½*/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras D
starring Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor
screenplay by Darren Lemke and Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney
directed by Bryan Singer
by Walter Chaw There's an interesting moment early on in
Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer, but don't get used to it. It's a
cross-cut sequence wherein peasant Jack (Nicholas Hoult) and princess Isabelle
(absolutely adorable Eleanor Tomlinson) reveal they're both products of neglect
and the devastation of a parent lost too young. This unites them in strife
and turmoil (in the way that wasn't properly addressed by the Mako/Raleigh
team-up in Pacific Rim) to (likewise) battle monsters of the theoretical
Id (Oedipus is the first guess, Electra the second), here literal giants
in a cloud-shrouded kingdom, accessed by a priapic growth sprouting in the dead
of night. It's the only time the film identifiably belongs to Bryan Singer, a maker of large films nonetheless invested
in personal, intimate deconstructions. People in my world are neatly divided
between the ones who didn't like Singer's Superman Returns and the ones who are
right. I want to believe that movie is the reason why Stanley Tucci, Ewan
McGregor, and Ian McShane said "yes" to Jack the Giant Slayer, and not because Tucci,
McGregor, and McShane are already just filthy impulses cashing paychecks à la
1980s Michael Caine.
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![Jack the Giant Slayer [Blu-ray + dvd]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61A0U4p-YGL._SL500_QL70_ML2_.jpg)
Jack the Giant Slayer has about it the reek of desperation. Unprotected by anything like a
decent script, it's also un-bolstered by anything like an inspired concept. It
seems our Jack gets magic beans, grows them, climbs a sky-high beanstalk to save
the beautiful princess, and encounters a land of giants led by a two-headed
freak giant. From a director who embraces difference, that bit of sideshow is the cruellest blow. To flesh out the running time (and the picture never feels
like it's doing anything but), add Tucci as a scheming nobleman who, failing to
violate our fair Isabelle, settles for donning an ancient crown (Hellboy
II) that makes him the king of the giants. He wants to be that, see, so he
can overthrow good ki…you know what? I can't talk about this movie anymore.
Sufficed to say, it all culminates in a castle siege, lots of really
questionable CGI, and with Jack and Isabelle getting hitched in a conclusion so
desultory and lazy-feeling that the lingering sensation is a kind of resentment
that whatever investment you placed into not walking out of the damned
thing was not returned by anyone involved with the movie proper.
It's awful, yes, and weirdly
impersonal–to the degree that it raises the question of motivation: What is
it that Singer is atoning for, still? Superman Returns? Valkyrie? Was
this the price he had to pay to earn back entry into the X-Men franchise?
It's bad enough, in other words, to inspire conspiracy theories as to how
someone like Singer, whose unmade concept for a Superman Returns sequel
remains for me the thing I would fund were I to win the Powerball, could have
fallen so impossibly low. It's bad enough, unfortunately, to prompt a
reassessment of his previous work; bad enough that I was desperate to discover
in there, buried like a bit of treasure under a mountain of bullshit, a hint that
Singer was winking, was bitter, was anything. Alas, I don't think Jack the
Giant Slayer is this director's North by Northwest: the
"fun" one masking the middle finger, doomed to be misunderstood and
greasy enough to lubricate the rest of a career spent doing the sort of
personal films that brought him to this point. When you make a movie this awful,
with no hint of useful self-awareness, you're not proving a point–you're
giving up.
THE BLU-RAY DISC
Lucky for Warner Bros., idiots like Shaun Oldfield are a thing and such things
provide blurbs for Blu-ray/DVD combo-pack slipcovers, such as, "Giant fun
for the whole family!" When cultural anthropologists spare a couple
of minutes a few decades from now for what happened to the craft of film criticism, a
paragraph or two should be devoted to guys like Oldfield, who reduced conversations
with art to bad puns in the questionable pursuit of seeing their name
attached to garbage like this. The 2.40:1, 1080p transfer is a brilliant rendering of a slick digital Renaissance fair–but, robbed of nuance, Singer turns out to be a rather
pedestrian framer, something complicated by the intention all along of
retrofitting this debacle into the almost-never-a-good-idea 3-D format.
Reviewing the 2-D presentation sees it as very much a big-budget movie from the
twenty-teens, and not anything more than that. Blacks are crisp black, whites are crisp white,
and that fake beanstalk is profoundly green. Also fake.
The audio mix is obnoxiously well-represented by the accompanying 5.1 DTS-HD MA track, with sound effects avalanching in from
all directions. The castle siege, in particular, crackles with destruction
and tree-born mayhem; if you want a showpiece, cue up the bit where the bean
takes root in someone's stomach and…oh, nevermind. Jesus. Deleted Scenes
(8 mins., HD) and a short gag reel (3 mins., HD) are essentially bits of adorable young
British people flirting and revealing that they developed nicknames for each other based on their costumes. I would have thought of something else to call
Tomlinson in her gold miniskirt of chain mail besides "C-3PO," but that's why I'm no longer welcome in the state of Missouri. Aimed at children and greenscreen fetishists, "Become a
Giant Slayer" (40 mins., HD) is a collection of behind-the-scenes featurettes accessible through an irritating remote-control
"game" that reminds me a lot of the crap that SEGA tried to foist on
their SEGA CD system before it disappeared in a puff of Dana Plato. Poor Hoult
is roped into introducing the gimmick and looks rightly embarrassed–though not
as embarrassed as Singer, who barely shows his face throughout the entire
ordeal. Blu-ray 3D version sold separately.
I love your work, Walter, but the taste fascism is getting a little tiresome, even in jest. I’m going to go ahead and make the counterargument that movies like Superman Returns, Chronicles of Riddick, and Kick-Ass actually DO suck, and that the general disdain towards them is a case where popular opinion was accurate, rather than horribly benighted. Giving four-star reviews to The Master and Byzantium loses a bit of its glow when you remember that Spider-Man 3 managed the same grade…
I seriously tear up every time that I read this review. Whatever else you say about Walter’s SUPERMAN RETURNS love, he’s not going back and is, in fact, doubling down. I wish I could love something as much as this guy loves SUPERMAN RETURNS.
Though I’m not quite as into SUPERMAN RETURNS as he is, I do think it’s weird that it’s not recognized as, no question and no debate, the best Superman movie. Obviously, it’s not self-evident that it sucks. Popular opinion, as I understand it, rejected the movie because it was a sequel to a film that never really existed (a novel idea that is nonetheless employed not just to do something different, the implicit justification for this can be found in Walter’s review) and because it is melancholy. I see neither as intelligent reasons to reject the movie or to question the masterpiece status Walter assigned it. That’s not to say that you can’t critique his praise of it, just that so far the most I’ve seen is that SUPERMAN RETURNS sucks and Walt needs to just lay down the opium pipe for a while because the dude is losing it.
An intelligent rebuttal, for my money, would have to acknowledge that the film isn’t really about comic books or superheroes but about coming to terms with our disillusionment toward our fathers and by extension God and about the difficulty of becoming a man and disappointing our own sons by being fragile and human. If you don’t think those issues are best served by a tentpole big-budget Superman movie, well you are wrong. I don’t know what a better vehicle would be.
JACK THE GIANT SLAYER does, in fact, suck major monkey balls by the way. Telling that nobody is complaining about this review or venturing that it succeeds where SUPERMAN RETURNS failed. Indeed, I didn’t know that Bryan Singer directed it until the end credits.
Fair points all. I guess I felt this more strongly as this review comes hot on the heels of the new Riddick, which featured an almost identical sentiment, to the effect that fans of tCoR are somehow “in the know.” I’m aware the tone is half-joking, at once an earnest opinion and an acknowledgement that the opinion really is just an opinion and not the word of god.
This all gets a bit murkier in light of some of Walter’s other posts, where he actually does insist that there are Right and Wrong approaches to art, and not everyone is entitled to their opinion. I’m not even sure he’s wrong there; I just enjoy criticism and art as a dialogue rather than a monologue, much less a rant.
In the interest of fairness, a few reasons why Superman Returns was terrible: it was 2.5 hours long but felt like at least 48 more than that; it fudges its own already-silly mythology whenever it feels like it (Kryptonie shard brings him to his knees, Kryptonite island, he can bench-press it); it’s not a sequel so much as a rapturous ode to two films that were terrible to begin with; most noxiously, it’s yet another of the thousand or so films that, lacking a brain or creative spark of its own, decides to just go ahead and make its hero Jesus, because hey, what else is there?
Chronicles of Riddick likewise shot itself in the head in attempting to deify its hero, but at the very least, you get the sense that Vin and his buddies are happier to see Riddick as Lucifer rather than Christ the Redeemer.
Kick-Ass avoided this problem, but was horrible by dint of being horrible, and by having Mark Millar’s name attached to it. I apologize if that last sentence is redundant.
Finally, I have to question your no questions claim that Superman Returns is handily the best Superman movie. I’m depressed to say that Man of Steel holds that title, despite also being, frankly, terrible. I find the whole smirking Super-cuckold shit from Returns vastly more creepy than the desperate neck-snapping at the end of MoS.
So far Superman features are 0 for 6, so I’m beginning to think the problems might be fundamental to the character.
Not sure where the bit about the opium pipe came from.
So in summation, here are the reasons that SUPERMAN RETURNS is “terrible”:
1. It’s too long and too slow.- Well, I feel that a shorter and quicker-paced SUPERMAN RETURNS would not carry as much weight.
2. It’s inconsistent with its own mythology- I’ll give you that, I guess, since I don’t really know what you are talking about it. Inconsistency within its own mythology fosters awareness of artifice that threatens what this Superman is.
3. It’s an ode to two movies that were awful.- In interest of full disclosure, I have not seen SUPERMAN 2. I am not a fan of SUPERMAN 1 though or at least it made very little impact on me, and the movie works for me as a sequel to a mostly non-existent original. Nostalgic for something that’s not exactly there? Maybe it helps to not have that much knowledge going in so you don’t make those associations?
4. The association of Superman with Jesus shows a lack of creativity and a brain- For much of the Western world, Jesus Christ is the principle anthropomorphic deity. While the connection is obvious, I think that we cannot help but make it in a Superman movie with the serious aspirations of SUPERMAN RETURNS. A Superman movie without a Christ allusion would risk degenerating into self-aware kitsch.
Setting aside the fact that the summation you offer is longer than what you’re summarizing:
1. I don’t even think the movie needed to be shorter – Nolan’s Bat flicks are of comparable length and play like gangbusters. It’s the glacial pacing. In Superman Returns, I was zoning out by the time Luthor blew up his train set.
2. I’m not sure what was obscure about my point; just that if you make up rules for your fantasy, don’t change them midstream. Don’t say your vampires can be killed by sunlight then have them strolling around at high noon. Don’t say that the green stuff can kill Superman then have him juggling with it. This has nothing to do with an awareness of artificiality. It’s just plain old bad writing.
3. I’ll actually back off this one, since it’s truly subjective on my part. Still, whether the first two films were classics or garbage, a quarter of a billion dollars is a hell of a lot to spend on a love letter to ANY film. At the very least, it needs to be something besides said love letter, and I don’t think Returns ever adds that second dimension, let alone a third.
4. I know who Jesus is, thanks, Alex. Saying that the reference has to be there because everyone expects it to be there doesn’t seem a little circular, and a Christ reference is no more necessary to a Superman film, than say, The Hobbit. I wonder what the two skinny Jewish kids would think if they learned that people had to view their cartoon as a Passion Play before anyone would take it seriously.
I feel like we’ve spent a tremendous amount of time arguing about a film that was barely worth watching to begin with. My original point was simply that, if you’re going to act as the arbiter of taste, your tastes better be immaculate, and that’s not always the case with Walter (or anybody else, to be fair). If, as Walter suggests, I were to win the Powerball and spend it all on a movie, I can think of a thousand great personal projects, from a director’s cut of The Thief and the Cobbler to a no-strings-attached rendition of Blood Meridian. Somehow I wouldn’t think Warner Bros. and DC need the money to make yet another swing-and-a-miss at Superman. It’s just a dumb thing to say.
Worth reiterating, after all this, that I’m still a big fan of the site.