Blog Features Giants

There's a new movie out called The BFG, based on the book by Roald Dahl. So apparently Dahl is going to be the kid's version of Philip K. Dick, with Hollywood grinding-out every one of his books eventually.

Of course, there's a problem here. The book came out in 1982, so for someone my age, it would have appealed to slightly younger people. So when I hear "BFG," I think of the weapon of that name from the Doom video game. It came out when I was in my second year of University, close to its target demographic, so I'm sure I'm not the only one. Just the association with a violent video game is an unfortunate thing, even before you consider what the word between, "Big" and "Gun" is.

The hilarious part is, you know someone at the studio did research on this, studying just what percentage of the population associated the three letters with each media property. I guess it makes sense: it's a fight between Generation X and the Millennials, and the latter wins on both numbers and likelihood to go to movies.

But here's something I never thought of before: I can understand wanting to put "friendly" in the title, since that's not how giants are usually portrayed. But "big" though? "Big giant" is redundant, since giants are, by definition, big. So it should just be "The FG," or, "The Friendly Giant." Well, Mr. British author and American director, that's a concept we in Canada pioneered, and we didn't even need any CGI to do it.