It is customary that once every few years, a movie studio - in hopes of creating future success - will produce a sacrificial lamb of sorts, a high-budget fantasy film with a cast only most directors could dream of that exists purely to fail spectacularly at the box office. If you find this to be entirely unbelievable, then surely question why there is such a trend in fantasy that continues to this day.

It varies from film to film on the specifics of the failure - sometimes it's a matter of poor script, sometimes overestimation of the audience turnout, sometimes the story just doesn’t appeal. Whatever the case was for Jack the Giant Slayer, the film didn't get the success it deserves, though it will get another chance to shine when it starts streaming on Netflix on April 1, via What's On Netflix.

Based on the English fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk,...