Chris Van Allsburg's Jumanji: Similarities Between Literature And Film

Lions, time travelling, and fright. Except, maybe without the time travelling. Books and movies vary — one portrays a story through descriptive words to paint a picture, and another through visual imagery that brings a tale to life. Naturally, as vintage classics gain significance, from children to adults, inevitably, they will become adapted into visual form; Jumanji is no different. This paper will articulate the similarities in a contrast to the differences between the written literary piece Jumanji with the 1995 movie directed by Joe Johnston; it will examine what elements play a crucial role in storytelling. The book Jumanji is a fictitious piece of classic literature written by Chris Van Allsburg in 1981. It follows the adventurous tale

It allows us to interpret the movie in the way the author intended, and helps us connect to the characters’ lines of reasoning. Zeroing into the book, Judy and Peter are only seen within either their park, or their home while their parents are gone. Later, Allsburg builds the world a little by describing the house, and adding guests to imply that their parents are quite popular within the population, including to give a reason for the siblings to have pressure in keeping the estate clean. However, he does not explore the world outside to give us a feel of the tone of the story as the motion picture does, and it may leave readers confused as to how the movie should be interpreted. To illustrate, in the movie, Peter Shepherd alongside his sister Judy, Alan Parrish, and Sarah Whittle are shown their own experiences in their world, which allows us to connect the dots to learn their way of thought, as well as stabilise a mood for the tale. The world in the movie is as perfect as worn shoes. It is the opposite of how it is implied within the book. At the beginning, the bullies harass, and pierce Alan with their distasteful insults, proving that bullying is a prominent issue. As Alan’s opinions are proven to be worth as much as a nugget of graphite at home, the parental negligence prompts Alan to pick up the board game in the park after running away from his fears. Into the bargain, after he

While the book was a short, and sweet tale written for children, it lacked composition of a world that would have explained how the characters behaved, as well as set a defined tone for the story. Naturally, as a children’s tale, Allsburg writes in a brief manner where potential areas for new plot development are not elaborated on. For example, the mystery of how the siblings find the game in the park. While the 1995 movie adaptation of Jumanji was one of the sole instances where I preferred the movie over the book, exaggerating the effects while exploring the world proved to lead to redundant, atrocious visual effects that sometimes ruined the mood with overdone extreme gloom. In addition, there is a blur between who the target audience is supposed to be, with their dour themes, notwithstanding keeping the idea of the adventurous Jumanji, where the book centred towards children. Nevertheless, from examining these sources, I found the movie was substantially better due to its critical expansion of the havoc Jumanji could truly bring within the world, potentially creating a dystopia. Moreover, it