Jack the Giant Slayer may have been a box office bomb, but the 2013 fantasy adventure film is finally finding success on Netflix.
The star-studded movie, based on the fairy tales Jack the Giant Killer and Jack and the Beanstalk, has broken into the Netflix streaming charts, with the film currently ranking No. 10 among films on the platform alongside hits like The Dark Knight, Den of Thieves, Alpha, and One of Them Days.
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Directed by Bryan Singer and written by Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie, and Dan Studney, Jack the Giant Slayer stars Nicholas Hoult as Jack, a young farmhand who sets off on an adventure alongside Elmont (Ewan McGregor) to rescue Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) after she is abducted by giants. The film also stars Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, Bill Nighy, and Eddie Marsan.
The film’s current Netflix success comes as a bit of a surprise. Despite its star-studded cast and being a high-budget film, Jack the Giant Slayer was anything but successful following its February 2013 release. Writing for Coachella Valley Independent, Bob Grimm said the movie would “go down as one of the worst domestic flops in recent Hollywood history” after it only managed to gross $197 million worldwide against the budget of $185–200 million, cementing itself as a box office failure.
Jack the Giant Slayer also didn’t fare well among critics or audience members, becoming certified rotten on Rotten Tomatoes with a 52% critics score and 55% audience score. Although the film received some praise for being “enthusiastically acted and reasonably fun,” critics said “Jack the Giant Slayer is also overwhelmed by digital effects and a bland, impersonal story.”
“Overall, Jack the Giant Slayer felt like the rough draft of a movie that could actually have been pretty awesome if somebody had actually thought about the story a little bit,” Annalee Newitz wrote for Gizmodo. “All the ingredients were there. They just didn’t get cooked for long enough.”
Meanwhile, Eric Melin called the movie “flat and uninspired” in his review for Screen Stealers, adding that it was “the latest in the steady stream of films that takes old, familiar fairy tales and updates their antiquated social mores with a modern sensibility.”
Despite the initial lackluster reaction to Jack the Giant Slayer, Netflix subscribers seem to be showing the movie plenty of love.
