Jack the Giant Slayer - Research Paper Example

of paper Film and Tearter studies Jack the Giant Slayer Introduction Jack the Giant Slayer is an adventure film of 2013 previously named Jack the Giant Killer. This adventure film based on fables “Jack the Bean stalker” and “Jack the Giant killer “. The director of the film is Bryan Singer and the screenplay is by Christopher McQuarrie, Darren Lemke and Dan Studney. The stars of the epic films are Evan McGregor, Ian McShane, and Nicholas Hoult. Billy Nighy, StanelyTucci and Eleanor Tomlinson are also stars in the film. The film depicts the yarn of a youthful farmhand and a princess (IMDb.com, Inc. , 2013). Style and Directing Jack is the farmhand who rescues the young princess he has fallen in love with from giants. Work on the film began as early as 2005. In 2005, Daren Lemke hatched the idea of the film and development of the film began. In January 2009, Caruso as the director started to work on the film, however on September that year Singer took Caruso’s place. Principal photography of the film begun in Norfolk, Somerset and Gloucestershire in April 2011, all these locations are in England. The premiere of the film was on 26 February 2013. Storytelling   The power of storytelling in the film, whereby the film depicts a bedtime story that giants wandered about England consuming and crushing anyone on their way. After recurring wars between human beings and the giants, a permanent solution hatched. This solution was a powerful crown that possessed magic. The wearer of this crown who was King Eric could control and tame the giants. King Erik sent away the giants back to their homeland of Gargantua. After sometime, King Erik died and he is buried together with beanstalks and the magical crown. Time passes and the legend of King Erik is becomes a narration to children Isabelle the princess and Jack a peasant as a bedtime story. Both Isabelle and Jack grow to become young attractive youths. While Isabelle runs from a forced marriage to Lord Roderick, she bumps into Jack and they develop a bond to each other. While Isabelle is with Jack at his place, suddenly a magic bean plants itself and grows to take Isabelle to the clouds, to Gargantua where she remains stranded.   If one watches the TV spots and trailers of Jack the Giant slayer, they will discover that the marketing is quite poor relative to the movie. The action sequence is not as creative and flowing as the legend itself. Bryan Singer the director of the movie seems more concerned with old traditional story telling than the targeted audience.   The movie has gently tried to twist the original and much familiar story. Isabelle and Jack both have a good childhood since they have parents who read for them. The movie depicts the importance of storytelling in child upbringing and development. Jack the Giant Slayer, as most fables are full of good life lessons. Life lessons come in the stories of scary villains, dangerous adventures, villains and courageous heroes who challenge them. Fairy tells highlight virtues of self-sacrifice and bravery. Storytelling shows the evils of selfishness, jealousy and greed. The mother of the princess uses storytelling to motivate her young daughter to emulate the heroes in the fairy tells and to practice good things in the world.  We can attribute Jacks attitude to the stories he grew up listening. For instance, his heroism and bravery is because he emulates the heroes in the stories.  Acting Acting is not impressive. The actors are Nicholas Hoult acting as Jack the farmhand, Eleanor Tomlinson acting as Isabelle the youthful princess (Goodykoontz& Jacobs, 2011). Other actors are Stanley Tucci acting as Lord Roderick the Kings adviser, Ian McShane acting as King the princess father and Billy Nighy as Fallon the leader of the giants. The acting is poor, Nicholas Hoult who is acting as Jack the peasant has an odd haircut and he is just an average actor. Elenor Tomlinson as Isabelle the princess is very bland and not particular captivating or useful in many ways. Ewan McGregor kept doing his Jedi thing all the time in the movie until it becomes monotonous and boring. Tucci who was acting as Lord Roderick the Kings adviser was the only one who displayed a reliable performance. Background music The background music for this film is known as the score. This music was composed by John Ottoman and in an exclusive interview with Times magazine he was quoted saying that” I just wanted to try to make the score timeless in terms of just good old fashioned movie adventures as opposed to something that is categorized into a certain time or period, doing stuff that was too fairy tale-like or obvious” (Goodykoontz, 2011). The music does not only blend in with the nature of the movie but also blends in with the theme of the film thereby making it blend with the whole film. Cinematography Cinematography is poor The cinematography is not impressive; the view of the Kings castle from the clouds is out of place. The effects are poor; consider superhuman speed across the countryside. This poor motion technology seems borrowed from the films “A Christmas Carol” and “The Polar Express”. The pieces of beanstalks used in the film look plastic and the green screen looks sham. The film is overwhelmed by impersonal story digital effects and bland. Most of the films 195 million dollars went on lavish effects. The 3-D system used in the movie is good but not necessary. Lighting Contrary to expectations, the film was shot using natural lighting. Most directors expected that the director would use strong lighting but the director wanted a strong background and he felt that using natural light would be much better and it turned out to be the best. As the film is an epic, natural light blends perfect with the themes of the movie and this is a major boost for the movie. Natural light makes the film look brighter and hence boosts the experience of watching the movie. Sound and Editing The film starts with a lengthy assault of aural and visual noise and a computer produced clumsy imagery. This makes the movie feel like a video game, feelings not fitting a fairy tell about agriculture gone wrong. Imposing scale of the giants and the beanstalks may terrify children after watching the trailer of the film. The humans in the movie seem artificial and computer generated. The digital work to the Giants is substandard. The fart jokes and bloodless violence shows that the audience for the film is children. Despite this fact, the movie has a PG rating of 13.   Act one of the movie is too talky especially to younger viewers that the film intends to captivate.  In act two, which is Gargantua is dramatic but relies too much on humor. Act 3 is too clumsy that one thinks that Hoults return to firma is the end of the movie. In this act, also, fantasy loosens and it heavily mimics Lord of the Rings. The whole film has awkward visuals and it is very predictable (Arnheim 1997). In the fable, Jack outsmarts a giant and meets his wife, coming from the sky with wealth and no interests in love since Jack is still a child. However, in the movie the giants are the ones coming from the sky, all of them are male. It is disgusting when the giant cook picks the nose and he adds it in the pigs he is cooking. The film is overlong taking a whole 114 minutes (Pramaggior 2005). The sound track of Jack the Giant slayer truly mimics the one for Lord of the Rings. The effects in opening of the movie look like play station three graphics. Bryan stinger the director of the film is wittingly trying to incorporate the motion technology he used on X-men which results in a total cliche.     The movie is boring since it religiously follows the beanstalk and Jack. The giant kills as depicted in the film are not great as one expects. The movie is PG-13 while it contains gruesome scenes for a 13-year-old child. For instance, the scene whereby human beings are step upon by giants and the word “bastard “is yelled in the film, this is inappropriate (Bergan 2007). The film denies the talented characters the required time to show properly evil and good. Jack the peasant boy and Isabelle the princess portray the same character in the entire movie. The only difference between Jack and the princess is that Jack is from a poor background and the princess comes from a wealthy one. All the characters in the movie seem to be having a good time. This sort of having fun by the cast is very uncommon in a movie driven by special effects like this one (Verevis 2005). Elmont involvement in all the supposedly ridiculous and hilarious situations is quite boring. The directors attempt to make a more family viewing has cost the quality of the film a lot. For instance, most of the violent parts of the movie are behind the scenes. Elmont eventually becomes a cliche character despite starting of as smart soldier. The gap between Lord Roderick’s teeth is overly in exaggeration in the movie. The giants seem not to pose the threat expected to humans. The only thing the giants are doing in the fight against humans is carelessly throwing trees and huge bells. Consider the scene where humans inside the fort are trying to keep the giants at bay a stalemate occurs. Humans are trying to close a drawbridge to prevent the giants from entering the fort. As humans try hard to close, the giants also struggle in the same fashion as humans. A giant should be strong enough and big enough to overpower 50 men. The film is plain and seems to capitalize on the movies “Snow white “and “Alice in Wonderland “.  The entire movie fails since it concentrates so much on these, one dimensional and uninteresting giant. The giants in movie are emaciated, grimy and too dirty for children to watch. The CG I in the film is overwhelmingly awful. The horrible 10 minute animated opening of the movie makes it somehow not worth watching. The animation in the movie is sloppy and grim.    Impact of the film on Society The film is not suitable for family viewing. Consider the scene where the men are en-route to Gantua, climbing the giant beanstalk. All the men tied together and linked with one rope, when one man slips the others remain dangling in the air. One man sadistically cuts the rope and the other men fall to their deaths. This is a gruesome scene not suitable for children. Th giants feeding on and eating humans, putting the characters in the mouth and a limb part remaining in their hands. Jack sees a giant biting a lamb while he is struggling to breath from under water.   Many scenes in the feeling can be scary and upsetting to younger viewers (Kauffmann, Stanley, & Wood, Michael 2005). Younger viewers can be very scared considering the degree aggressiveness and ugliness of the giants. For instance, there is a scene whereby a particular giant comes so near to the camera that he covers the entire shot. The giant leader has a mutated head that makes guttural sounds, this can very scary especially in 3D. One specific disturbing scene is whereby the giant cook stabs the pigs he is about to cook with a human. This scene is in the official film trailer. The giants towards the end of the film graphically kill characters. There is a gory scene where the leader of the giants has his heads squeezed so had by the beanstalks that his eyeballs pop out of their sockets. There is a scene of emotional distress, whereby a giant bites one character and left to dies, humans who loved him mourn him. The film also has a fear factor, the giants are too relentless aggressive and scary.  This movie has some sexual content not suitable for children. For instance the scene Isabelle the princess first meets Jack the peasant. The princess is harassed by threatening men who seem to be sexually attracted to her. One of these threatening men calls the princess ‘pretty’. The peasant boy who is in the market to sell his horse sees the commotion and intervenes. Jack tells intervention quickly removes the threat. There is also a sexual image in the film. The image is that of a harp carved into a seemingly topless woman. Bad language is present in the film, numerous curse words are occasionally uttered about by character in the movie. There is presence of upsetting dialogue. For instance while Jack is trying to rescue the princess he overhears the giants joking and laughing on how thy enjoy feeding on humans.  Conclusion In general, the film is reasonably fun to watch and enthusiastically acted. Nevertheless Jack the Giant slayer is overwhelmed by digital effects and an impersonal bland narration. The use of natural light has brought in the theme of nature. It makes the movie blend with environment and provides a perfect match that is crucial to the movie. The score has made the sound of the movie perfect. It creates the mood of the movie and creates suspense. Being an epic story the style of the movie is perfect and blends with the story telling. Acting is not impressive. Actors Nicholas Hoult acting as Jack the farmhand, Eleanor Tomlinson acting as Isabelle the youthful princess are not creative at all. In general, the film is good and the overall style blends in. References Arnheim, R. (1997). Film essays and criticism. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press. Goodykoontz, B., & Jacobs, C. P. (2011).Film: From Watching to Seeing. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. IMDb.com, Inc. . (2013). Jack the Giant Slayer . Retrieved June 11, 2013, from IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1351685/ Kauffmann, Stanley, & Wood, Michael. (2005). Regarding Film: Criticism And Comment. PajPubn.Bergan, R. (2007). Film. New York: DK Verevis, C. (2005). Film remakes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Geuens, J.-P.(2000). Film production theory. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press. Pramaggiore, M., & Wallis, T. (2005).Film: A critical introduction.London: Laurence King. Read More