Jumanji: Open World's New Trailer Lets the Game Out, and Spencer's Mum Is Going In

Photo: Maciej Kraus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sony released a new trailer for Jumanji: Open World on Wednesday, October 28, and it finally explains the title. The game escapes its console. Animals that belong in Jumanji are running around the real world, and to put it back, Spencer and, this time, his mother Janice get pulled into the game. Marin Hinkle plays the mum, and the trailer's best joke is her landing in the body of Dwayne Johnson's Dr. Smolder Bravestone and having no idea what to do with the arms.

Photo: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan are all back as the avatars, which was the whole appeal of the 2017 and 2019 films: the body-swap comedy of teenagers in adult action-hero bodies. Alex Wolff is back as Spencer, Nick Jonas returns, and Danny DeVito is in it again after stealing the last one. The tagline is Our world. New rules. One final game, and Sony is calling this the end of the trilogy.

Photo: Eva Rinaldi, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The film opens on Christmas Day, after moving there from an earlier date, which puts it a week behind Dunesday and Avengers: Doomsday on December 18. That sounds like suicide until you remember that The Next Level opened in December 2019 against Rise of Skywalker and made 800 million dollars. Jumanji is the film families see after they have seen the big one.

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Jake Kasdan directs again. I liked the last two more than I expected to, mostly because Black playing a teenage girl is still one of the funniest performances in a studio film this decade, and the trailer suggests the real-world section gives the film some new scenery after two trips through the same jungle.

Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sony says this is the last one. Nobody believes that about a franchise that has made nearly two billion dollars, but it is a nice idea. Is Jumanji your Christmas week film, or do you take the kids to Avengers?