Bryan Singer: His Films Ranked From Worst To Best

10. Jack The Giant Slayer

The sudden rush of fairy tale-based blockbusters in recent years has been pretty bewildering in many respects. However, no one film of this curious subgenre has bewildered viewers quite so intensely as this oddball fantasy adventure.

The 2013 release of Jack the Giant Slayer (originally entitled Jack the Giant Killer, not that the title changes much) marked Singer's return to directing after a five-year hiatus, but it did not prove an especially illustrious comeback. Nicholas Hoult feels a little out of his depth as Jack, the farm boy of yore whose trade of a horse for beans results in an unexpected adventure.

It takes the essentials of the fairy tale and retrofits it to a more grandiose tale of giants at war with humans and a forbidden romance between the peasant Jack and a princess. In so doing it tries to strike a largely light-hearted tone somewhere between Lord of the Rings and The Princess Bride. The results are of passing enjoyment, but too uneven to really hit the mark.

Highlights include an endearingly camp turn from Ewan McGregor, clearly having a ball as a dashing knight with a plummy English accent; downsides include an over-reliance on ugly CGI for the giants, and a present day epilogue that's utterly irrelevant and makes little sense.