Why Jumanji: Open World is exactly the predictable fun we actually need

The trailer has arrived, the avatar outfits are identical, and the CGI looks as polished and blocky as ever. It has been seven years since we last checked in on this particular universe, and Sony Pictures has decided it is time to boot up the console again. The result is Jumanji: Open World, a film that promises to do absolutely nothing new with the medium of cinema, and will be all the better for it.

This time, the franchise is upgrading its gaming metaphors to the era of the modern sandbox. In actual video games, an "open world" usually means spending forty hours riding a horse toward a glowing icon to collect fifteen herbs. In Hollywood terms, it means letting the game's avatars loose in our world, bringing some jokes about glitches, Dwayne Johnson sporting a Spanish accent, and the cast doing the exact same double-act they perfected last decade. There will be bits about "demo modes" and characters running in place. The material practically writes itself, which is convenient, because that is largely what is happening here.

Yet there is a quiet, deadpan genius to how Sony manages these films. While other studios collapse under the weight of their own multi-phase cinematic universes, demanding audiences do three semesters of homework before entering the theatre, Jumanji remains blessedly uncomplicated. It asks nothing of you. It does not require you to have watched a spin-off television series to understand why Kevin Hart is screaming at a hippopotamus in an alley. It is a high-budget sitcom set in a chaotic real-world playground, operated by actors who know exactly what kind of movie they are in.

We do not need Jumanji: Open World to be art. We need it to be a highly competent, predictable machine that delivers exactly two hours of air-conditioned relief from our families in late December. It will almost certainly achieve this. In a cultural landscape cluttered with exhausting blockbuster ambitions, there is something deeply comforting about a film that is perfectly content to just be a film.