Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

(2005)

A lot of people I knew scoffed at this.

“Achchphtsch! IT’S JUST JUMANJI IN SPACE! Blrahgm! Huuuuuuuuu? (sniff sniff)”

Yeah, it is Jumanji in space AND it was just as great if not better than Jumanji! They were perfectly transparent about this fact in the promotional material. Disney changed Treasure Island into Treasure Planet and no one batted an eye. No one saw that one either which might explain the lack of eye batting but Treasure Planet was great too! 

Eragon (2006) never advertised itself as a fantasy version of Star Wars: A New Hope when it clearly was exactly that, character for character and scene for scene. Being forthcoming about what you’re blatantly copying (even if Zathura is written by the same author and produced by the same company), I call artistic integrity.

How cool would it be if we could just get any story in whatever genre we choose? That would be crazy awesome! Oh, tonight I feel like The Matrix in a 1930’s noir style. Tomorrow, let’s do Darkest Hour but it’s a comedy. The next night, Ace Ventura Pet Detective but it’s a gritty crime drama!

We may not be able to do this on the fly but they (gnomes) still painstakingly do this all the time. Let’s take characters from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and put them in a high flying adventure series. Let’s take Archie and Jughead and put them into a murder mystery. Let’s make Arrow a superhero series for 3 seasons and turn it into a stupid soap opera for the remaining 5 seasons.

There isn’t a single aspect of Zathura I take issue with. It’s one of the few films I would put in the category of “perfect” along with I,Robot (2004) and Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse (2018) and Jui Kuen II (1994). It’s one of the few films I’m happy to watch over and over and over again.

And for the haters, I have to ask: Did you go see Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)? Did you go see Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)? If you did then it’s clear you like the Jumanji idea with little tweaks and twists to keep it fresh, right? Zathura may be the same concept with a sci-fi board game instead of a jungle safari board game but I guarantee, this story is ultra fresh!

If you just hate Jumanji that’s different. You’re certainly entitled to your opinion. I won’t fault a person for having different tastes.

As for myself, I want a sequel, preferably with Dax Shepard involved and mayyyyybe Kristen Stewart?