When Sony announced a sequel to Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle in 2017, there was a million dollar question: how and why should the characters get back into the cursed video game? They had just managed to get caught in a video game forever (and possibly really die) by successfully completing a level. Why in the world would they ever return?
Jumanji: The Next Level solves this problem by making one of his characters fear separation. Spencer returns to the game because he felt isolated from the friends he had found in it and believed that Dr.
With The Next Level, which is expected to raise over $ 45 million on the first weekend, cinema-goers should likely expect a third Jumanji film in the next few years. But returning to the video game a third time seems like a tough business. The Next Level gives us a clear overview of what might come next – and it’s a strange fallback to the very first Jumanji film.
(Ed. Note: Spoilers for Jumanji: The Next Level will follow.)
Say something? Photo: Sony
Although Spencer, Fridge, Martha, and Bethany agree on the next level to leave the cursed video game alone once and for all, it is Spencer’s mother and an artisan who fix the house’s heating system and accidentally trigger Jumanji again. The artisan, played by New Girl’s Lamone Morris, sees the broken console and reaches for it when he tells Spencer’s mother about his interest in video games. No green light soaks them into the game, but when the four teenagers set off into the night, they are interrupted by a rush of ostriches. This time they don’t go into play. the game comes to them.
The return to the formula that made Jumanji so entertaining in 1995 also reminds us that The Next Level is actually the third Jumanji film and not the second in a new Jumanji series. In the original film, the game’s jungle creatures jumped into the real world, prompting the characters to continue playing the game until one of them won, putting the game back in its box. Now the game is unleashed in the real world again.
But the connections between The Next Level and the original film don’t end there. The restaurant that Milo and Eddie previously owned is renamed Nora’s. If the name appears familiar, it’s because Nora was a character from the 1995 film, Judy and Peter’s aunt. She appears here in a cameo by Bebe Neuwirth, which takes up her role again.
The direction the next Jumanji will go (if we get one) may be obvious – let’s go back to the roots of the franchise! – but there are still a few questions that need to be answered. Given that we turned the original board game version of Jumanji in Welcome to the Jungle into a video game, will the game change again now that it has been brought into the real world? And how do the rules of a video game apply in real life? Are the game avatars somehow brought into the real world? Will they try to work a CGI Robin Williams in there somehow? Give us Jumanji 4, please!
