This 2016 Steven Spielberg Box Office Bomb Streaming on Disney+ Deserves a Second Look

Roald Dahl’s 1982 novel “The BFG” is one of his most unusual tales. It is about Sophie, a young orphan who, one night awake, sees a mysterious giant the size of a building walking through the streets of London. The giant realizes that he has been seen, kidnaps Sophie and takes her back to a land far, far away where giants live; he can run at supernatural speed, so the land can be anywhere on Earth. The bulk of “The BFG” involves Sophie learning about this giant and what his life is like. The giant, whom she nicknames the BFG (for Big Friendly Giant), works as a distributor of dreams. He travels in a mystical plane and captures dreams in jars. Dreams are colorful, wild, living puffs of smoke. He then sneaks into London and makes the children dream with a specialized vuvuzela.

At home, the BFG eats disgusting vegetables called snozzcumbers and drinks a fancy soda called frobscottle. Frobscottle causes magically powerful farts. The BFG is also bullied by his country’s other giants, as he is the smallest and meekest of the group. Beyond that, the BFG cannot read and speaks in a very particular patois. Naturally, Sophie teaches him about humans and civilization.

In 2016, Steven Spielberg released a film adaptation of “The BFG”, using motion capture and CGI to transform Mark Rylance into the main creature. Young actress Ruby Barnhill plays Sophie and, like in the book, she spends the film discovering the ins and outs of the BFG’s life, including the means by which he distributes dreams. Spielberg includes his sense of wonder, as well as his skills in constructing magical visuals, while retaining Dahl’s British idiosyncrasies. Although it bombed in theaters, it’s actually pretty good and worth streaming on Disney+.

Since the turn of the 21st century, Spielberg seems more interested in making adult dramas that comment on the politics of the day, rather than the adventurous blockbusters that defined the early parts of his career. Spielberg films like “Munich,” “Lincoln,” “The Post” and the historical spy thriller “Bridge of Spies” seem to attract a lot more thought and attention from directors than effects-based trifles like “The Adventures of Tintin” or the dreadful “Ready Player One.” “The BFG” proved to be an exception to this rule, as it is an effects-driven fantasy picture based on a beloved children’s novel, but one that is also rich, textured and intriguing. Much of the effectiveness of “The BFG” comes from Rylance’s performance as the title character. The BFG is visualized with motion capture, but it was also designed to retain many of Rylance’s real-life facial features, making the giant even more expressive.

Spielberg couldn’t resist, of course, making “The BFG” more Spielbergian. In Dahl’s book, the BFG captures unseen dreams from the air in a distant prairie. In the film, he sinks into an alternative reality where dreams dance, already colorful, around a massive and magical tree. This sequence gives the impression that the director was having a little fun.

Overall, Spielberg maintains the original novel’s strange sense of humor. Indeed, it’s worth noting that “The BFG” features the director’s first fart joke – particularly during a scene where Queen Elizabeth II (Penelope Wilton), in her 1950s best, tries her hand at frobscotting and farting to the point of ecstasy. Meanwhile, his corgis fart so loudly they move across the floor of Buckingham Palace. This is something that actually happens in an expensive Disney movie. You have to admire Spielberg’s temerity.

“The BFG”, however, was not a box office success. Instead, it was a very expensive film that failed to capture the audience’s attention. Its failure could, in part, be due to the fact that it had to directly compete with the Pixar film “Finding Dory”, released a few weeks earlier. Unsurprisingly, family audiences preferred the sequel to “Finding Nemo” over “The BFG.” Ultimately, because it cost $140 million to make, “The BFG” became one of the biggest failures of 2016. Not only that, but when you factor in ticket price inflation, “The BFG” might just be the biggest loser of Spielberg’s career.

However, critics generally liked “The BFG.” The film currently holds a 74% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 308 reviews. Matt Zoller Seitz, writing for RogerEbert.com, appreciated the film’s overall sweetness. He acknowledged that many viewers may take issue with its lack of plot and action, but he appreciated that its monsters were rather fanciful and silly. Of course, not everyone liked it (Richard Roeper, for example, considered the film “listless and boring”), but the general impression was positive.

It’s possible that Barnhill’s career was derailed a bit by the failure of “The BFG,” given that she has mostly only taken on voice roles since its release. (Then again, she’s still very young, so maybe she’s still figuring out what she wants to do as a career.) As for Spielberg, he followed “The BFG” with “The Post” (which is one of his best films), so he certainly wasn’t struggling at work. His films, however, have not been as reliably successful as in the past, with his “West Side Story” and “The Fabelmans” both bombing. But don’t blame them.