A matter of life and deaths
Director Jake Kasdan on Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle’s many manglings
“IT WAS A very unusual opportunity to let your heroes get killed,” says Jake Kasdan, director of Jumanji: Welcome To
The Jungle, of the masterstroke that gives his box-office behemoth an edge. As, in the living video game that is Jumanji, each of Kasdan’s four leads — Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan and Jack Black — start with three lives, and gradually have them whittled down to just one. We asked Kasdan to talk us through the film’s inventive, often hilarious, and sometimes surprisingly moving death scenes.
HUNGRY, HUNGRY HIPPO
The victim: Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black) Method of dispatch: Munched by a giant hippopotamus, mid-sentence “This was in the very first draft I read,” says Kasdan of the moment when a perplexed Shelly (actually super-cool school girl Bethany) becomes a mid-morning snack. “I always thought it was funny and then, without warning, this hippo obliterates one of the characters. You suddenly have a completely different sense. Good God, anything can happen here.” Kasdan admits that Samuel L. Jackson’s death scene in
Deep Blue Sea, which treads similar ground, was in his thoughts. “That’s an amazing, hilarious moment. Here, it’s a narrative device that’s driving a lot of drama.”
CLIFF NOTE
The victim: Dr Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson) Method of dispatch: Pushed off a precipice by Mouse Finbar (Kevin Hart) Here’s the thing about The Rock. He never dies. Not lately, anyway. “It’s not part of his MO,” laughs Kasdan. “He recognised there was a great fun opportunity in that. And both of his deaths are very mortal endings. They’re ways anyone could die.” His first is quite shocking, in that he’s shoved to his doom in a fit of pique by his former best friend, Mouse/fridge. “Fridge does that knowing he hasn’t actually murdered his friend, but he expresses it like a smackdown of the most dramatic order.”
CAKE OR DEATH
The victim: Mouse Finbar Method of dispatch: Explodes having ingested cake There are allergies, and then there’s what happens to Mouse when he eats a tiny bit of cake in a bazaar. “It feels like a vintage video game thought,” says Kasdan, “that you have some weakness that only makes sense in the thin narrative of a video game.” Initially, Mouse was meant to expand slowly, then explode, à la Mr Creosote from
Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life. “But I looked at it like, how do we do this in a way that will seem really quick and shocking? Plus, Kevin would be hilarious doing it.”
SURPRISE SHOT
The victim: Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan) Method of dispatch: Shot during
an escape attempt “This is more real and more upsetting,
and that was very deliberate,” says Kasdan of the moment when Ruby/ Martha, thinking that she’s escaped a gun battle unscathed, finds a gunshot wound. “We wanted the deaths to not always be a broad joke, but to carry the gravity of this jeopardy. Karen plays those deaths in a way that is so real.”
RHINO YOU DIDN’T
The victim: Mouse Finbar Method of dispatch: Trampled by a herd of rhinos You could read the moment where Smolder/spencer throws Mouse/ Fridge into a certain death situation as payback for the earlier cliff push. But Kasdan insists this moment, in which Mouse becomes a distraction that allows Smolder to nab the film’s Macguffin, is more complex than that. “That originally came from a suggestion from Dwayne,” he says. “He’s always looking for a way to kill Kevin. But he thought one of them should sacrifice the other to get through a level. And it was really fun coming up with deaths for Fridge. Kevin is really funny, but also the character you feel least bad about killing.”
KISS OF LIFE
The victim: Professor Shelly Oberon Method of dispatch: CPR Having established a firm bond with long-time Jumanji survivor Alex (Nick Jonas), Shelly/bethany willingly gives up one of their lives so that Alex, fatally bitten by a mosquito, might live. “This is really about Bethany’s character evolution,” says Kasdan of one of just two deaths that required no CGI. “She finds herself doing exactly the right thing in a way that surprises even her.”
JAGUAR IN GEAR
The victim: Dr Smolder Bravestone Method of dispatch: Devoured by jaguars Another un-rock-like death, as Smolder is set upon by a pack of big cats. “I love this,” adds Kasdan. “He’s starting to believe that maybe he’s capable of anything. Then he gets startled by a squirrel, the smallest possible animal, and that leads to him being devoured.” As with every other attack in the movie, CG animals were employed. “Dwayne was completely safe at all times,” laughs Kasdan. To be honest, we were more worried about the cats.
A QUICK BITE
The victim: Ruby Roundhouse Method of dispatch: Snake bite Having earlier established that Martha’s weakness is venom, the moment she gets bitten by a snake feels inevitable. But not the circumstances, with Martha, surrounded by the slithering shitheads, provoking a reaction in order to sacrifice herself and be reborn somewhere else. “She, ultimately, is the one who makes that decision to face her fear and do that daring thing,” says Kasdan. “Martha’s deaths have a lot of significance, maybe the most significance.”