Action, yes, but "Jack the Giant Slayer" is a little thin
By David Bjorkgren
Managing editor
“Jack the Giant Slayer” has a lot of stuff happening on screen. We’re talking battlefield Armageddon here between man and giant, filled with flying arrows, flying rocks, a burning moat, burning trees and giants who not only stomp on anything that moves but also snack on terrified humans. Plus, huge beanstalks are sprouting everywhere.
It almost makes up for a thin and not particularly imaginative storyline and less-than-riveting dialogue.
The source material for the movie, the English folk tale “Jack and the Beanstalk,” isn’t exactly complex so there wasn’t too much to work with from the get go. To the film’s credit, they do a decent job of fleshing out and expanding the well-known tale by adding an ancient war, a princess, knights and a human turncoat that uses magic to dominate the giants in the hopes of taking over the human world. This “Jack” story shows us more than one giant and his wife. Here, there is a whole army of giants to contend with.
In this version of the story, it’s been a long time since humans and giants faced each other, centuries in fact. The first conflict took place when humans created magic beans so they could climb a giant beanstalk to heaven. Turns out, there were giants in the sky. Big, tall, terrible giants. War erupts. The clever humans create a magic crown crafted from a giant’s heart. The person wearing the crown has the power to control the giants and so the humans are able to order the giants to return to their skyward land. The beanstalk is cut down. Peace is restored.
It’s centuries later and the story of the conflict with the giants has faded into legend, told as a bedtime story to a young Jack and young Princess Isabelle.
Jump ahead a few years and Jack ((Nicholas Hoult) is selling the family horse and cart when he comes to the aid of the princess (Eleanor Tomlinson), who has snuck out of the castle incognito and is being accosted by some unsavory gentlemen.
A monk has stolen ancient magic beans from the castle to keep them out of the hands of Roderick (Stanley Tucci), one of the king’s henchman. Roderick has evil plans of his own for those beans. The monk trades the beans to Jack for a getaway horse. Meanwhile, Roderick has discovered the magic crown once used to subdue the giants.
The princess shows up at Jack’s house. Jack has tossed the beans to the floor. One takes root and the first of several giant beanstalks starts to grow, taking Jack’s house and the princess with it.
A rescue party of the king’s knights, accompanied by Jack and Roderick (with magic crown in hand) climbs up the stalk and discovers the land of the giants. They are taken prisoner and offered up as a snack while the giants try and figure out what the heck the humans are doing there. Roderick fulfills his evil scheme, donning the crown and taking charge of the giants. Jack frees the princess and the head of the king’s guard, Elmont (Ewan McGregor) and they make their escape down the beanstalk.
Roderick, meanwhile, loses his crown to the lead giant, General Fallon (Bill Nighy) and he is killed, making a sudden exit from the film.
With everyone back safely on earth, Jack’s beanstalk is cut down, but several magic beans have been inconveniently left behind with the giants. As they sprout four more additional beanstalks, the giants use them to descend to earth to capture the lands occupied by the humans. A massive battle ensues, with the giants quickly gaining the upper hand. Jack ends up taking on General Fallon and, thanks to a rather unusual use of yet another beanstalk, recaptures the crown and wills the giants into submission once again.
The limited, predictable story did have me yawning a few times in the theater. What saves the film (somewhat) are its action sequences, credited to director Bryan Singer (“The Usual Suspects,” “Superman Returns,” “X Men”). There’s not much down time as we move from one scene in motion to the next.
When there’s that much activity going on, you can’t help but have some fun, distracting you from other important aspects of the film, like character development, imaginative storytelling and the concept of nuance.
The scenery is a nice distraction, too, as we look down upon the earthly kingdom of the humans from a beanstalk perspective and travel the rocky cliffs, woods and village of the skyward giants.
Credit also the animation, particularly when it comes to the look of the giants. They have a textured look that captures all of their brute ugliness and the blend between computer generated animation and live action works quite well. What doesn’t work quite as well is the now-obligatory 3-D. It’s OK, but adds very little and the film works fine without it.
If the movie does well, the filmmakers left themselves an open door for a sequel . Giants could once again be in our midst, if the box office receipts are there. If they are, I hope they bring some better screenwriters with them.
As a somewhat fun, mindless, adrenaline rush, “Jack the Giant Slayer” works. For all of you “Lincoln” people, you might want to go elsewhere for your movie experience.
I give “Jack the Giant Slayer” six giant sprouting beanstalks out of 10.
By Arthur Ryan
Correspondent
When I was a kid, I used to
love to go to the movies and see the films made by Ray Harryhausen, the
legendary stop-motion special effects guru. There were the Sinbad films, "Jason
and the Argonauts" and Harryhausen's last big screen effort, "Clash of the
Titans" in 1981. The stories were mythical adventures that lent themselves to
the larger-than-life special effects that those films boasted.
This past weekend,
Legendary Films and New Line Cinema, released, "Jack the Giant Slayer", which
offers a new spin on the ancient fairytale of Jack and the Beanstalk. It's a
timeless tale that brought me back to my youth and those fond days spent sitting
in a darkened movie theatre and letting my imagination run wild, all thanks to
Ray Harryhausen.
Of course, Harryhausen's
stop-motion puppets have been replaced here with modern CGI technology, but the
motivation is the same, mythical creatures such as giants are brought to life
before our very eyes.
In this
telling, Jack, played by Nicholas Hault, is a tenant farmer, who along with a
runaway princess, Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) are hurled upwards when a stalk
sprouting from some magic beans thrust Jack's house into the sky.
High up in
the sky lives a world of giants exiled there by the power of an ancient King’s
magical crown. The new beanstalk offers the race of man-eating giants a chance
to return below and devour the humans living there.
What follows
is an hour and a half of pure fun and adventure, as Jack tries to rescue
Isabelle from the evil giants. Along the
way Jack is also challenged by the evil Prince Roderick, who has his sights set
on the magical crown that controls the army of giants. Roderick is played with
dry-wit by Stanley Tucci, who despite being set up early as the film’s bad guy,
proves no match for the evil giant’s collective powers.
“Jack the
Giant Slayer” was based on a story by Darren Lemke and David Dobkin and is of no
relation to the 1962 similarly themed, “Jack the Giant Killer.” In that film,
Kerwin Matthews (himself a veteran of many Ray Harryhausen films) played a farm
boy-turned knight who must protect a princess from the plots of an evil wizard.
Matthews’s appearance in that film, often lead to it being confused as being
made by Harryhausen, but it was not.
Here
screenwriters, Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney, have created a
charming world of characters that are not unlike those in 1987’s “The Princess
Bride”, although perhaps not as well drawn.
Director,
Bryan Singer of X-Men fame, created a
wonderful look to his film, which in itself owes much to the style of those
Harrthausen films of old. Singer’s camera captures the feel and dreary look of
this mythical world but also matches the high pace of the action brought on by
the arrival of the giants.
And it is the
giants and the modern special effects geniuses who created them with their
computers who deserve much of the credit here. The special effects crew on this
film reads like a phone book, and it’s no surprise that it would take such a
large team to create such huge imaginary creatures. The sequences featuring the
giants are daring and inventive. Whether it’s seeing giants from Jack’s
underwater perspective as in one scene or traveling down their insides as they
swallow in another, these are giants like we’ve never seen them before.
My only gripe
with this fairytale is its poor execution in 3D. Some three dimensional films
benefit from the latest technology in enhancing the experience to the fullest.
But in this case, the dark and dreary look to the film is made worse by the
addition of very old looking 3D technology. I can’t be sure if it was just the
theatre where I saw the film, or if the filmmakers are to blame, but I would
recommend seeing this film in 2D if possible.
