Welcome back to the Geekdom, I’ll be your Guide. Now I
have to ask, what is with the recent trend of taking old fairy tales and
turning them into darker action flicks? This trend hasn’t really worked well
for any of them, I mean sure I’ve liked a few of them but most of them are
fairly cheesy with really hammy acting. I honestly wasn’t going into this film
expecting a lot, given the current history of these darker action fairy tales.
Was I proven wrong? Let’s review Jack the Giant Slayer.
The
Negative
Two of the major villains simply had no substance to
them. These two characters, Lord Roderick and Wicke, were hiding nothing; they
flaunted how evil they were to everyone. I honestly hate characters like these
in films. This is like the Saturday morning cartoon super villain; being the
advisor, being evil, and nobody seems to notice that he is evil. Really guys?
No one else sees him plotting in the corner with his minion? Speaking of his
minion, Wicke was an impossibly stupid character. I honestly couldn’t stand to
see him on the screen; he just annoyed the crap out of me.
I'm not an expert on medieval garb, but Jack looks like
he is wearing modern clothes throughout the entire film. Jack appears to be
wearing a dusty brown jacket with a hood and jean colored shorts. That’s
something I would expect to see out on the streets today. I found myself
looking to see if he was also wearing a pair of Nike sneakers. The costumes
weren’t exactly great for everyone else either, but they at least looked like they
belonged in that era, Jack just looked like he was lost in time.
Bryan Singer promoted the crap out of the fact that some
of the giants would have multiple heads. There was only one giant that had 2
heads and the second head was mentally challenged with a speech impediment.
This head was used for comic relief. Do I really need to go into grand detail
as to why this was a horrendous move on their part and should never have been a
part of the film in the first place? I thought not, moving on.
Some of the acting was extensively hammed up. These
people are facing incredibly life threatening events, and they are acting as if
this is a whimsical day at the park. I’m all for being lighthearted but this is
borderline ridiculousness. It didn’t help that the make-up and costumes made
everybody looked poofed up for the ball.
The
Positive
There were multiple moments when I didn't know which
direction the film was going to go in. Many of the main characters are very
suddenly and violently killed off throughout the film. I had expected some of
these characters to survive to the end of the film, but they just kept killing
them off. This killing spree leads to a really neat level of shock and suspense
for the film. I honestly couldn’t tell you which characters were going to
survive to the end of the film and so I actually felt a sense of worry for the
characters I was watching.
The giants were fantastically well done. I have found
that overly large CGI characters have a tendency to appear under-detailed or do
not mesh well with the world they are placed in, but I was really surprised to
find these character models fully rendered and fleshed out. The giants held a
very looming presence on the screen the entire film. I kind of wish we had
gotten to see more of them become main characters, only a few of them had big
parts with the majority of them just taking up the background.
In
Conclusion
This wasn’t a particularly bad re-telling of the old
fairy tale, but it wasn’t particularly good either. The lighthearted nature of
the film felt really uneven with the horrific events that were occurring
onscreen. I kind of wish they had taken themselves more seriously instead of
making a mediocre comedy action flick. 3 out of 5.
don't talk about my Wickey poo like that you titty licking baboon!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I seem to like that little guy. I think he's cute!!!!!!!!! and I have a lot of pictures of him from the movie. he is not stupid, but I know who is ..... and it's YOU!! and he was not evil that was Roderick that was forcing him to cut that rope.i did not like you calling him stupid and I bet he fells the same way about you. you dirty ass prick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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