I saw the preview today for the upcoming movie, Zathura. As I was watching it, I was wondering if it was obvious to anyone else that it's the exact same story as Jumanji. And sure enough, as the trailer ended, I saw it was written by the same author.

Can you really do that? One story works so well that you just do the exact same thing again? I guess that's kind of what a sequel is, and I suppose that's how this should be viewed. But usually a sequel picks up the story where the first installation left off and expands on it, filling in parts of the original story that were left unanswered, etc. Back To The Future 2 would have been much less interesting if it had consisted of a charismatic, salt-and-pepper-haired scientist discovering time travel by means of, say, a cleverly-rigged boat, and then accidentally travelling back to the 1930's and finding himself having to ensure that his grandparents fall in love. You just can't do that. (OK, The Next Karate Kid notwithstanding.) (And I guess every sequel of Alien.)

Which isn't to say that I won't watch it, sadly enough. I liked Jumanji, and hey, it's just like Jumanji except with new characters, and in space. I like space.

Edit: As if to add insult to uncreative injury, the Zathura trailer uses the theme music from The Abyss, although I don't know for a fact that it was written for The Abyss; it may very well be by a classical piece like the ever-popular Thus Spake Zarathustra (think 2001: A Space Odyssey or pretty much any other "introducing something awe-inspiring" scene you've ever seen) or even something written by a group like E.S. Posthumus without any specific film in mind. Still, come on, couldn't you even come up with original music?