If it's been a while since you've seen the first two Jumanji films or if you've avoided
the sinister game until now we've got you covered.
We've gathered everything you need to know before you see Jumanji: The Next Level, including
past events, new characters, and more.
Gather up your gear, because we're heading back into the jungle.
The original Jumanji film is based on the 1981 picture book of the same name by Chris
Van Allsburg in which a pair of siblings named Judy and Peter Shepherd come across the titular
board game in the park.
In the films, the characters come upon the game in much the same way, with all of them
happening upon it seemingly by accident — although the films imply that the game has a degree
of sentience to it and can manipulate circumstances so that it can be found and played.
After finding a board game called Jumanji at a construction site in 1969, Alan Parrish
begins playing with his friend, Sarah Whittle.
However, they've barely begun to play before Alan is sucked into the game, with a message
that he must wait in the jungle until someone rolls a five or eight.
But instead of taking her turn, the terrified Sarah flees from the house, and the game is
placed in the attic.
Later, in 1995, orphans Judy and Peter Shepherd move into Alan Parrish's old house with their
aunt and discover the game in the attic.
They begin to play, and Peter's roll releases Alan from the game.
"Where's my mom and dad?"
"We don't know.
Everyone thought you were dead."
Now an adult, Alan has been living in the jungle for the past 26 years, and he uses
the skills he's acquired there to help the children fend off the animals and natural
disasters that emerge from the game.
However, since the game from 1969 was never finished, they have to find the adult Sarah
and convince her to take her turn so that they can complete the game and return everything
to normal.
After taking turns that result in the game unleashing increasingly catastrophic levels
of mayhem and destruction, Alan finally finishes the game and says …
"Jumanji."
Everything is returned to its pre-game state, including Alan going back to 1969, where he
grows up to marry Sarah and prevent the accident that killed Judy and Peter's parents.
While the game of Jumanji is undeniably tricky and deliberately misleading, it is, at its
heart, still a game.
The rules written on the board game state: "You roll the dice to move your token, doubles
get another turn, and the first player to reach the end wins."
With each turn, the game creates a new obstacle for the players to face, making it progressively
more difficult to finish the game.
Through playing, the characters learn that no one can forfeit, leave the game, or skip
a turn, and there are consequences for attempting to cheat in order to end the game sooner.
After completing their final turn, the winning player must say the word "Jumanji" out loud
in order to end the game.
Over the course of the films, however, the board game shifts its form to become a video
game.
So naturally, some of the rules had to change, but the basics have stayed the same.
Dice-specific stipulations such as the doubles rule no longer apply, but players still have
to complete the game once it's started, can't forfeit or quit, and have to say "Jumanji"
out loud in order to finish it.
In both Jumanji and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, a player gets trapped inside the game
for decades due to no one being able to beat it.
In Alan Parrish's case, his problem was that Sarah stopped playing, and therefore didn't
roll the five or eight that was needed in order to bring him out.
Even when Judy and Peter thought they were starting a new game, they were really just
continuing Alan and Sarah's game from 26 years earlier.
Then in Welcome to the Jungle, Alex gets caught inside the game for 21 years after his father
finds it on the beach in 1996, where it washed up after Alan and Sarah threw it into the
river in 1969.
While the original version of Jumanji was a board game, and thus required at least two
players, once it shifted into a quest-based video game version, it became possible to
play as a solo player.
However, while Alex technically could've completed the game by himself, he wound up stuck when
he came up against an obstacle he couldn't get past on his own.
Like Alan, Alex required other players to join in later to finish the game and return
them all to their pre-game state.
If you're unlucky enough to get caught inside Jumanji, and there's no one around to take
the next turn or you can't complete the game on your own, you'll simply be stuck "playing"
forever.
Unlike Sarah and Alan or Judy and Peter, the four teenagers who go on to play the game
in Welcome to the Jungle aren't friends, siblings, or really much of anything.
Spencer, Bethany, Martha, and Fridge are all students at Brantford High School, and that's
about where their similarities end.
Spencer and Fridge were best friends as kids, but now their relationship consists entirely
of Spencer doing Fridge's homework for him, and while Spencer admires Martha from afar,
they don't really talk.
Meanwhile, Bethany is off in her own self-absorbed world, and she doesn't seem to notice any
of the others.
The four are sentenced to serve detention together in the school's storage room on a
Saturday, removing staples from magazines so they can be recycled.
Rather than engage in their tedious task, they decide to play a video game Fridge discovers
among the shelves, and soon, they find themselves trapped inside Jumanji.
After a harrowing adventure inside the game, including a number of near-death and actual
death experiences, the four learn to lean on and appreciate one another, and they emerge
from the game as good friends with a new outlook on life.
Bethany learns to be brave and selfless, Martha finds confidence, Fridge learns humility,
and Spencer learns to lead and conquer his fears.
In addition, Fridge and Spencer rekindle their friendship, and Spencer and Martha embark
on a romantic relationship.
While the main characters of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle are Spencer, Martha, Fridge,
and Bethany, the people we spend the most time watching in the film aren't technically
people at all.
Instead, they're video game avatars.
Avatars are characters that exist within the game and are controlled by outside players,
and in Welcome to the Jungle, each character spends most of the film occupying the body
of their chosen avatar.
"I look like a living garden gnome!
Where is my phone?!"
"Who cares?"
"We are in different people's bodies."
Each avatar has its own strengths and weaknesses, which remain with the avatar no matter which
player is controlling it.
Ruby Roundhouse — Martha's avatar — is proficient in karate, T'ai chi, aikido, and
dance fighting, though her weakness is venom.
Bethany's avatar is Professor Oberon and his strengths are cartography, archaeology, and
paleontology, and his weakness is endurance.
Meanwhile, Mouse — the avatar of Fridge — boasts an impressive knowledge of zoology
and an equally impressive variety of weapons, while his weaknesses are cake, speed, and
strength.
Spencer's avatar is Smolder Bravestone and his strengths are speed, throwing boomerangs,
climbing, being "fearless," and his "smoldering intensity."
He has zero weaknesses.
Seaplane McDonough — the avatar of Alex — tells us that his strengths are piloting
and margaritas, and that one of his weaknesses is mosquitoes, but he doesn't mention what
the others may be.
Although the board game version of Jumanji had several rules specific to rolling dice,
the video game version adapts the mechanics of its gameplay to fit its new format.
Now instead of taking turns, the players work together to complete levels, each with its
own goals and challenges.
The levels get increasingly more difficult as players progress through the game, and
all build toward an ultimate end goal.
Additionally, each character starts the game with three lives, although it's possible for
one player to transfer one of their extra lives to another player under dire circumstances.
If a player dies, assuming they have an additional life, they'll respawn, along with any objects
they were holding when they died, appearing in the sky over the game and landing in approximately
the same spot.
Jumanji also contains several NPCs or non-player characters that interact with the characters'
avatars and either guide them on their way or attempt to work against them.
The main NPCs in Welcome to the Jungle are Nigel, who serves as a guide for the characters,
and Van Pelt, who's the game's antagonist.
Van Pelt also existed in the board game version of Jumanji as a big game hunter determined
to keep Alan and the other players from completing the game.
In Welcome to the Jungle, Van Pelt is given a more thorough backstory and a similar goal
to the player characters, but his role as the game's resident bad guy appears to be
a Jumanji constant.
So what exactly happens in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle?
Well, after getting trapped inside Jumanji, and after a period of initial confusion and
denial, Spencer, Martha, Fridge, and Bethany have to work together to deliver a magical
jewel called the Jaguar's Eye to a giant jaguar statue before the sinister Russell Van Pelt
can get his hands on it.
Possessed by the power of the jewel, Van Pelt is able to control Jumanji's animals, which
works against the players as they attempt to complete their task.
The group is given clues meant to inform their quests, which leads them to Alex's avatar,
who'd started the game in 1996 but had gotten stuck when he found himself down to his last
life on a challenge he didn't know how to complete.
Drawing on their avatars' collective strengths, the group is finally able to beat the level
that had thwarted Alex for so long, although Alex loses his last life in the process, and
Bethany has to transfer one of her extra lives to him through CPR.
The five players reach the statue, return the jewel, and call out, "Jumanji," ending
the game.
Shaking hands with each of them, Nigel returns them to their lives at the moment before they
entered the game.
The four Brantford High teens walk to the previously run-down Vreeke home, where they
encounter a now grown-up Alex, who tells them he'd emerged from the game in 1996 and had
lived a good life, naming his oldest daughter Bethany.
Later, the four teens destroy the game.
Almost every major player from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is coming back for Jumanji:
The Next Level, although we'll get to see several of them in a brand new light.
In fact, the entire main cast including Rhys Darby's Nigel and Colin Hanks' Alex will be
returning for the next installment in the series.
The only significant character from Welcome to the Jungle who hasn't been confirmed for
the sequel is Bobby Cannavale, who played the villainous Van Pelt.
However, while most of the faces in The Next Level will be familiar, some of the actors
will be portraying totally different characters.
Due to Jumanji's use of avatars, only Karen Gillan will be portraying the same player
as she did in Welcome to the Jungle.
Fridge, who played as Kevin Hart's Mouse Finbar the first time around, will now be controlling
Jack Black's Shelly Oberon, while Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Hart will be portraying
the avatars of two brand-new characters: Spencer's grandfather, Eddie, and Eddie's friend, Milo.
We've yet to learn which avatars Bethany and Spencer wind up controlling, or if Alex re-enters
the game at all, but one thing's for sure this game will be very different from the
last one.
"We're gonna die."
"We did die."
"Are we in hell?"
"I knew it."
Joining the cast for Jumanji: The Next Level are comedic acting legends Danny DeVito and
Danny Glover, playing Spencer's grandfather, Eddie Gilpin, and his friend, Milo Walker,
respectively.
If The Next Level follows the same format as Welcome to the Jungle, we don't expect
to see DeVito and Glover on screen for very long, but it looks like the characters will
still have a significant presence in the movie after they accidentally enter the game and
wind up controlling the avatars portrayed by Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart.
Also coming aboard for the next Jumanji outing are Once Upon a Time's Dania Ramirez and Crazy
Rich Asians and The Farewell star Awkwafina, both in undisclosed roles.
While Ramirez doesn't appear in the trailer at all, the brief glimpse we get of Awkwafina
suggests that she'll be playing a character within the game, although whether she'll be
another avatar or a new NPC is anyone's guess.
Whoever she is, sources have told The Hollywood Reporter that Awkwafina's role is more significant
than just a cameo leading us to guess that she's likely either an avatar for one of the
players possibly Spencer, Bethany, or even Alex or she's the game's new villain.
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