Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle's Karen Gillan responds to costume controversy

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is arriving just in time for Christmas (we called it "an Uncharted-style story packed with heart and laughs"), and you may remember that the reaction to our first look at it back in 2016 was 'why is Karen Gillan wearing such tiny clothes'?

The first trailer eventually explained the joke, but Gillan told Digital Spy that she was glad that people weren't impressed by her costume.

"I wasn't expecting quite the uproar, but I also get it," she said. "I don't see it as a negative at all. I think that when you look at that picture out of context, it is ridiculous, and that is sort of the point we were making with it.

"We made an active choice to make her like a Lara Croft-style '90s video game character with an absurd male fantasy sort of vibe. If anything, the point definitely got across, and I think that it's a good thing that gender equality is at the forefront of people's conversations.

"So the fact that we sparked any debate about that, I think it's a positive thing. So I was kind of like, 'Yeah, this is good'."

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Unfortunately, the costume didn't give Gillan much protection from the crawling things living in the Hawaiian jungle where Jumanji was shot.

"When people are talking about how hard The Revenant was, I'm like, 'Try shooting Jumanji'," the Guardians of the Galaxy star said. "Because, oh my goodness, it was so hot and humid. The mosquitoes were so bad that on the first day of filming, I didn't really put on any bug spray, because I was like, 'It's going to be fine'.

"And then I got bitten all over my legs. And because I'm Scottish and we don't really have those, I think I'm allergic to them or don't have any immunity to it. So there were big, bulbous purple things, and there's nowhere to hide that.

"There were centipedes that would fall out of trees at any given moment. So you were just never safe. It was horrible!"