Zathura

Zathura: A Space Adventure is a 2005 fantasy science fiction film directed by Jon Favreau, based on the illustrated book Zathura by Chris Van Allsburg, author of Jumanji. It starred Jonah Bobo as Danny and Josh Hutcherson as Walter. Tim Robbins also had a small role as the divorced father of Walter and Danny. In the film two boys discover a space–themed mechanical clockwork board game of race game type in the house's basement; it represents space travel, and in the game Zathura is the name of the place that the players must try to reach. When the game is running, everything inside it becomes real when they play. The film was released on November 11, 2005 by Columbia Pictures. It was shot in Los Angeles and Culver City, California. The film features a sister named Lisa; introduced a lost astronaut to the plot; and a large number of Zorgons and Zorgon ships.[1] Unlike the Zathura book, it contains no Jumanji material and does not mention any Jumanji events.

Plot

Walter and Danny are two boys who cannot get along with each other or with their older sister Lisa. One day, when their father sets off for work, they quarrel yet again while Lisa is in her bedroom upstairs. Walter has a pair of small walkie-talkies. Danny damages one of them; Walter accuses him again of wrecking everything.

Danny gets banished into the house's basement, but discovers a clockwork-driven space-themed board game called Zathura. It is a race game, and the objective is to reach a space location called Zathura. At each turn, one of its two markers moves along or back on its track, and the game issues a card (all of which read primarily by Walter, due to Danny's inability to read). The boys start playing the game. On looking out, one of them sees that it has become night outside, and that the house is no longer on earth but on a small rock floating in space. Some sort of power source is keeping the house supplied with water and gas and electricity, and is holding an envelope of air around it. They soon find that when the game says that something is happening, it happens in reality in or around the house. Also, according to the instructions, the house will not return to Earth until the game is finished. During the course of the story, the boys must overcome their personal ill will toward one another in order to survive.

One of these cards says "Shipmate enters cryogenic sleep chamber for 5 turns."; the boys investigating find the house's bathroom frozen to far below freezing point and in it Lisa frozen rigid hard. Another card announces a meteor shower, and the house is destructively bombarded by many small fast-flying objects. Another card drawn says "reprogram"; they see no immediate use for it.

Another card says "Your robot is defective.": a robot appears, first as a small wind-up metal toy, but it quickly becomes real and life-size. It is supposed to defend the players, but as it is malfunctioning it misidentifies Walter as an alien life form and begins rampaging through the house to catch him (its line of directive being, "Emergency. Alien lifeform. Must destroy.") Finally it runs into a wall where its arms are trapped. Another card says "Shooting star, make a wish as it passes.": a large bright object rushes past. Walter struggles mentally with himself about what to wish, but finally wishes for an oval football with a famous player's signature on it: it appears, but is of no immediate use.

Another card says "Rescue stranded astronaut"; an astronaut appears at the house's door, and manages to enter. He was flying loose in space with a rocket pack and a life-support backpack. He says that he and his brother had been playing the game, and he had got trapped as a character in the game's world as a result of using a wishing card during a quarrel to wish that his brother had never been born; that caused his brother to disappear, leaving him unable to escape the game as it was no longer his turn and the game could not advance without another player. He stops Walter from making the same mistake. While trapped in the game he had grown from boy to man and came through a time hole to be with them. He needs a means of two-way communication at a distance with the boys; Walter shows him the walkie-talkies and complains that they are no use because Danny clumsily broke one of them; but the astronaut quickly and easily mends it.

Sometime midway through the game, Walter notices Danny has illegally moved his piece forward, and forcibly moves it back while berating Danny. The game interprets only Walter's action as cheating and the game punishes him by getting him sucked out into space, but the astronaut flies after him with his spacesuit's propulsor and rescues him. Accompanying Danny, Walter, and the astronaut is Lisa, who, while not a player, is as vulnerable to the dangers present in the game. After she comes out of stasis, she develops a crush on the astronaut.

The main villains in the film are the Zorgons: cyborg lizard-men who are fond of heat and are attracted to a heat source much like bees are attracted to nectar, because they are cold-blooded. The Zorgons, having burned their own planet to get more heat, are nomads who travel through space seeking more to burn. They keep a flock of four-eyed goats on their ship, presumably as food. Advised by the astronaut, Walter and Danny switch off all power-using devices in the house, losing its heat signature. The astronaut sets a sofa on fire and throws it out into space; the Zorgon ships follow it away.

By now Lisa has come out of her cryogenic stasis. The boys and the astronaut do not see her switching the gas on to heat water for a bath, and the resulting heat and light draws Zorgon ships back. The Zorgons shoot at the house, damaging it more, and anchor to it with grapples, and suck the game into their ship along with much miscellaneous house debris, which they shovel into their ship's engine in order to use them as fuel. The astronaut tries to rescue the game but cannot. Danny gets past the Zorgons to the basement unseen by a dumb waiter, which only he is small enough to fit into, and riskily through a boarding passage into the Zorgon ship. He rescues the game at the last moment before it would have been shoveled into a furnace, and gets back into the house with it.

The robot comes back and tries to attack the boys. Walter uses the "Reprogram" card (which he had drawn earlier) on the robot, which then instead attacks the Zorgons. Of two Zorgon spaceships, one flees, and another explodes. One Zorgon survives the robot's kamikaze attack and sneaks up behind Walter and Danny as they are wondering where Lisa is. Before the Zorgon can kill them, Lisa crushes and kills it by shoving Danny's piano down on it.

Walter, drawing another "Shooting star, make a wish as it passes" card due to getting to repeat his last turn, wishes that the astronaut had his brother back. A copy of Danny appears. The astronaut apologizes to Danny, who is his brother. It is revealed that the astronaut and his brother are Walter and Danny from an alternate time line which started when Walter at the first wish card wished otherwise: "I wish my brother had never been born", which was stopped this time due to the astronaut's intervention. The astronaut's brother disintegrates into sparks which enter Danny when the two touch. The astronaut thanks Walter and tells him to take care of Danny, then touches him and turns into a copy of Walter, which smiles at him and disintegrates into sparks which enter Walter. Thus the two time lines merge, and the future caused by Walter wishing Danny away is erased. Lisa is alarmed to find that she had fallen for an older version of her brother Walter.

In the last throw of the game, Zorgons return with a large fleet, and start blasting the house. Danny scores a move which brings his marker to Zathura, and the Zorgons stop firing. The house goes to a black hole, which sucks up the Zorgons and the house and Lisa and Walter. Moments later, the humans are on Earth in the house, whose structure and furnishings are as they were before the game began and in perfect condition; Danny and Walter realize the whole adventure never happened due to time reversing. The Zathura game is in the house, switched off at the second before Danny started playing. The brothers are thereafter much more cooperative with one another with Walter teaching Danny how to play catch. The boys, and Lisa, keep their memories of the game's events, but all agree never to speak of Zathura again, although Walter makes fun of Lisa for her crush on his other self.

As the two boys get in the car with Lisa and drive away, one of their bicycles, which drifted off into space and can be seen in certain parts of the movie, falls back onto the house's lawn.

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