I’ve lost count of how many adaptions I’ve seen of this classic tale. There is Jack the Giant Slayer, Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack the Giant Killer to name a few. I’m sure there are loads of other as well. Common for them all is that there’s a land above the cloud where giants (and other creatures) live. To get there you must climb a giant beanstalk. To get the beanstalk you need to plant the magical seeds and so on. Some of the stories tell the story from the giants point of view but most of them have th humans in focus of course. That’s only natural since that’s the way the story was written to begin with.
I think Jack the Giant Slayer tells it a bit from both sides. From the Human point of view the giants are evil and grotesque. Well, that are ugly and they want to eat the humans. Tastes good apparently. From the giants point of view the humans are tyrans since there is this mystic crown made ages ago which controls the giants. The king that wore it was called Eric the great among humans but Eric the terrible among giant. That figures don’t you think. You can easily apply that on the real world. If you’re an ally it’ll be a great king but if you’re the enemy it’s quite the opposite.
I was afraid that this would bed badly animated when I first started watching it. The film starts with flashbacks and the giant aren’t very nice made at all. But luckily this is only in these flashbacks. For the rest of the movie the creatures are very well made. The Humans are played with real live characters and it’s obvious that most of the focus have been on the giants. Not to say that any of the acting is bad, but it’s rather two-dimensional and cartoonish. But the film was obviously made from a younger audience so I guess that’s fine.
The main theme is that a princess gets caught “up there” and a bunch of soldiers climb the beanstalk to get her down. Among these are farm boy Jack. Guess who rescues the princess and becomes the hero of the story? It wasn’t hard was it? Well, I don’t suppose it’s ment to be hard. There’s only so much you can do with a story like this. I liked it for the most part. I’m a sucker for fantasy stories and I’m glad I finally got around to watch it. There’s a lot of action in it and the CGI looks really nice.
