As such, the results are consistently adequate yet unfortunately mundane.
While he's clearly no unqualified amateur, he does seem to lack the hunger or vision a first-time or rising director might display. It's tough to see that experience in what he brings to this film. He's dabbled extensively in effects films and navigated the treacherous waters of steep budgets on movies like X-Men and Superman Returns. Jack is directed and produced by Bryan Singer, a filmmaker who grabbed everyone's attention out of the gate in 1995 and has been a reasonably average storyteller ever since. Though its plot defies the laws of our world, but the imagination of the fairy tale's conception is very old and not aided by any fresh creativity or the best cinema technology money can buy nowadays. The film's biggest problem is that it is short on magic.
#Jack the giant killer disney professional#
Each of these ingredients is implemented in passable and professional fashion, but they do not transcend the sum of their parts. It has romance, battles, comedy, and visual effects aplenty. Jack the Giant Slayer goes through the checklist of elements likely to feature in any big, expensive fantasy adventure. The only thing they submit to is an ancient magical crown, which one of the journeyers happens to have. The enormous beasts speak English but loathe mankind (they're still bitter about the one they call Erik the Terrible) and apparently do eat them, as the many skulls they walk on can attest to. The beanstalks bring both the princess and the valiant rescuers face to face with dozens of giants who have been resigned to high altitude living out of sight and mind for the human race.
Jack volunteers alongside Roderick and Elmot (Ewan McGregor), the king's lead guard, to make the journey up the vast vegetation to rescue Isabelle. From it, a giant beanstalk rapidly grows, taking Jack's little cottage and the visiting princess high in the sky. A major thunderstorm and a disappointed uncle get one of those beans plenty wet. "Whatever you do, don't get them wet," the monk warns. Jack sells that horse to a sketchy monk, who promises to give him ten gold coins, but for now gives him a bag of magic beans, er, priceless Holy relics from ages ago. As the heir to her father's (Ian McShane) throne, Isabelle knows comfort, but also being set up for an undesirable arranged marriage to the old, conniving Lord Roderick (Stanley Tucci). Living with his uncle, Jack is a worker, tasked with selling horses and such. Ten years later, commoner Jack (Nicholas Hoult) and Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) have lost parents, which has shaped their teenage years less than the lives born into. The film opens in Medieval times with both a simple farm boy and a young royal hearing the legends of deadly giants conquered by a king known as Erik the Great. Naturally, Jack embellishes the short source tales to yield a nearly two-hour, effects-laden experience. As on John Carter, foreign audiences embraced the film and its IMAX and 3D exhibitions more than domestic ones, but not enough to lift this costly production out of the red. When the dust settled not long after its release, Jack the Giant Slayer had grossed even less than John Carter, albeit on a slightly lower budget. What it did do was invite comparisons to John Carter, which 51 weeks earlier had bombed spectacularly following similar title changes and marketing doubts over at Disney.
That move eased the competition, but didn't seem to help Jack find an audience. A more telling one delayed the film from its scheduled mid-June 2012 debut to March 2013. The softened title was one sign of studio reservations. This semi-remake was shot with the same title, but Warner changed "Killer" to "Slayer" in an apparent effort to make this expensive film more palatable to families. While the beanstalk yarn has typically been adapted as cartoon shorts or for television or video, the more action-oriented legend did become a medium-sized live-action adventure with stop-motion effects in 1962's Jack the Giant Killer. In fact, Jack the Giant Slayer draws from both that children's tale and an Arthurian variation a hundred years older. Pictures and New Line Cinema, the studios most seasoned in blockbuster contemporary fantasy, the 19th century fairy tale was a viable foundation for a $200 million tentpole. To some, the story of Jack and the Beanstalk may have seemed nearly as preposterous for big budget action spectacle treatment as the board game Battleship.
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