendency for
games to do fanservice, but doesn’t really expand on that commentary. Multiple
missed opportunies, in my opinion. It does have moments of brilliance, such as
the path Alex uses to bring the others away from the Bazaar leading into an
empty area, like a secret place. And of course, it’s great when the characters
get a hold of their abilities and use the situation to their advantage, in the
climax mostly. By the way, this game would be terrible to play. Jumanji is a
bad dev.
And like I mentioned earlier, what was it that Alex
had to learn through his experience in Jumanji, which led to him getting stuck
there for twenty years? The prologue isn’t long enough to explain this. The
other four teenagers get a reasonable amount of screen time showcasing the flaws and character traits they need to work on, before getting
sucked into the game.
But overall, I did enjoy the film. I recommend it.
Arguably, the original film is not a necessary watch to understand this one,
but it does help a lot in setting up the extent of the board game’s abilities,
what it can do. Is it better than the first? Honestly, I don’t know, because
they are so different. As a sequel, this film expands on the “mythos” of
Jumanji, by doing its own thing rather than copying what we saw in the original.
Perhaps not every change is perfect, but it’s a good attempt at putting a new
spin on the formula, as a sequel doing exactly what the original did would not
be seen as very creative. Good work there.
And hey… who knows, maybe this means we can have a
Zathura sequel now! Give me this, Hollywood.
Next week… something else.
Meanwhile, join the Planned All Along Discord!
No comments:
Post a Comment