I’ve seen Jumanji many times. Dozens upon dozens of times. I saw in theaters when I was five years old and I watched it on VHS throughout my childhood.
But it was only now, watching it on Encore out of boredom at four in the morning, that I realized that Van Pelt was played by the same actor who played Alan’s father. Of course Alan would see Van Pelt as his father. But I only just noticed and now I feel like a complete 'tard.
You guys ever miss the obvious in films?
Don’t feel bad, I’d seen Fifth Element about 10 or 15 times when somebody pointed out to me that Zorg and Dallas never see each other or communicate in any way for the whole movie. They do just miss each other while the bomb on the liner is ticking down.
I still don’t get it. Why does Alan see Van Pelt as his father
It was the ongoing (never-ending?) thread on The Prestige that caused me to really grasp that one main character is two people who become one while the other is one person who becomes two.
This is not unlike Peter Pan, where, conventionally, the person playing Wendy’s father also plays Captain Hook.
That’s pretty cool- but I’ve never seen Wendy’s father. My Peter Pan exposure is limited to Hook.
Well, wait, that’s not true. I remember when I was an itsy bitsy little tot I had a movie on VHS that was a live action play of sorts (it only had one camera angle per scene, I don’t know how else to describe it). Peter was played by a woman who seemed like she was in her twenties. The movie was fucking awesome, but that’s about all I remember. That and lots of singing.
His father was (to young Alan) a stern, domineering man who could never be pleased. This wasn’t true, of course, but characteristic of men of his generation was a certain distance from their children. Alan simly couldn’t relate to his father.
Van Pelt is the character, but in his childish imagination: a unkillable, untiring stalker who never quits haunting him. It isn’t until the end fo the movie when Alan confronts Van Pelt and receives his approval (in the twisted Jumanji way) that he breaks the image, ends the game, and can then go on to be honest with his real father.
That was probably the classic Broadway production. I remember going to the 1979 stage revivalas a very small kid.
It was certainly true in the most recent big Peter Pan movie, where both were played by Jason Isaacs.
The first time I saw Fight Club, I was so drunk I didn’t realize that
“Jack” and Tyler Durden were the same person.
Despite it explicitly saying so? 
I’m surprised you even remembered having watched the movie at all.
All right, fine. I’ve been trying to resist the urge to share, because it makes me look so stupid, but in my defense I was very young when I saw it in the movie theater and didn’t get it until I saw it on TV years later.
The first time I saw ‘Airplane’ and Ted mentioned his drinking problem, I wondered, “How can he have a drinking problem? He can’t even get the glass to his mouth!”
:smack:
It wasn’t until the 2nd or 3rd time watching Pink Floyd’s The Wall that I realized the the part at the end with Pink becoming a fascist leader didn’t really happen in the movie. It was a hallucination brought on by the drugs his manager forced on him to try to get him on stage for a concert.
I must be an idiot. Apparently, I’m the only person in the entire world who watched The Sixth Sense and didn’t know
the Bruce Willis character was a ghost
until it was revealed at the end. One of my buddies says he figured it out from the trailer, it was that obvious.
It wasn’t until I read it on IMDB a couple of weeks ago (because of the Best Line in a Western? thread) that in the film Pale Rider, Clint Eastwood’s character “The Preacher” is a ghost.
If ya ask me, it ain’t that obvious either.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Granted I saw it when I was 7 years old but even though I saw it several times in the theatre I never understood why they showed a bunch of empty planes in the desert at the beginning of the film and was even more dumbfounded at the end when a bunch of military guys came strolling off the UFO. I never put the two together until years later (the 80s) when I saw it on VHS.
Should be pretty clear after the bathtub scene. 
Two from my college years, back in the 1980s.
I didn’t realize that “Dead Men Wear Plaid” used clips from old movies. Thus, I totally didn’t get much of the movie, and thought it was rather disjoint.
I didn’t realize that Peter Sellers played two parts in “The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu”.
In my defense, I did not grow up watching movies, and really not that much television. For the “Dead Men Wear Plaid” movie, I didn’t recognize the old actors in the movies to see they were “out of place” in a modern movie. For the “Fu Manchu” movie, I didn’t know Peter Sellers well enough to recognize him playing two parts.
A couple from Kill Bill.
It didn’t hit me until years after I saw the movie that they named the kid B.B. because their first names were “Bill and Beatrix.”
I also didn’t get the fact that the white guy who kills O-ren’s father in the animated segment was Bill himself until I read it on a fansite (although in my defense, that doesn’t actually make a whole lot of sense.).
I’m pretty sure most people didn’t get it, hence why there was so much buzz about it when it came out.
I thought it was brilliantly done and had no idea until the end.