Based on the folk tale Jack the Giant Killer,  Jack the Giant Slayer is the story of Jack (Nicholas Hoult), a young orphan-farmhand who reignites a war that has spanned centuries between humans and giants over a crown we may or may not have taken from them [we did] and the giants’ subsequent banishment. The only thing is that the giants live somewhere between Earth and heaven, and there isn’t really a way for people to go up or the giants down, so it’s not a war in its most traditional sense.

Enter Jack.

Having been given some magic beans by a monk after selling his horse, he’s explicitly warned not to get them wet. Unfortunately, a single bean gets dropped during a storm, and a giant stalk sprouts in nanoseconds taking Jack’s love interest, Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) up to the giants’ world. Not only do Jack and Elmont (Ewan McGregor) have to spearhead the rescue expedition whilst protecting Isabelle from plus-sized giants, they have to take on one particularly terrifying two-headed monster, General Fallon (Bill Nighy).

Claudia Puig of USA Today writes, “With deftly etched computer-generated imagery, the film looks like an illustrated storybook come to life. The tale is engaging, running circles around January’s dreadful Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and other recent fairy-tale adaptations.” HSX is predicting that Jack the Giant Slayer earns about $28M in its opening weekend.

Rating: PG-13 // Genre: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy // Runtime: 1 hr. 54 min. // Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor // Directed by: Bryan Singer // Written by: Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie, Dan Studney, David Dobkin // Produced by: New Line Cinema, Legendary Pictures, Original Film, Big Kid Pictures, Bad Hat Harry Productions, Warner Bros. Pictures // Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures