Can someone please explain the ending to me? (spoiler)
Not sure if I understand why Alex was grown with a family, and the "freak" house looked normal.
shareDifferent universe/magic.
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MovieChat Forums > Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) Discussion > Can someone please explain the ending to...
In order to answer that, think of the original "Jumanji" movie. After everything that happened to the main characters, when the game was finally completed Alan went back to being a kid again, because that's when he entered the game. The other two kids stayed in the present because that was their timeline when they started to play the game. That's how it works.
So that's what happened to Alex. He went back to 1996 when he first started the game. Just like Alan, he was around to "meet" the other players down the line when they arrived finally in his/our realty. When he finally caught up to them in his/our timeline. Understand?
Because Alex was returned to the exact moment he initially entered the game, in 1992, it “rewrote” history.
The first time through, with Alex in the game, his father fell into depression due to Alex’s disappearance. The house fell into disrepair and the father developed the “freak” reputation.
After Alex was sent back when they beat the game, all of that changed. Because Alex did not disappear in the altered timeline, his father never fell into depression, the house never fell into disrepair, and Alex and his father lived normal, happy lives for the next 20 years.
After those 20 years, restored Alex finally “caught up” with the other four kids, who went in during our time.
But doesn't that create a paradox. How did the kids know about the freak house if the timeline was reset? They would have grown up with that house and family being completely normal.
shareIt all depends on which theory of time travel you (or in this case, the particular movie you are watching) subscribe. For an excellent description of the different theories of time travel in films, check out this site:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3zTfXvYZ9s
In the case of Jumanji, they are subscribing to the theory that those who do the traveling are the points of consistency, and it is their actions that cause changes in the timeline. They, themselves, do not change, but the way that history "played out" due to the changes they made, did. The time travelers, having originally passed through one history will have one set of memories that are now out of sync with the new, altered timeline. This follows the "branching time" theory and the theory of multiple worlds first postulated Hugh Everett. When Alex returned home, this created a new timeline that branched off of the original. In this branch, Alex never disappeared, and every effect of his disappearance in the original timeline was negated. The new timeline then rolled on from that point, free from any constraints of the original timeline. When the other four kids returned, they returned to the altered timeline and would need to "relearn" the "history" they knew.
You can imagine how this felt for Alex, as well... having been returned to the exact point in time he left, he would now be back in the body of a teenager, yet with 20 years of memories from a life spent in the game, and a glimpse of the future having dealt with the four other players who's parents were children in the time when Alex arrived!
This is similar to the end of "Back to the Future", when Marty returns home to find his parents are now confident and "cool". Everyone in that new timeline will have completely different memories of their history than the ones that Marty has (and, realistically, that would cause some REAL awkward and problematic moments). Marty, as the point of consistency and the initiator of the changes, retains his memories of his journey through the original timeline and everyone else has new memories and experiences of their journey through the new timeline.
Of course, this is an oversimplification of how things would, most likely, really happen if people were able to travel through time in this fashion. The differences that would occur in the timelines with Alex missing versus Alex remaining at home would have spread further than just Alex remaining home and his house not changing. The return of his presence would have affected dozens and dozens of other people (from those that investigate the crime to school friends, family members, etc.) Just the fact that Alex was married... in the original timeline, the woman Alex was married to may have been married to someone else, so the children to come from that union would no longer exist. Heck, since they are all from the same town, how do we know that Alex didn't accidentally marry one of the mothers of four players? If that were the case, one of the four players may have had no home to return to!
Time travel is always hard to pin down, because the paradoxes and alternate timelines can go just about anywhere the writer's ideas want to go. In the particular universe of Jumanji, however, it appears that they are taking the branching multiverse theory... Alex returning causes a second branch in the timeline to form, and a new history plays out from that point. The other four kinds return to this branch and will get to live in this new reality. Not really a paradox, more a quirk in the application of parallel timelines.
But they're not time-travel movies so much as magic movies
The Jumanji game is clearly "intelligent" to some extent, enough that I can accept its ability to remake reality for its players without any "butterfly effects"
As it’s been said, Alex’s fate after he was sucked into the game (before and after he won) is basically how things went for Alan Parish in the original. Once Alan beat Jumanji, he returned to the exact moment he left as a kid, he prevented his father from losing everything, and he got to grow up and live a normal life.
They resolved it pretty much the same way for Alex in this movie and it was done so well. By the way seeing Colin Hanks as adult Alex was very neat/touching.
This link explains the connection between the first Jumanji movie and the new one :https://www.thisisbarry.com/single-post/2018/09/14/How-is-Jumanji-Welcome-To-The-Jungle-2017-Connected-To-The-Original-Jumanji-1995
Now, that said, when you complete the game, you go back to the beginning of time to when you started playing it. When Alex completes the game he goes back to the 90s to that time when he plays the game that morning. At that time the other 4 players are not yet born. Alex lives a life where he gets married had has kids, and years later runs into the 4 of his co-players. the 4 coplayers return to the time they started playing (just a few days in the past) ..
Since Alex doesn't disappear, his parents are also normal and that house never becomes a freak house.