Film / Jumanji: The Next Level

"This next adventure is even more challenging. And remember, the future of Jumanji is in your hands!"

Martha: I think [Spencer] went back in. We got to go get him.
Fridge: Are you out of your mind?!

Jumanji: The Next Level is a sequel to the 2017 film Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, itself a sequel to the 1995 film Jumanji (and its Spiritual Successor Zathura). Directed by Jake Kasdan, it sees the return of Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan and Nick Jonas, who are joined this time by Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, Awkwafina and Rory McCann.

Following the events of the previous film, Spencer secretly kept the pieces of the Jumanji video game, and while visiting from college for the holidays, worked to repair the system in the basement of his house. When Spencer's friends arrive, they find Spencer missing and the game running, and decide to re-enter Jumanji to save him. Spencer's visiting grandfather, Eddie (DeVito), and his estranged friend, Milo Walker (Glover), hear the commotion, and inadvertently get sucked into the game too. The teenaged friends must help Eddie and Milo get used to their in-game avatars and get their help to find Spencer and escape Jumanji again.

The film was released on December 13, 2019. Kasdan has confirmed that a third film retaining the same core cast is in development.

Previews: Trailer 1, Trailer 2.

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Jumanji: The Next Level contains examples of:

• Acting Unnatural: When Ming and Finbar go off to steal camels at the Oasis, they leave Bravestone (currently the avatar of Grandpa Eddie) to keep watch and tell him not to draw attention. He stands in the middle of the square looking awkward. When two locals walk by—not paying him any attention—he calls out "Nothing to see here! Keep moving!". This, naturally, attracts their attention, and the situation soon devolves into a brawl that draws in most of the population of the Oasis.
• Action Girl: Martha as Ruby Roundhouse continues to be a veritable One-Woman Army, dispatching multiple mooks.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Danny DeVito hearing that the chef at Nora's left for Philadelphia. Perhaps to work at Paddy's Pub?
  • Danny DeVito once voiced Phil, the trainer of Hercules in the 1997 Disney movie. Phil likes to hit on any females. DeVito's character Eddie seems to be doing just that to one of the NPCs in Jumanji and also to Nora Shepherd in real life. His Jumanji avatar is portrayed by Dwayne Johnson who once acted as Hercules in 2014 and Bravestone seems to have superhuman strength as well.
  • Kevin Hart has a scary encounter with an ostrich while riding in a vehicle.
• Aesop Amnesia: Spencer backpedals on the lesson he learned in the previous film about the importance of the real world and the dangers of the Jumanji video game, as he works to rebuild it, feeling inadequate and out of control in his life compared to his friends.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version, weirdly enough, uses a Christmas-themed song titled "Merry Merry Christmas Night" by Taiiku Okazaki for its ending theme.
• An Asskicking Christmas: Takes place in December, a few weeks before Christmas.
• Angry, Angry Hippos: Yet again, the same hippo that killed Bethany in the first film appears out of the river. But, see under Bait-and-Switch to see how that ends.
• Animal Stampede: It wouldn't be a Jumanji movie without one. This time, it's a flock of angry ostriches chasing the heroes through a desert.
• Artistic License – Geography: Jumanji was always a fictional African jungle and associated wildlife. While the characters start in the same swampy area they did last time, they got in a plane and after five minutes of exposition are dumped into Saharan sand dunes. Then they trek their way to a snowy mountain fortress, all of which would be a thousand miles apart and not in that order. Granted, it's a video game but also runs into Africa Is a Country.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: "Welcome to the Jungle" plays again, as the characters decide to bathe into character-changing waters.
• Avengers Assemble: Bethany explicitly refers to the others as her 'team' when asking Alex for help.
• Bag of Holding: Mouse. His bag now holds an entire array of miscellaneous items that come useful right at the moments the team needed them, from a smaller bag containing ice-climbing equipment to an entire boombox to trigger Ruby's Dance Battler skill.
• Bait-and-Switch: At one point, Milo encounters a hippo, presumably the same one that killed Bethany the last time. Fridge (who is in Bethany's avatar) tries to warn Milo, but is himself killed, this time by an anaconda.
• Battle Couple: Martha and Spencer become this once reunited, particularly when Spencer gets the Bravestone avatar back.
• Bears Are Bad News: Fridge implies that a polar bear will attack him and the other main characters before they can finish the game. Fortunately, no polar bear makes an appearance.
• Belated Happy Ending: It's revealed that thanks to the new timeline from the first Jumanji movie, Nora has a happier life without losing her brother and sister-in-law in a tragic accident. She opens a restaurant of her dreams and maintains a good rapport with Eddie, hiring him as a new manager.
• Big Damn Heroes: When it looks like the gang is about to be killed by mandrills, Alex and Bethany (as "Seaplane" and Cyclone the horse, respectively) show up and scare them off.
• Bittersweet Ending: Spencer, Eddie and the others exit the game and return to the real world but Milo decides to stay behind and protect Jumanji, the game is still out there, and Spencer's mom and a heating mechanic are now presumably sucked into the game while releasing a herd of ostriches into the real world.
• Black Comedy: The character deaths in this film are more over-the-top and Played for Laughs. It starts with Fridge lecturing the group on how to avoid the hippo that killed him last time and to always be alert, before an anaconda descends out of nowhere and snaps him up. We also get Bravestone being ripped to shreds by a peck from an ostrich, Milo being Punched Across the Room into a rock outcropping that falls and crushes him, and the entire party is blown up by a rocket launcher fired using Improbable Aiming Skills.
• Black Dude Dies First: Fridge is the first one to lose a life, although in this case as the Shelly Oberon avatar.
• Brick Joke:
  • Fridge tries to convince himself that Shelly is not completely useless by attempting to do some squat-thrusts, but collapses from exhaustion after barely pulling off just one. Later when he becomes Ruby, he attempts to do squat-thrusts again, only this time he ends up leaping through the roof with a single jump.
  • Eddie-Bravestone starts off confused about the context of the game and calls it Ju-man-ji. When Eddie-Ming sets the clear condition for the game and realizes he has to shout its name,
    Eddie/Ming: What did they say? Ju-man-ji?
  • Eddie constantly spams Bravestone's Smoldering Intensity skill at random moments throughout the film. While talking to Nora at the end of the film, real-life Eddie tries to use his Smoldering Intensity to flirt with her.
• Both Sides Have a Point: The center of Eddie and Milo's feud. Eddie is furious that Milo sold the restaurant after Eddie refused and made him retire when he wanted to keep working. He says he wasn't ready to hang up his apron. Milo admits that he's got a legitimate grievance. On the other hand, Milo says he was getting old and wanted to spend time with his wife so he needed to choose to retire. He didn't want to spend the rest of his days cooking 24/7. After hearing this, Eddie admits that Milo also had legitimate reasons to retire.
• Butt-Monkey: Fridge Johnson is once again stuck into one of the non-badass avatars, which he considers extremely unfair.
  • In the previous film, Fridge-Mouse had the highest amount of Weaknesses, at three Weaknesses in total^note Cake, Speed and Strength. This time, while Milo-Mouse did not gain any additional Weaknesses, Fridge-Shelly gains an additional three Weaknesses^note Heat, Sun and Sand to Shelly's original Weakness of Endurance, making his a total of four Weaknesses and, once again, the highest amount in the group.
• Call-Back:
  • The same sequence for entering Jumanji was reused (running through a forest before falling a great height into the jungle), only this time it is from the perspective of Martha/Ruby instead of Spencer/Bravestone.
  • Like in Welcome to the Jungle, Shelly Oberon is killed near the same spot, in the same way (getting eaten on the head), though both the animal involved (an anaconda this time, instead of a hippo) and who's controlling Shelly (Fridge, instead of Bethany) are different.
  • Franklin "Mouse" Finbar is still weak to cake. It gets to the point that Fridge-Mouse panics and immediately wrecks an entire cake offered to him, while in real-life Fridge is shown to have grown averse to eating cake.
  • Ruby Roundhouse still retains her Dance Battler skill, which comes into play during the climax of the film.
  • After the players all switch bodies and Bethany is swapped from Cyclone into Shelly, she hugs herself and says, "I missed you!" ...echoing her line at the end of the first film when she was back in her own body.
  • At the end of the film, Spencer plays Street Fighter V with Eddie, the game he was playing at the start of the previous film.
  • The first movie had the games various animals and fauna coming out into the real world. The Sequel Hook finds the game's ostrich herd in the real world.
  • During the end credits sequence, the board game dice and Alan's game token are seen, as a reference to the first movie.
• The Cameo: Bebe Neuwirth makes an appearance as Aunt Nora, her character from the original, who now owns the eponymous "Nora's" restaurant.
• Character Development: Spencer's mother in the first movie was overprotective of her son, telling him all the ways he can get in danger. Here, she treats him like an adult and is much mellower.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: Nora's, the restaurant where Spencer is expected to meet his friends. It's brought up throughout the movie, but generally in the context of it having been Eddie and Milo's old restaurant and the cause of their falling out. In the end, we find out the significance of its new name: Its eponymous owner is Peter and Judy's Aunt Nora from the first film.
• Chekhov's Gun
  • The Jumanji Berry is Jurgen's weakness.
  • The glowing water around the Jumanji Berry that lets the players switch avatars pops up again in the climax.
  • Once again, each character's stats. Shelly Oberon's skill of Geometry, Ruby's skill of nunchuks, and Mouse's skill of Linguistics.
• Chekhov's Skill: One of Bravestone's established skills is "smoldering intensity," which amounts to a wispy stare off into the distance. With Eddie he can't seem to get it quite right, the timing is off or he ends up with a slack jawed gape. It's not until after he leaves Jumanji that he nails it flirting with Nora, the owner of his old restaurant.
• Closest Thing We Got: After arriving in Jumanji, Martha initially has to basically act as the group's leader as Bethany and Alex are absent, Fridge and Spencer are stuck in new avatars they aren't well-suited for, and Eddie and Milo don't entirely understand the situation.
• Comically Missing the Point: Eddie and Milo take some time to comprehend the nature of the situation they are in.
• Company Cross References: As usual for a Sony film, it also crosses into Product Placement. Spencer's bedroom still has a poster for a PlayStation 4 game (and he's playing the PS4 with his grandpa at the end of the movie), the Jumanji console's hooked up to a large Sony Trinitron CRT from the 2000s, and the boombox pulled out towards the end of the film by Mouse is an old 80s Sony boombox.
  • A rather clever case. When Milo as Cyclone rescues Eddie as Ming and they follow the instructions to end the game, it looks like a pegasus flying above sun-tinted clouds — very much like the 1990s TriStar Pictures logo that the 1995 Jumanji opened with (this film and its' predecessor were instead released by Columbia Pictures due to Tristar being Demoted to Extra in the late 90s).
• Convenient Terminal Illness: Milo is revealed to have some unspecified terminal illness, which prompts his decision to stay in Jumanji in his avatar in the end... and his decision to come mend bridges with Eddie in the first place, as the latter correctly guesses. Justified since, well, getting old sucks.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Switchblade is married to Dr. Bravestone's ex-girlfriend and is unhappy that she still has feelings for Bravestone.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: No one got to choose their characters before entering the game. Martha was lucky enough to arrive as Ruby Roundhouse again, which gave her an edge because she was well versed with the character. Fridge went into Shelly Oberon's body instead of Mouse, forcing him to be The Navigator rather than a Human Pack Mule and The Beastmaster. Spencer wanted to return to Jumanji to relive the feeling of being Bravestone again, but was put into the new character Ming Fleetfoot, a small Asian female cat burglar. After figuring out how to switch avatars using water glowing with the green Jumanji energy, Spencer, Fridge and Bethany all return to their classic avatars for the climax.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Downplayed with Ming Fleetfloot, Spencer's new avatar, a new thief character. She's obviously meant to be a 1990s video game ethnic stereotype of an Asian thief, but the movie tastefully leaves out any potentially dated backstory since Nigel doesn't talk to her in the beginning and we only know her skills.
• Demoted to Extra: Not that he had a huge role in the first movie, but Nick Jonas' Alex has very little to do in this film and doesn't even show up till shortly before the climax. He still kicks ass.
• Disney Villain Death: During the Final Battle, Spencer ultimately sends Jurgen plummeting to his death from the bridge of his airship.
• Distracted by My Own Sexy:
  • Eddie and Milo take a moment to admire their respective avatars' bodies, particularly Bravestone's hips and Finbar's thighs.
  • The first thing Fridge does in Ruby's body is feel her boobs.
• The Ditz: Eddie and Milo's ignorance of the game is often ridiculously over the top, literally forgetting everything they hear about it within seconds.
• Double-Meaning Title: The Next Level could mean either escalating stakes or a literal next level in a video game.
• Dread Zeppelin: Jurgen the Brutal's airship.
• Dumbass Has a Point: While Fridge is no longer wilfully stupid, it's still significant that he was the first one to explicitly state that the current controller/avatar dynamic doesn't work if they're about to face the final confrontation.
• Expansion Pack World: In Welcome to the Jungle, the whole of the land of Jumanji is seen as being composed of a wide jungle valley. In this film, however, the heroes travel through scorching deserts and freezing snow-covered mountains, and Alex reveals that he explored these territories during his time alone in the game.
• Experienced Protagonist: Martha and Fridge remember all their experiences from the previous film, and are saddled explaining the situation to Eddie and Milo.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Jurgen the Brutal's clansmen include men and women from various ethnicities.
• Eunuchs Are Evil: Bethany and Fridge attempted to infiltrate Jurgen the Brutal's fortress by impersonating his allies, the Brothers Kababik. Unbeknownst to them, one of the brothers (the one that Fridge impersonated) is a eunuch. This led to an awkward and hilarious conversation where a mook mentioned Fridge's supposed castration.
• Feathered Fiend: Eddie/Bravestone threatens a wild ostrich in the desert, who promptly kills him with a single peck. Said ostrich then flees and returns with an entire flock of angry ostriches, chasing the group as they try to escape in dune buggies. Unlike real ostriches (which rely on powerful kicks for defense/attack), the Jumanji versions have thick, powerful beaks that can punch through metal with a few pecks.
• Foreshadowing: When the group is being transported into the game, notice that the streams also go up the stairs...and Bethany is left behind.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Thanks to the rules of Jumanji, Martha appears as Ruby Roundhouse once more... but Eddie and Milo are transformed into Dr. Smolder Bravestone and Franklin "Mouse" Finbar, respectively, and Fridge is now Bethany's former avatar, Professor Shelly Oberon.
  • Later in the film, Fridge and Martha discover a strange lake filled with water that causes them to switch avatars if they both enter the lake at the same time.
  • After Bethany enters the game in the body of a horse while Spencer is in the new avatar of a female thief, the gang use the water to put Spencer, Fridge and Bethany back in their original avatars while transferring Eddie and Milo into new bodies. Mainly justified due to Fridge's comments about how the players and avatars don't mesh well with their current set-up: Milo's slow delivery and long-winded speeches fail to get to the point when he needs to drop knowledge on animals or translate what they say, Eddie's impulsiveness with the most physically capable avatar they have has resulted in an actual Total Party Kill, and Spencer's neurotic personality does not vibe well with playing a thief.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Jurgen the Brutal beheaded Spencer-Ming, you can briefly see Ming's head flung off of her body before disintegrating.
• Game-Breaking Bug: In-Universe; It's heavily implied that the water that allows the characters to switch bodies is a result of the game being broken and not an actual feature, and it quickly comes in handy during the climax.
• Gender Bender: As in the previous film; Spencer is given a new avatar in the form of a female thief, Ming Fleetfoot, and Bethany later returns to her original avatar of Professor Shelly Oberon. Bethany herself first enters the game as a male horse. Fridge also gets a turn at this when he and Martha briefly swap avatars, turning him into Ruby Roundhouse, complete with the shameless admission that touching his boobs was the first thing he did upon realizing who he was. Eddie ends up in the body of Ming after Spencer, Fridge and Bethany switch back to their old avatars.
• The Ghost: The Brothers Kababik, Jurgen the Brutal's allies. Their absence allow Bethany and Fridge to unintentionally impersonate them when they attempt to infiltrate Jurgen's fortress.
• Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing: As Ruby Roundhouse, Martha lands on her feet as she enters Jumanji again. She finds that Grandpa Eddie and Milo didn't have such dignified landings, and neither does Fridge, who arrives as Shelly Oberon.
• Grim Up North: The last level of the game takes place in the icy northern region of Jumanji where Jurgen the Brutal's fortress is located.
• Happy Ending Override: For Spencer, at least. Welcome to the Jungle ended with the four friends having undergone some positive Character Development and with the Jumanji video game destroyed, but when this film begins a couple of years later, Spencer's trouble coping with the real world prompts him to rebuild the game, which results in him, his friends and others getting trapped back in it.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Fridge is unimpressed with Shelly and Mouse's new skills of geometry and linguistics. Turns out linguistics means Mouse is able to talk to animals and Fridge uses Shelly's geometry ability to navigate a series of swinging rope bridges.
• Heinous Hyena: Jurgen the Brutal has tamed spotted hyenas as his pets and vicious guard dogs.
• Hollywood New England: Everyone lives in a small New Hampshire town.
• Horseback Heroism: When the heroes are surrounded by mandrills and it looks like this is going to be the end for them, Alex (as 'Seaplane') comes galloping in on a black stallion and scatters the mandrills. The heroes are even more surprised that the horse is Bethany in the avatar of Cyclone, a new PC in the game.
• How Do I Shot Web?: With two new characters entering the game and only one returning player in her familiar avatar, the characters initially have trouble adapting to their new/old skills:
  • Fridge is not pleased to be stuck in an avatar who is even less physically capable than his old one. Compared to Mouse, he despises how Shelly's only key use is to read the map while having weaknesses that the levels clearly exploit.
  • Spencer dislikes how Ming lacks the raw power and intensity of Bravestone, even referring to her as his own Distaff Counterpart.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Given their friendship built from the first movie, this becomes apparent with Fridge next to Bethany and Martha. After meeting up they give each other hugs and the girls barely come up to his sternum. In the game this is repeated with Bravestone when paired next to Ming Fleetfoot.
• I Choose to Stay: Milo remains in Jumanji at the end of the movie rather than returning to the real world.
• Identical Grandson: The new Big Bad, Jurgen the Brutal, is stated in the backstory to have killed Bravestone's parents. Bravestone's father is played in a brief flashback by Dwayne Johnson in a curly wig and Porn Stache.
• Idiot Ball: Despite repeatedly having everything explained to him and warned, Grandpa Eddie continuously makes choices that put the entire group in danger and get them killed. It wouldn't be so egregious if Milo didn't adapt to the situation much better and quicker.
  • Can double as Fridge Brilliance: why is Grandpa Eddie so much slower to adapt to Jumanji than Milo? Because Grandpa Eddie is slower to adapt as a person. He's still living his resentment over losing the restaurant while Milo had a happy retirement.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: At one point, a thug miles away manages to inflict a Total Party Kill with a rocket launcher that seems to auto-lock onto them. Might be justified, since said thug was established earlier as Bravestone's sole weakness.
• Informed Flaw: Shelly Oberon's weaknesses now include Sun, Heat, and Sand — while the team is in the middle of a desert. However, Fridge-Shelly has no problem functioning during this leg of the adventure and gets out of the level without difficulty. Likewise, Ming's weakness to pollen never comes into play.
• Insecure Love Interest: Part of Spencer's reasons for going back to Jumanji is this, as he feels that Martha is doing better with her college life than he is based on her Instagram posts showing her making new friends; Martha has to assure him later that they are all insecure and she still feels that she is at her best with him.
• Jackass Genie: Spencer wanted to be cool again and regain his confidence. The Jumanji game puts him in the body of a tiny thief, Ming Fleetfoot.
• Kryptonite Factor: Jurgen's only vulnerability is the Jumanji berry, which weakens him enough for Spencer/Bravestone to hurt him.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Fridge is particularly frustrated when he looks at Shelly's new character stats and sees that his weaknesses are now Endurance, Sun, Heat and Sand, while they're in the middle of a desert.
• Large Ham: Fridge is just as hammy as Bethany in the Shelly Oberon avatar.
  Shelly/Fridge: THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!
  • Fridge also gets hammy when he temporarily takes over Ruby Roundhouse, excited that he finally has an athletic body.
  • The Rock and Kevin Hart pretending to be old men are a masterclass of overacting.
    Eddie: My hips feel good now.
    Milo: [pulling up his pants] Look at my thighs!
• Lighter and Softer: Zigzagged compared to Welcome to the Jungle. The addition of Eddie and Milo means the movie has a much heavier comedic slant, the returning cast has already been through Jumanji once and are more annoyed than scared this time, and character deaths are usually Played for Laughs instead of Played for Drama (with spare lives being expended within seconds). On the other hand, the adventure is still very dangerous (probably moreso than the first), the group is still at risk of getting Killed Off for Real if they lose all their lives, and Jurgen the Brutal is a slightly (only because he's a Card-Carrying Villain who didn't attack the heroes in real world and doesn't even harm a kid) more intimidating villain (due to being an Evil Overlord) than Van Pelt was.
• Likes Older Men:
  • Though it's never addressed directly, Bethany's crush on Alex still remains.
  • Played with Martha/Ruby, who at some point was mesmerized by Bravestone until she reminded herself that it is Spencer's grandfather behind the avatar, not Spencer himself.
• The Load: While Eddie and Milo frequently come in handy, it's exclusively due to their characters' innate skills; left to their own abilities and personalities, they need things explained to them several times and get the team into trouble on more than one occasion.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman:
  • Once Fridge ends up in Ruby's body:
  Fridge: And on top of that... boobs!
  Martha: Touch my boobs and I will murder you!
  Fridge: Too late! It was literally the first thing I did!
  • Averted with Ming, where Spencer simply panics and explains that Ming is just another version of himself, and Eddie who remains oblivious and sometimes even forgets who Ming is.
• Maniac Monkeys: The heroes fight a horde of monkeys with mandrill-like heads and gelada-like bodies on a Rope Bridge.
• May It Never Happen Again: It begins with Spencer repairing the game because he felt it was the only place where he could be awesome. The film then makes perfectly clear near the end that Jumanji can never be destroyed.
• Medieval Stasis: Jurgen the Brutal and his clansmen, aside from their Schizo Tech.
• Mercy Invincibility: Downplayed trope. When the characters respawn they fall from the sky unharmed.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Fridge Shelly sprains his ankle at the climax of Act II and makes a big show of how hurt he is. After another body swap Bethany is back as Shelly and tells everyone it doesn't hurt THAT bad.
• Mistaken for Afterlife: Eddie and Milo each assume that they died and Jumanji is hell.
  Milo: Did I die and turn into some kind of, small, muscular boyscout?
• Mistaken for Special Guest: Bethany and Fridge attempt to infiltrate Jurgen's fortress by mingling with Jurgen's troops the same way Alex did. Looking nowhere near as military as Alex, they are immediately spotted. Fortunately for them, they are mistaken for the Brothers Kababik, Jurgen the Brutal's allies, and brought into the fortress. They then attempt to maintain the masquerade despite knowing nothing about the Brothers Kababik (and one of them being white and the other black).
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The monkeys are identified as mandrills, and accurately, they have colorful heads and buttocks, but also gelada-like bodies with long fur and long tail. The ostriches have cassowary-like crests on their head.
• Mood Whiplash: The team (sans Martha and Alex) leaps into a mountain rapids that flows with the mysterious water to change back into their original avatars. They succeed, and attempt to do a Team Power Walk out of the waters... only to stop midway and shiver badly from how cold it actually is.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Milo is terrified when he thinks his slow-talking got Eddie killed for good.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Played with. Nigel's line that not everyone will make it this time is nowhere in the film, and once again no one loses their last life. However, Milo, who's terminally ill in real life, decides to stay to protect Jumanji as Cyclone the Pegasus.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Compared to the previous film, some of the avatars have expanded skillsets and new weaknesses, with these new traits having some relevance to the changes to the game.
• New Rules as the Plot Demands: Jumanji now has an entirely new landscape to explore, new villains, new player characters (along with the ability to accommodate more than five players), and a function to let players change their avatar during a game in progress. Justified due to its magic and the fact it's broken and implied to be glitching; that last new feature is even hinted to be such a glitch and probably not intended by the game.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Eddie catches a petty thief who stole the key to Jurgen's chest containing the Falcon Jewel and hands her over to him, just as Martha and Fridge realize said thief is actually Spencer in a new avatar. As a result, Spencer loses his first life to execution via a flying axe to the head.
  • Despite attracting the attention of a mob boss named Switchblade, who is Bravestone's only new weakness, Eddie-Bravestone gets overconfident and refuses to budge when the team urges him to run, costing all of them one life each when Switchblade fires his bazooka at them.
• Non-Indicative Nickname. You'd expect a guy named "Switchblade" to use a knife as his weapon of choice, right? Nope: This guy fires a ridiculously over-sized bazooka at our heroes and atomizes them.
• Noodle Incident: The full story of why the Kababik brother gave up his testicles is not revealed (though apparently is had something to do with a flood) but it was such a sacrifice that several mooks are visibly moved by it.
• No Name Given: Dr. Bravestone's ex-girlfriend (who's married to his Arch-Enemy Switchblade) is unnamed. She's referred to only as "Flame".
• Not So Invincible After All: Dr. Bravestone has a Weakness now — Switchblade. Not a weapon, a gang leader named Switchblade, who is furious at Bravestone for apparently having had a fling with his wife in the past. That Switchblade is Bravestone's weakness justifies his Improbable Aiming Skills when he manages to hit Bravestone with a bazooka from a mile away, on a ballistic trajectory.
• Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: The build up to Spencer's original heist attempt at the bar.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Martha and Fridge weren't happy at being forced back into the world of Jumanji once more, and Fridge is particularly frustrated at being stuck in a new avatar, even if they accept the need to do it to save Spencer.
• One-Man Army: Eddie as Dr. Bravestone lays out forty men with ease in the oasis. The only reason he doesn't take out more is because his weakness shows up, Switchblade, and Eddie has the mind to recognize that's a bad sign and get out of there.
• Patchwork Map: Each game level is a different environment. A jungle, desert, tundra and coniferous forest are all unrealistically close to each other. Of course, this is Jumanji we're talking about, so the usual rules don't apply.
• Piranha Problem: Subverted. Fridge thinks that the water surrounding the Jumanji Berry Tree is infested with vicious man-eating piranhas, but when they do fall into the water there is no piranhas on sight.
• Posthumous Character: Milo's wife has recently died.
• Power Up Letdown: Spencer is quite upset he didn't get to be Dr. Bravestone when he re-entered the game and ended up in the body of Ming Fleetfoot, a thief and pickpocket who has Pollen as a weakness. Spencer cracks that the descriptor "small, crafty, and has allergies" is pretty much who he already was.
• Punched Across the Room: A single punch from Bravestone is enough to send Mooks flying through walls, much to the delight of Eddie.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: In the climax, Jurgen No Sells Bravestone's Megaton Punches. At least he did before he was hit with the Jumanji berry.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Fridge gets this reaction upon realizing that he's stuck as Shelly Oberon... and thus, once again a non-badass avatar.
• Remember the New Guy?: The game's new antagonist, the warlord Jurgen the Brutal, is established as having killed Professor Bravestone's parents when Bravestone was a child.
• Reveling in the New Form:
  • Eddie and Milo, who are both elderly, are rather enthusiastic when they are transported into the youthful bodies of their avatars Dr. Smolder Bravestone and Franklin "Mouse" Finbar. They take a while to admire how good they look.
  • Towards the end of the film, Milo finds that he enjoys being in the form of Cyclone the horse. He even voluntarily decides to live inside of the game as the game's protector due to an unspecified terminal illness, aware that he doesn't have much time left.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: After Eddie as Bravestone causes a ruckus in the Oasis, the gang manages to escape with the Camels they needed to travel to their next destination. Of course, given that Eddie-Bravestone managed to rile up his Arch-Enemy and convenient weakness Switchblade, the latter launches a rocket blindly into the sky hoping to hit them. Said rocket manages to pull off a Total Party Kill, costing everyone a spare life.
• Save Scumming: Alex is forced to do this to rescue Milo-Cyclone by memorizing the path to avoid the traps, despite arriving late he used up two lives to get him out of there.
• Schizo Tech: The bad guys drive pickup trucks with mounted machine guns and have a jet-propelled airship at their HQ, but appear to only fight with axes and other medieval melee weapons.
• Secretly Dying: Milo reveals to Eddie that he showed up to make amends because he doesn't have much time left. This also influences his choice to stay in Jumanji as its protector in the end.
• Sequel Escalation: Invoked, as Nigel explicitly tells the players that this new adventure will be even more difficult and dangerous. The scenery is more varied and the action scenes are elaborate setpieces.
• Sequel Hook: The film ends with Spencer's mother and a handyman discovering Jumanji in the basement, and later shows a flock of ostriches running through Bradford in front of Nora's diner just as the group was leaving.
• Shall I Repeat That?: This is the one rule Eddie appears to grasp fast. It helps that the "line of dialogue" ends with a beautiful woman kissing him.
• Shout-Out:
  • The scenes of the characters traversing sand dunes and rock canyons evokes Lawrence of Arabia.
  • The chamber that Alex has to cross to reach Milo-Cyclone is booby-trapped exactly like the one with the gold statue in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• Shown Their Work: After Milo said that everyone lives in New Hampshire, there's a stand for the New Hampshire Union-Leader newspaper in the background at Nora's restaurant.
• Sixth Ranger: Spiritually, Eddie and Milo are new additions to the Jumanji group, although subverted in that they are more The Load due to their age, confusion and bickering. In the game, new avatar characters include Classy Cat-Burglar Ming Fleetfoot and Cool Horse Cyclone.
• Snakes Are Sinister: A huge anaconda devours Fridge, costing him one life.
• Status Quo Is God: A minor example but for the last act of the movie, all of the main characters are in the same avatars that they had in the previous movie.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Played heavily in a sequence with regards to "The Brothers Kababik".
  • Bethany/Shelly and Fridge/Mouse attempt to infiltrate Jurgen's fortress by blending in with the entering crowd. Their clothes failed to blend in and a guard catches them, but he asks whether the pair are their expected guests, The Brothers Kababik, to which Bethany says yes.
  • The guard then questions their differing ethnic looks despite being "brothers". Bethany comes up with an explanation that they are born of different mothers under the same father. The guard accepts this.
  • An escort for them later on describes the younger brother Mouse is standing-in for as a eunuch. Fridge takes heavy offense to it, but Bethany/Shelly forces him to play along, leading to an awkward conversation about Fridge/Mouse's missing balls.
  • When meeting with Jurgen to exchange for the Falcon Jewel, Jurgen demands the Brothers to bring out their younger sister, with whom he is to wed as part of the deal. Bethany and Fridge panic upon realizing they do not have a sister stand-in, until Martha/Ruby bursts in announcing herself as the sister. Jurgen accepts, and Martha is about to claim back the jewel... until a letter arrives from the actual Brothers Kababik announcing that they are delayed, immediately outing the group as imposters.
• Suspicious Missed Messages: When Spencer doesn't answer his phone, Martha, Bethany and Fridge go looking for him. When they find his phone in the basement, it has more than a dozen missed calls and more than 40 unread texts on it: mostly from them. This convinces them that he has not just gone to the store or anything mundane, but almost certainly gone back into the game.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Averted and complained about with Milo's zoological expositions as Finbar, as his slow talking leads to the party getting (nearly) killed a few times.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Eddie and Milo need the other players to explain video games to them multiple times.
• Took a Level in Badass: As well as their existing skills, the avatars have gained new abilities; Oberon is now an expert in geometry, Roundhouse can use nunchucks, and Mouse is a skilled linguist who can even communicate with animals.
• Total Party Kill: Once Eddie gets Switchblade riled up, he fires his bazooka and kills the entire party, making everyone angry at getting one life wasted.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The final trailer ends with Bethany returning to being Shelly Oberon after dipping into the glowing water, spoiling that everyone returns to their former player characters right before the climax.
• Trapped in Another World: Some of the same characters from the first movie along with some new ones are sucked into the game once again. Could also be considered a version of Trapped in TV Land.
• True Companions: Even with Spencer having grown distant from the other three, once they realize that he has returned to Jumanji, Fridge, Martha and Bethany decide to go back and save him. Fridge is the most hesitant until Martha points out that Spencer would do the same for him. Bethany later contacts Alex for help when she is left behind, and describes the group as her team.
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: As Fridge and Bethany go up pretending to be the Brothers Kababik, the Info Dump on them gets increasingly unsettling and hard to keep in-character - particularly Fridge supposedly being a eunuch.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The sudden "platforming" with the need to make perfectly timed jumps between rotating bridges can certainly give that impression.
• Unpredictable Results: While malicious, the rules of Jumanji seemed to be rather clear in previous films and the characters had to work with them. The haphazard repair to the console seems to throw all that out of alignment, particularly in that they aren't able to choose their characters before entering, and even the experienced characters are questioning all the changes and noticing Good Bad Bugs along the way.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Eddie is an old man who is slow to pick up on things, has no idea how video games or their associated tropes work, and has no sense of tact or subtlety. Lucky for him, he's in the body of Dr. Smolder Bravestone, an avatar who is inhumanly strong and fast enough to punch men through walls and accomplish physical challenges no problem.
• Video Credits: The credits pan over a map covered with objects, and once the cast appears, they're all relevant to the characters (such as Mouse's handkerchief, the nunchucks Ruby wields, and Spencer's inhaler).
• Voices Are Not Mental: Like in the previous movie, when the players become their avatars, they sound like them instead of retaining their voices. When Bethany enters the game as Cyclone the horse, she could only neigh, and is relieved to finally speak again when she changes to Oberon with the magic water.
• We Used to Be Friends: Eddie and Milo were once close friends and business partners but at the start of the movie they haven't spoken in fifteen years. Turns out Milo was getting too old for the restaurant business and wanted to retire and travel with his wife. Eddie meanwhile had poured his life into the restaurant and was devastated to have it ripped out from under him.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The new villain, Jurgen the Brutal, who can easily engage Bravestone in a physical fight, is revealed to be vulnerable to the Jumanji Berry.
• Wham Shot: During the climatic battle with Jurgen the Brutal, Bravestone hits him in the chest, causing a stat chart to pop up and revealing he's another avatar. Unfortunately, the film doesn't go any further into this revelation.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Ironically enough, Fridge delivers the first two quite accurately. When the former Dumb Jock is able to measure the situation accurately, you know something is wrong.
  • Eddie's stubbornness and impulsive recklessness with his newfound strength as Bravestone gets the team into countless trouble, eventually costing them all a life via Total Party Kill.
  • Similarly, Milo's longwinded habits as Mouse come far too late in explaining the threats any animal can pose to them before they could avoid it.
  • After finding Spencer the rest of the group gives him one of these for going back inside, namely from Martha for ghosting her. He explains his plan was to fix the game and re-live their first adventure as a self-esteem boost, believing he'd be ok since he'd already beaten the game and would be playing as Bravestone again. He wasn't expecting that the game would create a brand new scenario or that its broken state would have side effects, like not being able to pick your avatar.
• What You Are in the Dark: A good description of Bethany's situation; with Spencer, Fridge and Martha stuck in Jumanji along with Eddie and Milo, Bethany has no explanation anyone else would believe, every reason to not want to be stuck back in the game herself, and no way of knowing if she even can do anything to help, but rather than run away and ignore it she immediately contacts Alex, the only other person she knows who has experience with Jumanji, to get his help.
• The Worf Effect: Dr. Bravestone is strong enough to punch men through walls and across rooms, and when hit himself he doesn't even flinch. But when he comes up against Jurgen the Brutal, he finds himself on the receiving end of the same treatment. It takes the Jumanji Berry to weaken Jurgen enough for Bravestone's blows to have an effect.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Martha and Fridge immediately suspect that the green, electrically-charged water surrounding the Jumanji Fruit contains some horrible peril. Turns out, it's just a bug of the game that allows them to swap avatars.
• You Killed My Father: Played with in that while Jurgen did do this to Bravestone's parents, neither Eddie nor Spencer really care due to them just being players controlling the avatar.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Jurgen the Brutal travels in one that resembles the classic design, but built with a metallic hull instead of fabric and propelled by a pair of jet-type engines.

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♫ Many a tear has to fall
But it's all in the game
All in the wonderful game... ♫