A to Z Challenge: Zathura

I'll admit I hadn't read the book or seen the movie of this one before this A to Z thing came along.  When I looked up Z movies that had been books, though, I remembered this movie had been on Netflix.  Fortunately it still was, so I could easily watch the movie for at least partial credit.

When this came out in 2005, it seemed pretty much like Jumanji in Space.  Not helping that is it's made by the same studio as Jumanji.  Though actually I haven't read or watched all of Jumanji either.  But this does seem like it has a very similar concept:  a boy finds an old game called Zathura and when he plays it with his brother, they find themselves in space, being attacked by robots, aliens, or whatever else is brought up when the game spits out a card.

Overall the movie is OK but a little on the long side.  Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame plays the big sister of the boys; the director and producers really sensed her acting range as most of the movie she's sleeping or frozen.  Another tidbit is it was directed by Jon Favreau, who went on to do the first two Iron Man movies.  So while it wasn't probably that successful a movie, it helped springboard a couple of careers.

I still haven't read the book, but maybe it answers just who the hell made the game and why.  Not that it's all that important; most Twilight Zone episodes work just fine without explaining too much of why things happen.

Though really, Disney probably should have paid attention to this movie's failure when they were green-lighting Tomorrowland, which similarly tries to invoke nostalgia for the bygone era of science-fiction from the 50s.  I don't think there are many people in the 21st Century actually  nostalgic for that, so maybe give up trying to make big-budget movies about it.

So there you go, there's the whole A to Z thing for the 2016.  Maybe you learned something.  Maybe not.  Monday we're back to...whatever.