For some people, 1995’s Jumanji is a childhood classic. For those who never saw Joe Johnston’s action adventure tale, it follows a young boy who gets sucked into a board game he finds at a construction site. Forty years later, the game resurfaces, he comes out a full-grown adult (played by Robin Williams), and he has to finish the game while jungle creatures wreak havoc on a small town. The concept of a game coming to life and having life-or-death stakes is fun, and for me, the original film isn’t so sacrosanct that moving that concept forward would be blasphemy.
Enter Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. The upcoming film finds that the board game has taken a new form, this time as a video game. When four teenagers find themselves in detention, they discover the Jumanji video game. After booting it up and choosing characters to play, the get sucked into the game and discover they’ve been transformed into their avatar bodies. Armed with new abilities and no idea how to escape, the quartet must figure out how to finish the game and get back to the real world.
Last October, a group of fellow journalists and I traveled to Hawaii to visit the set of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Although some sets show you a bunch of stuff and take you around various departments, this was all about being on location and taking in the natural wonder of our location. As for the scene itself, you’ve already seen it in the trailer—it’s the group discovering that they each have special abilities except for Kevin Hart’s character, who learns that cake is his weakness.
So rather than tell you all about a scene you’ve already seen, I’m going to tell you about the cool things we learned from our interviews with stars Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, and Nick Jonas, producer Matt Tolmach, and director Jake Kasdan (an interview we conducted last week since he was unavailable when we were on set).
Dwayne Johnson
- As is so often the case when you’ve got a busy actor like Johnson, he took this film because he loved the script and there was an opening in his schedule.
- The fun part of playing this character, Dr. Smolder Bravestone, is that even though on the outside he looked like Johnson, on the inside he’s a nerdy 16-year-old kid who’s afraid of everything.
- The video game influences are very 90s since that’s when the first movie came out.
- For Welcome to the Jungle, the challenge was “to take something that's beloved and present it in a way that is appealing to today's audience.”
- The fun part of working with Kevin Hart again on this film is that Hart’s character is 6’5” football star “Fridge”, who is trapped in the body of Kevin Hart.
- Bravestone’s strengths are “fearless, speed, boomerangs, climbing, smoldering intensity” and his weaknesses are “none.”
- Fridge’s weakness are “strength” and “cake.”
Kevin Hart
- Part of the appeal of playing Fridge was you have someone who’s a bully and all of his power gets taken away from him.
- There was some improv, but they never took it too far off the page.
- He and Johnson worked on the script together for months before they started filming and then spent two weeks doing rehearsals.
- Hart sees the new film as a “continuation” of the original story but reshaping it for a new audience.
- When it comes to how he pushes himself and how Johnson pushes himself, Hart notes, “You’re just looking at two guys who just aren’t content with where they are in their career,” which is quite a statement for one of the most successful comedians in the world.
- At this point in his career, he feels it’s important to constantly educate himself because, “if you know it inside and out, it’s something that you can do forever.”
- Hart believes that when it comes to playing these characters, it’s not just about being funny or being crazy; you have to believe in the substance of the person you’re playing.
- His kids are more excited about the animated stuff he does like The Secret Life of Pets and Captain Underpants.
- He loves his character’s hat, which he believes is like another version of his character.
Jack Black
- He considers himself an old-school gamer, and notes that one of his first gigs was an ad for Pitfall Harry.
- He enjoys playing Minecraft with his kids, but also likes playing Grand Theft Auto V. During filming, he was playing Call of Duty III: Black Ops.
- He feels like tapping into his inner 16-year-old popular girl “was the real life I was born to play.”
- After Goosebumps and School of Rock, he feels like he can really find a way to make his roles in kids’ movies fun and enjoyable.
- He hadn’t seen the original until he got the script for Welcome to the Jungle.
- One of his best experiences was getting to work with Jake Kasdan on Orange County.
Karen Gillan
- Her character is Martha, a smart young woman who’s also socially awkward. When she lands in the body of “Ruby Roundhouse”, she has no idea what to do.
- She really enjoyed a scene where she kills two men using dance fighting.
- The original Jumanji is in her top 3 films of all-time.
- She says she learned a lot from playing Nebula “in terms of combat, fighting and stunt.”
- She feels like she got cast because Kasdan could tell she was a nerd in high school.
Nick Jonas
- He can’t say how long his character has been in the game, but it’s longer than the four leads.
- He was watching the original Jumanji on his tour bus when he got the call to be in the sequel.
- His character is on the same side as the leads, but he couldn’t reveal any more details.
- The bugs have been biting him up while filming.
- He was particularly looking forward to playing off Jack Black.
- The pitch is what sold him on the project, and he fell in love with the character once he read the script.
- Karen Gillan advised him on what it would be like to do green screen work.
Producer Matt Tolmach
- Chris McKenna, who worked on Community, came up with the original idea for the sequel.
- Tolmach sees Welcome to the Jungle as another Jumanji adventure rather than a reboot or legacyquel.
- They wanted to hit the right balance of the characters playing a game, but the game has real, life-and-death stakes.
- Tolmach says they made sure to do their homework and seize on what people liked about the original Jumanji rather than just blindly rushing in to do a new installment.
- When it comes to paying tribute to Robin Williams, Tolmach says, “the spirit of [Williams’ character] Alan Parrish is something you'll feel in this movie.”
- They’ve stayed in touch with original author Chris Van Allsburg. “He's such an incredible resource for us,” says Tolmach.
- Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart were both the first choices for their respective roles.
- It was a tougher process casting Ruby Roundhouse, and Gillan auditioned for the role.
- Ruby’s outfit is very much an attempt to poke fun at Tomb Raider and how women are dressed in video games.
- While there’s certainly a CGI element when it comes to the animals, they also tried to integrate practical effects like stunt drivers on motorcycles.
- The game world has clear rules that the characters will learn early on.
- When it came to casting the teenage actors, they wanted to find actors who embodied the opposites of their main cast.
Director Jake Kasdan
- He was sold on doing the sequel because it kept the spirit of the original while still doing something completely different.
- When it comes to integrating the video game elements, he feels like the film is a “real-world representation of a video game.”
- Despite all the big effects, he believes that at its heart, Welcome to the Jungle is still a character comedy.
- One of the things he liked from the original that he wanted to carry over to the new movie is a “deep sense of foreboding and dread” and that you’re not so much playing the game as the game is playing you.
- The animals in Welcome to the Jungle will be slightly different than the ones we saw in the original.
- Part of the appeal of the cast was getting each actor to play against their archetype.
- You don’t need to have seen the original to enjoy Welcome to the Jungle, but Kasdan says you should seek it out just on its own merits.
- There won’t be a massive reveal in terms of the connection to Alan Parrish, but he hopes that people will appreciate how they’ve brought it in.
Closing Thoughts
The most encouraging thing about Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is that everyone seems to have a very clear idea of the movie they want to make and how to achieve it. Spirits were high on set, everyone knew the action-comedy beats they wanted to hit, and it looks like a fun evolution of the original film. Before I visited the set, I was skeptical about another Jumanji movie, but based on what I learned and what I saw, I’m now ready to get back in the game.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle opens December 20th. For more of our set visit coverage, click on the links below: