So Jack is about the story of a person called Jack, who's an ordinary farm boy who gets involved with a princess, going to the land of the giants, saving the princess, escaping with her and eventually defeating all the giants when they come down to the mortal realm. Sounds fairly normal right? Except it somehow even manages to fail even that simple premise.
When we're first introduced to Jack in his teenage years, he's wearing a hoodie. Yes. A hoodie in medieval england. Yes, apparently chavs existed way back then too. And then later on, when he's king and reading bedtime stories to his children on their bed, he's wearing a leather jacket. At bedtime. While reading stories to his children. Wtf is with his fashion sense?
So yes, Jack. I don't much care for him. He never really develops as a character in the entire film but to be honest, NONE of the characters do. Most of their characters can simply be reduced to 3 words
Jack - Lucky peasant farmboy
Princess - Princess wants adventure
King- Stern authoritative father
Bodyguard - Bodyguard
Villain - Power-hungry villain
Giants - We eat humans
There. We have the basis of all the characters in Jack the Giant Slayer -_-. As if the characterisation wasn't bad enough, the writing and acting are pretty horrible too. It's as if the actors just said 'fuck it, this script's crap' and then just put on whatever obligatory acting they had to and left with all their pay. It was really painful to watch at some points, especially the 'romance' between the two leads.
There are so many moments in the film where you get the feeling the writer wanted the scene to go a certain way but had no idea how to do so and then just forced it there in the most ham-fisted way ever. Like the scene with the giant falling off the land in the sky. He falls off because a bee flies near him and he takes a step backward; oh so conveniently near the edge of the land, and falls off. This alerts the human kingdoms that yes, Giants do exist.
Plus the whole Giants in the sky part didn't make sense really. Assuming the giants do exist and feel hungry, they seem to survive on remarkably little food for such a large organic being. 3 human-sized pigs-in-a-blanket were supposed to feed an army of 60-70 giants? Furthermore, why are all their livestock the same size as the human ones? Shouldn't they actually have a viable eco-system considering they live in such verdant environments? I would assume the Giants are immortal and never reproduce simply because there are no female giants at all. And I have no idea why both times, the person who has had the crown never ordered the Giants to go kill themselves. Why? They've proven they're malicious and they really really want to kill humans without any reason or provocation. Instead, humanity keeps ordering them to go back to their land and leave them alone. How irresponsible is that?
In the end, my biggest gripe about the film was this. Based on the trailers, I was expecting a huge giant-human battle. Kind of like how I was expecting Aliens VS Predators in AVP. Instead, what I got was an hour and a half long of exposition, exploration and running away and then maybe 20 minutes of fighting. Seriously? The pay off is way too little for the buildup. Especially since the exposition consisted of bad writing and bad acting I had to sit through.
In the end, I'd say 'Do not watch this film. It is Garbage'.
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