Jack the Giant Slayer - or, They Don't Know Jack About Originality
So I saw Jack the Giant Slayer, and upon Wikipedia am disappointed to find it may not have been intended to be a parody or at the very least, an intentional tropefest. I was willing to give it that.
The premise of Jack the Giant Slayer is that assistant Pig Keeper Taran farmhand Jack and Princess Eilonwy Isabelle are both stuck in their positions, wanting more out of life. Isabel gets kidnapped by a bean stock, and Jack must rescue her.
Jack the Giant Slayer is one of those movies that actually has the right idea. I generally like retellings, although the idea of retelling of a popular children's tale really isn't as original as people would like to believe (a lot of Shakespeare's plays are versions of older stories), but still, the retelling element is sometimes what makes it more compelling. We like to imagine that Snow White might have been kind of a badass, that the Wicked Witch of the West may not have been born wicked, and that even Ogres may be okay. It's also fun to use those stories in a way that is appealing to the current audience. And sometimes it's fun to borrow from a lot of different texts, which I do think was at least partially intentional.
The problem is that JtGS was never clear on whether or not they were trying to be derivative, and thus everything seemed trite and cliche. I'm pretty sure I've seen every other scene before, and not because of fairy tales. It didn't feel remotely original. And that's the problem with the story functioning as a retelling - if it's a retelling, it needs to be original. There were no twists on fairy tales - they were just things you find in every fairy tale and fantasy movie. The same sorts of gimmicks, the same sorts of twists, the same line, the same humor... I didn't get anything new from it. As soon as we met Isabelle, I knew she was going to be the love interest. I knew one of the giants was going to be stabbed by surprise, look shocked, and then drop dead. What makes adaptations interesting is when there's more new twists. At one point the giants call former hero Erik the Great "Erik the Terrible", and I was hoping maybe we'd get some insight there. Was he perhaps not as "Great" as people thought? But the movie never went anywhere else with that, so I guess the giants just hated that they lost to him. Which I guess is still fair. If you're a giant.
There were a few good twists, don't get me wrong - and they were what made the movie worth spending money on.. I enjoyed those. And the cliches had a place here and there - you can't really do a hero story without invoking most hero tropes, for starters. The hero always has to be somewhat of a nobody (at least seemingly) who rises up and... just google Joseph Campbell. The movie also had Ewan McGregor, whose Elmont completely stole the show and really ought to have been the title character. And if nothing else, some of the cliches were so blatant you almost had to like them just for being.
In short, Jack the Giant Slayer probably is trying to capitalize off of other retellings, and unfortunately does it poorly. Still, it's tolerable, so if you've got extra cash to spend, nothing to do and like doing things ironically... check it out.
The premise of Jack the Giant Slayer is that assistant Pig Keeper Taran farmhand Jack and Princess Eilonwy Isabelle are both stuck in their positions, wanting more out of life. Isabel gets kidnapped by a bean stock, and Jack must rescue her.
Jack the Giant Slayer is one of those movies that actually has the right idea. I generally like retellings, although the idea of retelling of a popular children's tale really isn't as original as people would like to believe (a lot of Shakespeare's plays are versions of older stories), but still, the retelling element is sometimes what makes it more compelling. We like to imagine that Snow White might have been kind of a badass, that the Wicked Witch of the West may not have been born wicked, and that even Ogres may be okay. It's also fun to use those stories in a way that is appealing to the current audience. And sometimes it's fun to borrow from a lot of different texts, which I do think was at least partially intentional.
The problem is that JtGS was never clear on whether or not they were trying to be derivative, and thus everything seemed trite and cliche. I'm pretty sure I've seen every other scene before, and not because of fairy tales. It didn't feel remotely original. And that's the problem with the story functioning as a retelling - if it's a retelling, it needs to be original. There were no twists on fairy tales - they were just things you find in every fairy tale and fantasy movie. The same sorts of gimmicks, the same sorts of twists, the same line, the same humor... I didn't get anything new from it. As soon as we met Isabelle, I knew she was going to be the love interest. I knew one of the giants was going to be stabbed by surprise, look shocked, and then drop dead. What makes adaptations interesting is when there's more new twists. At one point the giants call former hero Erik the Great "Erik the Terrible", and I was hoping maybe we'd get some insight there. Was he perhaps not as "Great" as people thought? But the movie never went anywhere else with that, so I guess the giants just hated that they lost to him. Which I guess is still fair. If you're a giant.
There were a few good twists, don't get me wrong - and they were what made the movie worth spending money on.. I enjoyed those. And the cliches had a place here and there - you can't really do a hero story without invoking most hero tropes, for starters. The hero always has to be somewhat of a nobody (at least seemingly) who rises up and... just google Joseph Campbell. The movie also had Ewan McGregor, whose Elmont completely stole the show and really ought to have been the title character. And if nothing else, some of the cliches were so blatant you almost had to like them just for being.
In short, Jack the Giant Slayer probably is trying to capitalize off of other retellings, and unfortunately does it poorly. Still, it's tolerable, so if you've got extra cash to spend, nothing to do and like doing things ironically... check it out.