Jack the Giant Slayer - Film

Running with the same theme as Snow White and the Huntsman, Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Jack the Giant Slayer is the retelling of the classic fairytale, Jack and the Beanstalk. But don't expect talking harps and golden egg-laying geese, director Bryan Singer has done away with those and has replaced them with a princess and a team of guards.

Nicholas Hoult is yet again in the spotlight as the protagonist, Jack. You may have seen him recently in Warm Bodies, which satirised zombie films and Shakespearean tragedies to great acclaim. Either way, in both this film and the last, it was Nicholas Hoult that moulded the story into something really worth watching. Jack was not the idiotic farm boy in the story that we all know. Now he is a fairly lovestruck boy who, despite his fears, shows great courage. I think most people will enjoy the fact that he is no longer a thief and that he fights for not only the girl he loves, but for  the kingdom of Cloister as well.

The cast is utterly star-studded. This usually makes for either a great film or a really bad one. You will spot the likes of Ewan McGregor (who was actually my favourite actor in this film, his character was so likable and noble), Ian McShane, Stanley Tucci and Warwick Davis Even the vocal talents of Bill Nighy can be heard (remember him as Davy Jones in Pirates of the Carribean? Just stick that voice on a giant and leave out the strange snarly noises). Perhaps it was lucky that it wasn't filled with the biggest names, and that for the most part, the main characters were fairly unknown actors. I find that quite often having too many big names all competing can make the acting seem very shoddy.

The storyline is perfect. It had a great blend of action, romance and adventure, all set in a beautiful and sometimes surreal landscape. The costumes were well-designed and looked wonderful on the actors. The giants were exactly how you would expect them to be; humanoid but ugly, and very cannibalistic. A quick warning though on some of the effects. Children and adults may find them gruesome. There is a fair bit of death and destruction, but despite that the film has a surprising 12A rating.

The pure Britishness of the film cannot be denied; British actors, British story (did you know that originally Jack and the Beanstalk was set during the times of King Arthur and that he met him on his journey? No? I didn't either). I love that Bryan Singer (who, incidentally, is American) has picked up on this and done it justice.

This film is possibly more for children and teenagers than adults, but it is still good fun and I would recommend a watch at least once. Anyone who remembers that tale from their childhood and would like to see a nice twist on it will enjoy the story. In fact, there is a rather large twist at the end, where it all gets rather real. I am still unsure on whether I like it that way or not. But enough about that. I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise.

Four out of five. A solid performance on everyones part.

Warm Bodies - Isaac Marion

The film has been plastered everywhere, but how does the book compare? That's where I come in.

So for those of you who aren't that into YA fiction, or Zomromcoms, or Nicholas Hoult (who was great, by the way), Warm Bodies is Romeo and Juliet with a twist. Ever wondered what it would be like if Romeo was already dead and Juliet was the daughter of the human leader? Well, wonder no more.

The book opens nicely, with a nice description of how the zombies live, how they act, and why R (that's our Romeo) is a little different to the rest of them. Kind of like the film, but in a slightly less amusing way, we are put directly into R's mind. The first person narrative from his point of view is lovely. His thoughts and descriptions are vivid and produce wonderful images for us. The reason for his lack of words as a zombie is also nicely explained.

As always, there is more to the book than there is to the film, but here we see this in a very different way. R has a little zombie family, and the rest of the zombies are not quite as gormless and unthinking as the film suggests. They have classes for the children (macabre ones, but still, classes) and even (loosely speaking) a church. Thankfully, the Boneys were not made up, but there is a little more to them too. They are almost otherworldly beings with a faint, menacing hum emanating from them.

So, anyway, on with the book. The plot is good, it never stutters and never stops. It keeps you reading on, wondering what is going to happen. The relationship between R and Julie is not quite as obvious as it could be. I like that, as it does keep you guessing. Perry (Julie's boyfriend, who is killed by R at the start), keeps making appearances that are really interesting to read and give you more to think about. In fact, this book really makes you wonder about what happens when you die. It leaves you with philosophical questions about what happens to your soul if you were to become a zombie, or a Boney. Even the most high-brow of adults can get a kick out of this YA book.

I do feel that the ending was quite predictable in terms of what happens to R. Even the names of the parts in the book do their best in giving it away. However, it is a drastic change from the film. I don't want to give too much away, but in a way, it was a slight let-down for me about what happens to the Boneys. The climax was there, and someone dies who doesn't in the film (this part is actually really cool) but then it all kind of peters out.

Discard your preconceptions of zombies, folks. This a good read and really makes you think. Read this first, then see the film.

Three stars I'm afraid. The film just flowed better for me.

The prequel, The New Hunger, is out on Kindle now.

X-Men First Class

As you must all know by now, I rather like my superhero films. They tend to push boundaries in several ways: Special effects, concepts ranging from alien powers to radioactive spiders to genetic mutation, hot men in spandex.. Anyway, I find these films to be better than most because we find ourselves in an utterly different situation. This is no longer everyday life, it is what you make of it, and who is to say what is wrong and what is right?

The most recent X-Men film illustrates that last question perfectly. The film enables us to see everyones point of view; The normal human being, who is intimidated by the next stage of evolution and fears its own extinction. Charles Xavier, who empathises with all parties despite being a mutant and Erik Lehnsherr, believing there is a war coming and wishing revenge. As viewers, we can see the reasons for each character's actions. To them, what they think is right, and this quality in the film is something that I think everyone should appreciate.

This particular film is a prequel to the previous 3 movies, but not Wolverine, whose story, incidentally, is before and during this one, as we see by the fleeting cameo in which he tells Charles and Erik to 'fuck off' as they try to recruit him. I did take quite a lot of satisfaction from this as I do rather love Hugh Jackman and his antihero character.

There were, unfortunately, a lot of slip ups in this film. And I am fairly sure that quite a bit of it was true to the comics, but not so true to their other movies. Here are just a couple of them:

In X-Men: The Last Stand, when Xavier and Magneto visit Jean Grey as a child, Xavier can still walk. Xavier gets paralysed in First Class at a very young age, much before they go to see her. Magneto is meant to be in the Brotherhood at this point, and so may not have even accompanied Xavier to Jean Grey's childhood home.

In the first X-Men movie, Xavier says that Magneto helped him build Cerebro, however, in this film, Beast is the one to build it, and it is destroyed and not put back together before Magneto leaves to build his Brotherhood.

However, they do clear up quite a lot of questions that I had. Probably the biggest was how Xavier got paralysed in the first place. As I have not read the comics, I find the film very good in giving this kind of information, as well as Including characters that I know from the X-Men cartoon series.

The film stars all new actors in order to appeal to the younger audience, and in this respect they did a good job. I do think that they could have given a bit more to all the people who have seen the other films, though. Since the cast was entirely new and quite young, there was no way of recapturing the older generation and the lovers of the original films.

My favourite actor was probably Michael Fassbender in his performance of Erik/ Magneto due to his talent at getting across the mixed emotions that he feels with his facial expressions and body language. I think he did a good job of allowing the audience to get to know the character without hating him, quite like the way that Ian McKellen did in the original 3 movies. You can definitely see that he has studied the actor and taken character traits from him, only put them into a younger and therefore more volatile form.

Just to give a mention to another actor who I hold in quite high esteem, I think Nicholas Hoult did a brilliant job at being a geeky and rather sweet young version of Beast. I liked the way that the emotions of the young people were displayed, and the film did play a lot on attraction and self esteem. This, I felt, was a little too teenage even for me, so maybe the market could have been widened a little.

Overall I think this film is an 8 out of 10 as I very much enjoyed it and it had superb special effects. But it certainly isn't one for the huge fans or the originals, or for the comic book fans for that matter.

For me, I still think that X-Men Origins: Wolverine had it all.