Watch the Jack the Giant Killer Trailer: Beanstalk Blockbuster?

The fairytale action subgenre gets another entry next summer when Bryan Singer's CG-fantasy take on the Jack and the Beanstalk tale hits screens, with fresh-scrubbed Nicholas Hoult in the lead. That officially makes it "from the director of X-Men," starring that one kid who was in that other X-Men movie -- no, not X2. Or X3. The other one. Get your flaming tree catapults and Jurassic Park moment after the jump in the new trailer for Jack the Giant Killer.

Hoult stars as Jack, a lowly farmhand bequeathed with a handful of special bean who pays no mind to the age-old adage "Beans, beans, the magical fruit..." He gets them wet and soon enough there are ginormous stalks of green shooting through the floorboards to heaven -- or, giant-heaven, where enormous beings live. These beings, however, are to be feared; we know this because their CG-composed feet squish ominously in the mud like Tyrannosaur toes on Isla Nublar. I imagine rousing adventure follows in ye olde storybook adventure style, complete with evil scheming humans (Stanley Tucci is... somewhere, supposedly!) and valiant palace guards (Oh hey, Ewan McGregor).

Alas, I can't quite get excited for this given the uber-vanilla vibe it exudes, fancy CG beanstalks and soaring crane shots or no. Hoult may be, in fact, too fresh-faced to root for; I get shades of Matthew Vaughn's Stardust from this trailer, and that's not a good thing.

Plus? It was filmed in 3-D (on a RED camera), so expect beanstalk shoots and swords and whatnot to zip out at your eyeballs to boot.

The upside: It was written partly by scribe Christopher McQuarrie, who penned The Usual Suspects for director Singer.

The downside: McQuarrie and Singer also teamed up on Valkryie. So, yeah...

Verdict: Cracking in a bland pre-teen fairytale kind of way, but I need more danger! More grime! More excitement! More (or any) Tucci! In the least, more cats.

[view high res video at Apple]