JACK THE GIANT SLAYER (2013)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical. sociological*

A minor point: kudos to the unknown Warner Brothers executive who decided not to call this film JACK THE GIANT KILLER, thus creating needless confusion with the 1960s movie of that title. Additionally, the elision of references to the British "Giant Killer" folktales is appropriate because SLAYER is a heroic reworking of the more familiar "Jack and the Beanstalk" fable.

The only previous time I watched this Bryan Singer film, I thought of it as just another big-budget action-epic. But on re-examination I see several interesting complexities in the script, originally submitted by Darren Lemke and reportedly finessed by Christopher McQuarrie, a writer who had collaborated with Singer three previous times before SLAYER. In contrast to many scripts based on fairy tales, the Lemke-McQuarrie narrative takes loose folktale motifs and builds on them with an almost Tolkienian methodology.

A prologue establishes that the famous "beans" of the beanstalk-tale weren't just some throwaway magical dingus with no history. Instead, ancient mystics in the kingdom of Cloister (not the best name) wanted to bring forth titanic beanstalks in order to ascend to Heaven. But between Heaven and Earth was the cloudy domain of Gantua (yeah, another bad name), which is inhabited by nothing but ugly male giants. When the monk-created beanstalks reach Gantua, the giants use the stalks to descend to Earth and to begin a reign of terror, eating people and stealing their treasure (though the latter crime never becomes a big element in the film). King Eirik orders his magicians to create a mystic crown that can bind the giants and force them to return to Gantua, and once the beanstalks are cut down, the giants can no longer "fee fi foh fum" over the blood of Englishmen. However, over strange aeons the crown is lost to humans.

But certain beans survive, even several generations later, when Eirik's descendant King Brahmwell (Ian MacShane) rules Cloister. Brahwell plans to marry his restless daughter Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) off to a local lord, Roderick (Stanley Tucci). By chance farm-boy Jack (Nicholas Hoult) has a meet-cute with Isabelle, but in the end Jack has to trudge back to his farmhouse, though he's gained some magical beans in a trade. Jack's only relative, a cranky uncle, tosses them away, though this time the legumes end up under the floorboards of the farmhouse.

Restless Isabelle ends up at Jack's house, just wanting to talk to another young guy before she's off the market. A rainstorm activates the beans, and a mammoth beanstalk erupts from the earth, carrying the whole house (without Jack in it) up to the kingdom of Gantua. Isabelle is duly captured by the giants, though she wanders away from the site of the beanstalk, so that the titans don't know precisely where it links up with their realm. When the king finds out about his daughter's fate, he sends a group of knights up the stalk, led by Elmont (Ewan McGregor) and Lord Roderick. Jack is allowed to go along. But Brahmwell knows that he can't leave the beanstalk in place very long, lest the giants repeat their earlier invasion.

Thus Jack's trip to the giant's world is never about plundering treasure-troves, but about the joint task of rescuing the king's daughter and then severing the connection between giant and human domains. Despite his humble nature Jack proves himself a hero, though I'd call him the "deathblow" type because. being dwarfed by the colossi, he can't fight the giants directly and instead must find vulnerable points to strike at. His single-handed slaying of a giant cook, who's preparing to make Elmont into a hors d'oeuvres, is a strong heroic scene, though not the only one. The mission is complicated by the fact that Roderick, the dastard who plans to marry fair Isabelle, has possession of the lost mystic crown. For a time Roderick takes control of the giants, planning to descend with them and to take control of the entire world, no matter how many people get eaten. Roderick isn't a great villain, but he does supply secondary hero Elmont someone to kill, though.

Despite all human efforts, a horde of giants are able to invade Earth and to attack the castle of Brahmwell. In contrast with the majority of FX-blockbusters, the script for SLAYER is scrupulous about what the villains can do, so that the colossi don't simply pull useful powers out of nowhere. The attack on the castle is pleasingly bloody and Jack's final encounter with the giants' general ends up giving him the means to defeat the horde and to secure his relationship with Isabelle.

A lot of folktales depict valiant commoners getting the chance to marry royal princesses, but the script for SLAYER gives the fantasy a bit more groundedness, thanks to a development by which Jack does become a sort of "ruler." There's not much McGregor and Tucci can do with their simple "hero" and "villain" roles respectively.But there's a nice chemistry not just between Hoult and Tomlinson, but between each of them and Eleanor's father. The giants, produced in part through motion-capture, are consistently grotesque and are at their best whenever they're expressing their fervent desires to chow down on human beings. Bill Nighy voices the dominant cranium of the two-headed titan Fallon, and on the whole I'd have to say that I've never seen another fantasy-film translate the fear-appeal of giants as well as SLAYER does. Unfortunately, the film experienced bad box office, and Bryan Singer's spirited contribution to the genre of archaic fantasy-films has been largely overlooked.