New movies that reboot old favorites are always heavily scrutinized. In the new movie trailer for the upcoming Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle sequel, we get a good look at how the game has changed since the original Jumanji was released in 1995. The trailer opens with a man finding the game on the beach. “I found something; you gotta check this out,” he says excitedly. “Who plays board games anymore,” his son groans as he sets the game aside.
The new movie trailer then cuts to a high school where text explains that the game has gone untouched for 20 years. Because who plays board games, right? “Yo, what’s this,” says one of the eventual players. The screen cuts to the text, “But the game always finds a way.” When the trailer returns to the scene, “Jumanji” flickers onto an old tube television. The board game is now a video game.
As soon as the four teenagers in the room start the game, they are sucked into it. The first guy and first girl are lucky enough to become Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson) and Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan). The second guy is downgraded to Moose Finbar (Kevin Hart). The second girl is horrified to realize she’ll be playing as Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black). She’s even more disturbed when she discovers her phone is gone. Expect the new movie behind the scenes interviews to involve a lot of questions about Jack Black channeling his inner teenage girl.
The latter half of the trailer follows the characters in the jungle. One clear improvement new movies like this one have over their predecessors is the CGI. While watching the animal scenes in the original Jumanji can be painful, it’s clear that the new installment’s amped up effects make the game concept more immersive without treading on the game-meets-world scenario that was beloved in the first film.
The trailer introduces other game elements like strengths and weaknesses. It also ends with the character Moose Finbar exploding after eating a piece of cake. In the new movie behind the scenes interviews, Dwayne Johnson explains, “We have this gift of these three lives. What are the most fun, awesome, crazy ways that we can die and audiences are going to love?”
