Hello everyone and welcome to the latest post as part of the At Odds with Wrestling homework series. Now usually, I partner up with the At Odds with Wrestling podcast and as they assign each other wrestling related homework to watch, I join in and post my own thoughts. This week’s assignment was the 2017 movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle starring the Rock (there’s the wrestling connection). 

I’ve seen this movie many times over the years. My kid loves it, and the sequel, and I’m sure we’ll watch the third one when it arrives (2026). Joe and Adam will discuss the twists and turns of the plot when their Patreon episode goes live later tonight. So I’m not watching this for the first time, or even the second, and thus my mind wanders away from a straight up scene for scene recap of the movie. This time I found myself paying attention to the concept of identity as seen in this film. 

The movie starts off with four different teenagers assigned to some clean up tasks for weekend detention when they discover an old video game system and some game called Jumanji. Every teenager picks a character by name only and then are sucked into the game. While in the Jumanji world they discover their new avatars and all of the pros and cons that come with it. I’m skipping over a lot of the plot, bad guys, missions, another player found along the way. Listen to the podcast for all of those notes. Now, let’s focus on these four main characters in both worlds. 

Spencer – nerdy awkward smart boy becomes the Rock. Martha – awkward socially inept girl becomes Karen Gillan. Fridge – giant black high school football player becomes Kevin Hart (I do think the writers purposely didn’t switch any white/black characters). Finally, Bethany – prettiest most popular girl at school becomes Jack Black. 

The physically gifted characters become the weakest of the group and the most awkward become the alphas. Yet their minds are still the same. So how much of life is genetic gifts, and luck, and how much is work and effort? 

Spencer is nerdy and bullied by the larger Fridge. He can’t talk to girls. He cowers and falls in step. Yet in the game he’s the Rock. He’s the sexy beast of a leader. He’s the main character. The thoughts, the plans, the actions, while performed by the Rock’s body is still Spencer’s brain. Fridge is used to being a star on the field, and has not had to work on his mind. He’s coasted through school on his athletic gifts. Then as the diminutive Kevin Hart, he now must use his brain to make up for his stature. Martha hides herself from the world and now when she’s forced to show herself a strong personality emerges. Bethany has to keep up her perfect appearance but when in the body of Jack Black, a selfless caring person who focuses on others before herself blossoms. (Side note, Jack Black is absolutely playing this character with a gay angle, but because it’s actually a woman player in a male character’s body it’s “okay”). So, this is who we all are in the real world but is there something more that could come out if any of us didn’t look how we look? 

How much of who and what we are is the result of random selection? Take the Rock. I know he’s said many times about the tough times that he went through. And I don’t doubt him. But at the end of the day he’s still 6 foot 5, 260 pounds. He is genetically built larger than most of the world. Maybe he wouldn’t have become a movie star, or a wrestler, but he would have landed on his very large feet somewhere because he’s a giant. Hot redhead from Britain is always hot redhead from Britain. Kevin Hart turned being smaller into a career. Jack Black started as the fat funny friend. While Hart and Black were not born with the bodies of Rock or Gillan, did that then force them to use their brains? They learned how to be funny. They can’t run fast so they trained their brains to think fast. Of course, they could be mentally gifted from birth in the same way that others are physically gifted. But while it is easy to walk past someone on the street and know immediately if they are physically gifted, that does not happen with the mind. 

The characters now have their real world selves and their game avatars as two different personalities which are taking the best parts of opposites and becoming someone overall better. 

All of the characters have a stroke of luck here as well. They all chose their in game characters by name. There was no picture, no description. By chance they chose characters that while opposite turned out to be complimentary as well. Luck and chance in life can effect everything as well. When you were born effects when you can start school which then decides your friends, and your teachers, and opportunities that will set the course for your life. All because your parents got frisky on Valentine’s Day instead of their anniversary. 

While this is just a movie and within, just a game, but what if we could live within the body of someone else with different gifts than our own for a day? Would it open our eyes and create a sense of unity and motivation? Or would it create depression due to seeing what we thought was perfect from the inside? 

I’ve made the joke many times that the reason I learned to read and write well is because I couldn’t catch or throw. Although I am of larger frame, that frame does not carry athletic bones. Could I have worked hard and become an athlete? Possibly. But the fact is some people are born on third and can score much easier than someone who can’t even find their way out of the locker room. 

Whether it was because I was not athletic, or maybe I was born smarter, either way this acceptance of what my body and brain can and cannot do led me down a certain path. The friends I’ve made, the women I’ve dated, the jobs I’ve had, the lifestyle and hobbies I live all come down to these fingers can’t clasp around a ball but they can damn sure type for hours. 

But what if, what if, that same mind was put into a character like the Rock for a day? The immediate change is confidence. I wouldn’t use his size or muscles to lift weights. I would walk into a place like I own it. I would hit on women I consider out of my league. I would ask for a raise. I would wear better clothes. I would hold my head high. 

But that’s all my brain. All of that I would have, is in me already. I don’t need the Rock’s body for that. 

And maybe someone like the Rock would look at me at 6 foot one and doughy and say I would do this exercise and eat this diet and make these changes and make something out of him. Again, things my body can do. 

We go into people’s homes and daydream what we would do with the place. But we don’t make those same improvements in the places where we actually have control. 

All four of these teenagers were capable of being more. They had to be removed from their day to day selves in order to see potential within. 

Being someone else for a little bit can reveal who you truly are.