Jack The Giant Killer

Next year will see many of those Alice In Wonderland’s money-inspired, dark fairy-tale reimaginings we’ve been hearing so much about arrive one after the other (and in the case of the two Snow White movies, one in the looming shadow of the other). And so here’s another one, this time a mash-up of the Jack And The Beanstalk legend with the slightly gorier Jack The Giant Killer fairy tale, laced with 3-D things in your face and plenty of saturated grime. As the preview notes, X-Men director Bryan Singer is behind the camera (reuniting with his Usual Suspects/Valkyrie screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie) with X-Men: First Class star Nicholas Hoult in front as the pale, disconcertingly lippy farmhand who gets hold of some magic beans and—ignoring their vendor’s warnings, plus the lessons of Gremlins and packages of dinosaur-shaped sponges—gets them wet. Then: Beanstalk, kidnapping of conveniently placed princess, cat reaction shot, etc., until Jack unwittingly sets off a war between man- and giant-kind. Stanley Tucci and Ewan McGregor are in there somewhere too, though good luck spotting them amid the cacophony of catapults, flaming trees, and close-ups of giant feet. (You can see these things in HD here.)