By James Mottram
The son of Lawrence Kasdan – the acclaimed writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders Of The Lost Ark and the director of The Big Chill and Body Heat – 45-year-old Jake Kasdan has carved out his own impressive career as a writer/director, kicking off with indie darlings like Zero Effect and Orange County before veering into winningly crass comedy with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Bad Teacher and Sex Tape. Lately, Kasdan has been keeping it family friendly, rebooting the popular 1995 Robin Williams starrer Jumanji with the 2017 success story, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle. Ingeniously continuing the mythology of the first film while also updating it, the film starred Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan as video game avatars “played” by a group of disparate teens. In Jumanji: The Next Level, the quartet is back, but there are a couple of new players this time in the unlikely form of movie legends Danny De Vito and Danny Glover, who put a few new wrinkles into proceedings.
So, were you nervous about taking on the sequel?
“I’m always nervous about everything. But it was really attractive to go back out with those guys. We had had such a good time, the first time. But it was critical to me that we not do it just to do it. And that if we were going to do it, we had to have a new idea that we could get as excited about, as we were the first one. So my nerves were focused on, ‘How do we make this worth it? How do we make it really good? Or do our best to make it really good?’ And so that becomes the task.”
But the problem is that a video game, by its nature, is quite formulaic…you follow certain rules. So when you bring the audience back into that world, it’s going to be the same world. Were you concerned about that? Because obviously what you’ve done here is switch the avatars around, which is a very clever idea.
“That made it exciting again. It didn’t feel like we were just repeating the same story. It felt like we had told this story that I wanted to tell with those kids in the first movie, and the first movie ends in a way that actually ends. They’ve covered some ground, and by the end of it they’re changed by the experience. I didn’t feel like we could just reset them and do that again. That had no appeal to me. But then we came up with this idea of bringing in some new people, and that those new people would be these guys at a completely different point in their lives. How would they encounter that kind of adventure? That was when it started to get exciting. And then, what follows from there is all of the elements that you’re talking about, which is yes, there’s a structure to the adventure that’s going to remain in place. But with this thought that the game was broken at the end of the first movie. And now we can use that to tear down the walls, and see parts of this place that we didn’t see in the first movie, and different kinds of terrain, different kinds of animals and adventure, and all of that. Suddenly, it started to coalesce into something that felt new.”
There’s an eighties feeling around it. How was it for you to recreate an atmosphere that you grew up in?
“There’s a lot of stuff for kids these days. There are a lot of movies. A lot of the real estate that those movies had once occupied, is now occupied by animation. And animation has become so incredible, that it’s dominated the landscape for a long time now. But the live action adventure for the whole family, that’s also funny, is something that I always loved. Those were my favourite movies as a kid, and we were definitely trying to do something in that tradition.”
What about some old school video games? Are you a big video game nerd?
“I’m not a big video game nerd. I was a little bit of a gamer when I was younger. When I got a little older, I played less. And when I had kids, I didn’t play at all. But it’s always been critical to us that the game element of these movies is credible to gamers. There are a lot of us on the movie who are real gamers: Jeff Pinkner, who is one of the writers that I’ve worked with on both these movies; Hiram Garcia, our producer; and Jack Black, obviously, is a major, serious life-long gamer.”
Is that right?
“Yeah. He has a YouTube channel, nominally devoted to that. Jablinski Games. There are a lot of gamers around, and we take that part of it seriously. And it’s been important to me that my not quite knowing everything has not gotten in the way of making that part of it good. It’s an important part of these movies. It’s not a real game, so we can make up the rules, but we do try to make up the rules and then stick to them. We try to be somewhat consistent about it in a way that feels like we’re paying attention.”
What about bringing in Danny DeVito and Danny Glover? They add so much to it. These older characters don’t even know what video games are…
“Yeah, that’s right. From a comedy and story point of view, that was the really exciting part of that. And then, from a casting point of view, these are just two of my all-time favourite actors. To have them step into this with us was thrilling. They’re two brilliant actors, and they’re also of the era that you were talking about. Their early movies are from that time that this movie aspires to. And it brings this additional dimension, which is exactly what we needed for a sequel. They’re both singular screen presences. There’s no one else like Danny DeVito. There’s only one Danny DeVito, and he’s a comedy legend. Danny Glover is just an iconic, brilliant actor and movie star.”
It’s almost a shame that we can’t see The Rock next to Danny DeVito, physically in the film.
“I know. We talked about it. But as we’ve been promoting the movie, Danny’s been with us for some of it. And we did actually have the opportunity to have them rehearse together, before we made the movie. They know each other, and they’ve gotten to know each other over the course of this. But getting them actually together in some images, as they’ve been promoting the movie, has been a great thing. And we’ve thought the same thing a few times.”
How surprised were you with the success of the first one?
“I was stunned. It’s the best kind of surprise you can get with something like this. There are a lot of different ways you can be surprised when you release a movie. That’s the best version. Jumanji was a beloved movie, and we were certainly met with a certain amount of scepticism. People were obviously worried about what we would do to something that they love. I get that. I probably would have rolled my eyes at it too. I knew that we had this idea that was really quite different: this game that comes to life and what it does. Jumanji sat right in the perfect place though, where it was something that was beloved, but it didn’t have such an extensive and detailed history beyond the one movie, and that picture book that it’s based on. People loved it to care enough that we not damage it. But they aren’t so obsessively religious about it. It’s not such a deep canon, like some things, that you can’t make anyone happy. We were right in a sweet spot, with the first one.”
In the last few years, we’ve been witness to how strong the power of nostalgia has become in Hollywood. But with Jumanji, you’ve managed to find the formula to make it work. Is it trickier now to find this formula, because of how many we’ve seen? Or is it something that perhaps, because of your dad and your family, there’s been communication about this. This is probably something that you already have in you?
“That’s interesting. It’s very possible that I have, by osmosis, brought in some of the thinking that you need to do about this. It’s just a very fine line with these things. And I can’t speak to where other movies have struggled. There’s definitely a component of luck. And then there’s the huge thing that we had, which is that when I read the script for Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, I immediately saw this big exciting idea that wasn’t just some kind of re-tread. This was a big exciting concept. And then I found the most perfect possible cast, to play those parts. We had a cool idea, and we had the exact right people in it. And we were able to sidestep some of the troubles that people sometimes have.”
So, Jumanji 3: The Final Level? The next level could be a final level….
“The last level.”
Jumanji: The Next Level is released in cinemas on December 26.
