It’s been a while since I made another MythoRealm Musings post. Given how I was moving and stuff, I didn’t have the time to make a blog post like this. I got my bluetooth keyboard back and I have something new to bring to the table. This post could be seen as a sequel to the Giants and Kaiju post.

We all know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, right? A boy and his mom living in financial ruin. The boy is sent to sell their cow for money to get them by. The boy meets a salesman who doesn’t give him an invitation to Squid Game but some magic beans. (If they did get an invitation to the Squid Game, we’d have a Park Yong-sik and Jang Geum-ja situation. Season 3 episode 1 was the saddest episode of the show. Come to think of it, I’d definitely watch an imaginary season of Squid Game where we replace all the humans with fantasy creatures.) He climbs the beanstalk to a giant’s castle, robs him blind and chops the beanstalk causing the giant grievous bodily harm.

I’ve written a concept for a hypothetical adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk. I KNOW! I know the story’s been adapted more times than we care to count. But it’s such a simple story with so much you can do with it. It’s like Little Red Riding Hood or The Wizard of Oz. A simple story that leaves a lot of room for worldbuilding and lore. I saw Jack the Giant Slayer 2013 on Netflix and thought the film was okay, the giants looked goofy. But that film was enough for me to look into the fairy tales in which the film originated its idea from.

I’ve also had to do multiple Google searches to decide on the time period in which Jack the Giant Killer took place, King Arthur’s reign. King Arthur was 15 when he pulled the sword from the stone. Born in 495 AD/CE, pulled the sword at 510 AD/CE, and died at 565 AD/CE at 70 years old. Keep in mind that these numbers are estimates so they could be off. Early history is pretty murky anyway.

I had the idea that the first half of the story tells the traditional story while the second half flips the script and tells an original story in the form of a courtroom drama. A group of giant knights uproot the town Jack lives in and take them back to the Giant Realm which I decided to make Jotunheimr from Norse Mythology. The giant of the story is suing Jack for 3 counts of robbery, attempted murder, and grievous bodily harm. I haven’t decided on a name for the giant yet. But for this post, I’ll just call him Blunderbore*. *Jack the Giant Killer reference. I accidentally stole the lawsuit idea from the courtroom scene from Rick and Morty season 1 episode “Meeseeks and Destroy.” Particularly the scene where the giant accidentally slips and kills himself and Rick and Morty were believed to have killed him. They only got off scot-free because a giant lawyer came in and successfully talked them out of prison on a technicality. If you watched Rick and Morty, you might understand where I’m coming from. I still let the courtroom idea stand because it’s just too good to throw away and I picture it at a much larger scale metaphorically and literally. One of those ideas where I forget where I saw it from and unknowingly recreate it.

Jack before he stole from Blunderbore has a history of thievery stealing food from places to help himself and his mom out. (Robin Hood won’t be around for another few centuries.) The other kids in his town only like him because he bribes them with a fraction of what he stole to keep quiet about it. The kids confessed now because their entire town is uprooted and they’re in court. All their parents are understandably mad because they let Jack get away with it and they could’ve prevented this or saw it coming.

I’ve written ideas for twists and turns like the fairy godmother who told Jack about his dead dad’s stolen stuff is actually his biological mother, Jack was sent to live with a human mother to hide him from a war with imps and fairies. Throughout Jack's teen years, he has chronic back pains which are a product of him growing wings in his back before they sprout out at adulthood. Fairy puberty! The only reason he was able to climb that beanstalk was because the fairy godmother cast a spell on him to neutralize the pain from the inner wing growth.

The magic beans were a product of a magician enchanting beans to help food production during a famine somewhere. The magical properties led to the beanstalks being bridges to different realms. Various wizards, witches, and magicians (Jack’s dad included) used them to go to various different realms. Including Jotunheimr.

Jack’s dad was a magician who was accidentally killed by Blunderbore. The giant only stole from him because he was guilty for accidentally killing him and took his body and stuff to make there be no evidence of his death. So Jack’s adoptive mom would resent Jack’s dad for “ditching” her and causing them to fall into financial ruin. But she would later feel like a jerk for hating him when she learns of the freak accident. She also didn’t have a good work ethic to begin with because Jack’s dad would bring back so much gold. I imagine Jack’s dad being portrayed by real world magician and comedian Justin Willman of Netflix’s Magic for Humans and Magic Prank Show.

There’s a giant lawyer working with Jack who’s Blunderbore’s neighbor and childhood friend, he has to decide between a small human he doesn’t know or his childhood friend. I’ll call him Cormoran. This is to give Jack someone to talk to and befriend aside from the fairy and the giant’s wife (the latter of whom turned on Jack because of the beanstalk chopdown). I feel like a supporting cast with Jack is needed because he can’t just think to himself the entire time. Cormoran is the one who teaches Jack that giants aren’t bad or any different from humans outside of size.

I picture the dynamic of Blunderbore and Cormoran as a Fred Flintstone to Barney Rubble relationship. (I know that show was based on the Honeymooners, but The Flintstones is where I’ll permanently remember this character dynamic from.) Life-long friends one is loudmouthed and ambitious while the other is good natured and would go along with his schemes. This court case could make or break their friendship.

Jack’s grandpa is revealed to be the late Jack the Giant Killer (The other Jack vs Giants story minus the beanstalk, he died of natural causes before this story), the giants will try to twist the lawsuit into his family being cold-blooded killers to their kind. The giants will act like they are doing the humans a favor by making an example of Jack. The only reason the current Jack never heard of him was because his dad moved his family away in case the giants wanted revenge.

With the info of Jack’s multiple acts of thievery and his family history, the giants will be gunning for the death penalty for Jack and his adoptive mom by proxy by being eaten by the giant plaintiff. When the giants say, “I’ll grind up their bones to make my bread.” They aren’t messing around.

The giants have attempted to live on Earth and make peace with the humans. But humans being humans, they freaked the f out and drove them away. The giants hurt by this decided to cut any beanstalks to their realm to cut ties with the humans. The imps from the war see this as an opportunity to use the giants’ bad history with humans as leverage to get them on their side to guarantee their victory against the fairies. Them joining the imps hinged on the lawsuit. Make the giants think that humanity is inherently bad/evil/weak. Meaning that if the giant won, they’d side with the imps and it’d be game over for the fairies, Jack, humanity, and the Earth.

The salesman will be revealed as a gryphon in a human meat suit. He worked for the fairies in the war but was kidnapped by the imps to be eaten by them. He only agreed to join the imps to save himself from being eaten. Much like how Peter Pettigrew betrayed the Potters to Voldemort to save himself from Voldemort. The salesman stole Jack’s wagon and cow and left him with the beans. Part of the imps’ plan to get the giants on their side. The imps knew they couldn’t beat the giants in a fight so they lied to them about having more power than they really do. Kinda like Hopper from A Bug’s Life where his power pretty much hinged on maintaining the illusion of power. All the imps in the war are low-level demons with not much power. Their end goal was to steal a realm outside of Hell that they can call their own. Using the power of lies and propaganda. Their empire’s built on an unstable foundation. The only reason the imps can hold their own in the war was because the weapons and magic they did have were stolen from other people.

It ends with the giants and Jack putting their differences aside to save the Earth from the reign of the imps. He would receive a pardon from the giants as a thanks for being a hero and would live with Blunderbore moving forward as they cleared things up between each other. I picture the ending of Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Jack’s house inside of the giant’s castle. Jack also has to work in his town to pay back for all his theft as punishment and his golden goose eggs don’t count. (To make sure he actually does his punishment and it sticks.) The kids who took bribes are also there but they don’t have to work as hard or long. Not an unfair punishment, as Jack shouldn’t have been stealing and the kids shouldn’t have taken bribes in the first place. Just because you do one big heroic feat, that doesn’t automatically null your history of wrongdoing. Jack accepts it with humility and dignity.

I’ve written down more stuff. But I’ll save that for another day. I do hope to turn this into something one day. Book, comic, or otherwise. I just wanted to get down on paper how I would do Jack and the Beanstalk. I don’t see this as a story of good and evil, I see it as a story of two people put against each other. Both of whom suck in their own ways and we see them get better throughout the story and unite against a bigger evil. Jack, a chronic thief, dealt a bad hand in life. Blunderbore, a giant that tried to live peacefully on Earth but was rejected by humanity. (Humanity’s rejection of giants is the reason why he eats humans.) In conclusion, this is a courtroom drama that got caught in the middle of a Lord of the Rings movie.

This post WON’T be in the creative commons because I hope to do something with these musings one day.

-Charles. T