The Rock plays Dr. Smolder Bravestone, Gillan plays Ruby Roundhouse, Hart plays Franklin "Mouse" Finbar and Black plays Dr. Shelly Oberon. These three names and the appearance of the four are so ridiculous that they cannot possibly belong into Earth. And they don't, because they are all Jumanji creatures. Hence why the released image places them in the jungle and Nick Jonas, the fifth confirmed cast member, isn't with them. Jonas is a player.
- Confirmed. The game in the sequel changes from a board game into a videogame, and the aforementioned four characters are "avatars" used by children playing the game.
- To be exact, they are inhabitants of the in-game setting of "Jumanji", based on NPC Nigel's history with Bravestone, Mouse, Shelly, Ruby and Seaplane whom Spencer, Fridge, Bethany, Martha and Alex took on as their characters respectively.
Building on the "avatars" information, the Word of God that it is a sequel and not a remake, and the "game wants to be played". Jumanji is a Reality Warper after all, so what's to stop it from warping itself to get new players?
- Confirmed in the second trailer: A kid finds the board game, then immediately shelves it because, "Who plays board games anymore?"
- An NPC the players acquire during the game.
- Sort of confirmed, they do manage to recruit him into their party.
- Another player that's been trapped in the game for years like Alan was in the first movie.
- Confirmed. Nick Jonas plays as Seaplane McDonnough, the player character of Alex, the boy trapped into the video game at the beginning of the movie, in 1996. Although he does get teleported back into 1996 once he escapes.
- It will be revealed that their partner died during their game which made it impossible for them to continue playing, like what happened to the Astronaut in Zathura.
- Alex/Seaplane entered the game by himself but after losing two of his three lives, gave up because he didn't want to risk dying for real.
- Jumanji itself, keeping a close eye on its players to better reward, punish, help, or hinder as it sees fit.
- This could be foreshadowed by the person occasionally speaking in rhymes but Hand-Waving it by saying it's a side effect from being in the game so long.
- He's really going to be an upgraded version of Van Pelt, who's only "helping" the players so he can eventually trap them and claim them as his prizes
- Seaplane (Jonas's character) is actually the avatar of a player who has been stuck in Jumanji since 1996. He's nothing but helpful to the other players and is fully aware that the only way out of the game is if they all work together.
- The game being completed.You've come so far,
You're almost done,
Speak my name,
And the game is won.- Rhymes show up thrice during the movie: the NPC Nigel gives one that is basically their reminder to shout out "Jumanji!" once they reached their destination and succeeded in placing the gemstone back into the eye of the Jaguar Statue, and during the Black Mamba challenge which is told to them by a child NPC. And, of course, the game also starts with a loading screen displaying the famous phrase: "A game for those who seek to find/A way to leave their world behind"
- Among them will be an Alan Parrish.
- Half-confirmed: the new players end up finding a fifth player, who has been living for twenty years in an open hut built by Alan Parrish during his time there, with his name carved into a post.
- In both the original book and the first movie, Jumanji is not the name of the Bulungi the characters are traveling through, but a City of Gold that is the ultimate goal of the adventure. In neither do the Main Characters actually see that city, as completing the game ends it. That doesn't have to be the case here, enabling an Uncharted-style battle through the Scenery Porn.
- Or true to its original versions, it will be a sacrificial shrine that worships a spinning vortex.
- Jossed to both. It started with a large Jaguar statue and it ends there.
And there's our Sequel Hook.
- Not completely Jossed as the game was physically destroyed by the teens, but Jumanji may come back in a different form due to the Jumanji Drums sounding after the credits but as for Zathura, it may not happen due to the original Zathura being not successful.
- Jossed. Spencer and Martha confessed their love for each other, but this was a major subplot and not a token gesture.
Played by a different actor of course, and become Younger and Hipper to fit the current setting of Jumanji.
- Confirmed. The Big Bad of the movie is an evil explorer named Russell Van Pelt.
"You think that mosquitoes, monkeys, and lions are bad? That is just the beginning. I've seen things you've only seen in your nightmares. Things you can't even imagine. Things you can't even see. There are things that hunt you in the night. Then something screams. Then you hear them eating, and you hope to God you aren't dessert. Afraid? You don't know what afraid is."
The game played in the original film and book was, itself, of a modern commercial style - a "racing" board game a la Candyland or Game of Life, with ancillary effects per move straight out of Monopoly - which would've seemed state-of-the-art to the boys who bury the game in the first film's opening scene. If "Jumanji" is actually supposed to have been centuries old even then, it had probably only recently transformed from a previous format - a chessboard, backgammon board, Snakes And Ladders, or possibly just cards - and may ultimately have gone through dozens of iterations over the generations. Its actual origins may have been as something like Mancala or Shax (note that the Real Life animals it evokes are distinctly African), or possibly Mehen
if a "racing game" configuration is its default arrangement.
- This actually makes even more sense when you remember that the animals in the game are not realistic — they look and act like the animals in Darkest Africa fiction, from the vicious, man-eating lions to the sadistic monkeys. Jumanji was a board game for board game players, has become a video game for the 90s generation... who knows what it could have been, or could yet be?
Literally everything about the game screams Anansi the trickster god…
- The game is a part of the pot containing all the worlds wisdom that Anansi dropped and broke. The wisdom and pot were swept out to sea and spread around the world. We have TWO eldritch games as far as we know; Jumanji and Zathura... and those may not be the only ones out there.
- Jumanji supposedly means "Many Effects" in Zulu. Anansi had power over stories so the game COULD be a sentient choose your own adventure story that gained form somehow.
- On the subject of stories, every player fits a role, and if not all of them fit it sucks in someone else to fill it as a "side character" but either way all the players are protagonist archetypes.. perhaps the story/game lost its original protagonist. Which flips back to Anansi who was had all those qualities the players have.
- On the pot thing, it was his son who made him drop it as he was attempting to hide the pot in a tree. All the FIRST players have an incident with their fathers that results in the story starting. Perhaps its Anansi's son Ntikuma who made the game to set right parental issues between sons and fathers, since it always seems to be a male first player…
- Iktomi's the trickster who's supposed to keep himself updated, so my bet would be on him.
- In the first movie, we don't get to see what the jungle inside the game looks like, but Van Pelt is clearly modeled after a late 19th/early 20th century big game hunter, so it can be assumed the rest of the jungle is modeled after that era as well. This movie, Jumanji becomes a video game, and the jungle inside the game suddenly has mercenaries on motorcycles and helicopters.
- Almost impossible to deny, since none of the tech we see in the game would have existed when the game was first made.
- Face it, the game looks out of date even now. The kids only played it to divert boredom. To stay relevant, it will change form again - into a digital form on an internet server. Or an app.
- Well the game isn't intentionally dated, the reason it looks out of date is because there's still a game in progress so it can't change forms.
- Semi-confirmed by Word of God. In the film, we never see the game transform again, but the drums are heard after the credits, which has been confirmed to be because the game is still around. The next film is intended to be about Jumanji as a phone app game.
- Will be an immediate sequel in which due to the game being destroyed, it spits out all the animals and elements from it (including the avatars), and the main characters will have to work with their avatars (who have their own over-the-top personalities and have to come to grips with the real world) to put the game in a new "container."
- Jossed. Word of God says that the after-credit drums signaled the game surviving, and the current plans for a sequel revolve around it turning into a phone app game.
- Instead, it sends the player back to the beginning of the game, with all memory of the previous experiences erased, forcing them to start over. This explains why Alex has only experienced a few months in the game: he repeatedly played up to the point where the rest of the players found him, eventually died anyway, and restarted, sticking him in a "Groundhog Day" Loop until new players arrived to alter the events. Contrast with Alan Parrish who, after becoming an Action Survivor in Jumanji, experienced the full twenty-six years within the game before he got out.
- Fair point for the memories being erased part. After all, in video games, players CAN restart their video games after getting their Game Over status. However, at the same time, no one in-universe wants to know what will happen if they do lose their lives as it is way better to be safe than sorry.
At some point between the climax and the epilogue (years from his perspective), he'll meet Alan and say "I've been at your Jumanji treehouse".
- It's possible. After all, he did name his infant son "Alan". However, that does not necessarily meant he actually did work there as Alex could have sought out, and even found, Alan Parrish and then got a job anywhere else.
- Except Alex's son is named "Andy", not "Alan".
That's the reason it always returns to Brantford no matter what players who win do to make sure it never makes anybody else play it.
2009 Tokyo; a bright yet overly imaginative 14 year old boy called Akihiko Kayaba hears mysterious drumbeats coming from a dark forgotten corner in the back of vintage game console store, on the last day of its closing down sale. He nonchalantly picks a moldy paper box from the creaky old shelf, and to his surprise the grey-haired owner screamed “Take it! I thought I got rid of that evil thing! Have it for free! Just get it away from me!”
Akihiko shrugged, went home and blew the dust off the box, illustrated in the style of a 1950s American Jungle Adventure Novel like Tarzan, plugs the suspiciously-clean PlayStation One Console it into his room’s television, and shouts “I’ll be right down!” in response to being called for dinner…
…not knowing it would be the last time he would see his mother for 20 long years.
But moments later for Mrs. Kayaba, her son lethargically stumbled to the dinner table, his once-bright and enthusiastic eyes replaced by the tired ones of man twice his age, weary with the ponderous burden of phyrric victories, meaningless sacrifices, broken dreams and lost love. Akihiko mumbled “after all I did, I had to leave her behind, what was all that for.” Mrs Kayaba saw the tears welling in her son’s hollow eyes and hugged him, thinking he meant he was dumped by a girl at school, not knowing that the heart of the furiously weeping boy had stayed and died in the jungles of Jumanji.
Refusing to reconcile with the reality that his two deaths before being forced to sacrifice the NPC he loved and even married to return to the now meaningless “real” world was all for nothing, Ahihiko took inspiration from his ordeal and voraciously dedicated himself to the study of Game Creation, so he may one day re-create a world where death, loss, and sacrifice actually HAS meaning, with the ONE life you have and will ever get, and graduated with Honors from Professor Shigemura’s University Course…
…on November 6 2022, The Immersive Online Game Sword Art Online was unleashed onto the unsuspecting world.
"I beat you, old friend. I finally beat you" he bitterly chuckled at the ancient PlayStation One console, from which the drums still mysteriously beat as he shouts, “Link Start.”
How else can a 26 year old college professor create a living, breathing world real to all-senses save for pain, with nightmarish-monsters our for your blood, not to mention NPC and AI like Yui-Chan so nuanced and complete in personality they practically have souls? With technology that is a mere FOUR years away from now? Just as Zathura ran on the same magical “engine” of Jumanji to create a living breathing Space Opera, it stands to reason Kayaba was able to hack the now-electronic Jumanji after beating it...… or worse, enslave the game, take it apart, and hard-wire it into the Sword Art Online server to help create the living-breathing Heroic-Fantasy World of Aincrad.
- The game itself returns once more, this time as a rogue virus which abducts anyone who sees it on their computers or smartphones.
- Russel Van Pelt is still the Big Bad, and has become Jumanji itself by corrupting its source code and making it Unwinnable by Design, changing the setting from a jungle to a futuristic crime-ridden metropolis, and taking over the minds of players who die on their last life.
- It will be set around graduation day, with the four teenagers finding out about Jumanji's return and having to play it again to flee from Spencer's ruthless rival, who's possessed by Van Pelt due to losing all his lives inside the game.
- Alex Vreeke is now the main characters' teacher.
- Sarah Whittle will return, this time as the principal of Brantford High School.
- The four main avatars are now cyberpunk leather-wearing spies, with Bethany's avatar Shelly Oberon being turned from an overweight male genius into a slim, female assassin.
- After his final defeat in the climax, Van Pelt reverts to his old self from the first film.
- Jumanji "wants to be played". If someone wins the game or gets bored, they will leave, and it won't be played, so it tries to conjure up all manner of tricks to keep people in the game. If it were to become a mobile game, however, there would be THOUSANDS of players online at any given moment, and trying to trap players would only make FEWER people want to play, as it would become widespread enough for a reputation to be made. Thus, it would actually be able to make the largest game just by letting people come and go freely
- How does Jumanji generate an NPC? Maybe they are former players, who died in the game for good unable to finish it.
At the end of the original film, the game has washed ashore at what the Junior Novelization identifies as being near Nice, France (though how it made it from a river in New Hampshire, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Strait of Gibraltar to enter the Mediterranean Sea, and then north to the shores of France, even over the course of 26 years, is another question entirely). Yet at the start of Welcome to the Jungle, it's on a beach in New Hampshire. So... in between, the game must have been found by someone in France who played and won it, then threw it in the ocean to get rid of it (just like Alan did with the river). It then made its way back to New Hampshire (probably wanting to find Alan again) and was there found by Alex Vreeke's father, who gave it to his son and kicked off the plot.
