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Cinema Fan Theory: Jumanji (The Board Game) Never Actually Kills Anyone/Always Resolves

Arnox

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I had a random thought about the original Jumanji movie. When I thought about it, despite all the horrendous problems that the game causes, nobody ever actually... Died. Save for natural aging of course. Judy does get shot in the neck by the flowers, but it's kept pretty ambiguous as to whether she actually died from that or not before the game was resolved and reset. Van Pelt also constantly seems to be evaded by his targets even though he's clearly depicted as a skilled hunter. And then there's the fact that the game's instructions never say that death or at least not being able to finish the game is a possibility. In fact, the game MUST find a way to finish or else the game will be locked in an eternal loop where it needs the original players to roll the dice but the participants are all dead.

But for me, all that is not the dead giveaway. Instead, the real giveaway seems to be when Alan gets sucked into that jungle for years as a boy and, despite that, somehow manages to survive. I'm calling the game's bluff on that one. No freaking WAY Alan survived that damn jungle when he was just a kid. Read Into Africa by Martin Dugard sometime. There were experienced and hardened explorers that went into the African jungles and even then, many didn't come out. And that was just a REGULAR jungle, not some cracked out mystical jungle in a twisted board game.

Other tells are how Van Pelt is played by the same actor as Alan's father and also his line about how Alan is finally starting to become a man. This heavily suggests that the board game is guiding the whole experience to make it incredibly harrowing and maybe even incredibly painful, but will also ensure in the end that the participants will survive the board game, or at very least, one of them will survive to finish it and resolve the game and ensure a reset every time.

Now, with that in mind, here's an interesting question. Let's say you actually knew that all of the above is true. Would you yourself play a game of this shit or still kick it to the curb?
 
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