What has Peter Jackson done with his life?

[bsu legato]

Why is Peter Jackson considered such a big hollywood producer/director? When he started out he was supposed to be this revolutionary, cool, young director with projects like Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles.

Then he did The Frighteners, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings, and King Kong this December.

Sure a lot of his money went into WETAbut they are parts of his company, not his personal projects with total involvement like film production. Now he's lost a bunch of weight (about damn time too, ya pudgy Kiwi) and is remaking Kong...again.

So is he a nut or what?

Edited April 26, 2005 by bsu legato

[KingNor]

personally, lotr isn't REALLY that good. its an endless stream of slow motion and medium frontal shots of the characters talking to the camera.

Tolkein is carrying those movies with his epic story. ( and gandalf is done well)

meet the feebles is jacksons best work.

[Agent ONE]

He is certainly NO George Lucas.

[Seven]

LMAO! Greatest thread since the Uwe Boll one!

[dr_vandermeer]

I too, was not blown away by the LOTR trilogy.

[myk]

I'm not blown away by Lucas' first Trilogy; let's see if ROTS can win it for his second Trilogy.

[EXO]

LOTR was a good trilogy... Hollywood lacks so much good fantasy/sword and sorcery type movies that LOTR more than made up for it. I don't know why you guys give Tolkien's story all the credit, I can see it being made much worse under a lot of other directors. Tolkien's story was good, it's what made all the CG, incredible sets and imagery even better.

[bsu legato]

I'm just surprised that this thread has outlived both the original thread it was satirizing and its own parody thread.

[Prime]

But you have to admit that making three movies of that scale is an impressive accomplishment.

[bsu legato]

But you have to admit that making three movies of that scale is an impressive accomplishment.

Ah, but Hollywood made huge epics long before LOTR. All PJ really did was throw in excessive amounts of CGI. And you'd think he could have found a live volcano to stand in for Mount Doom. Instead he just took the easy CGI shortcut.

[Agent ONE]

I personally think starting this thread is a greater accomplishment than the LOTR movies. Good job BSU.

[EXO]

What are you talking about? Bsu can't get that many midgets together... though he has tried... he just couldn't get that many...

[bsu legato]

What are you talking about? Bsu can't get that many midgets together... though he has tried... he just couldn't get that many...

My "Midget Wrangler" was fired on the second day of filming. This lead to problems with the unions that plagued the production until the producers shut us down. I don't like to talk about that period of my life, to be honest. It was a real heartbreaker.

[EXO]

I'll have my little people call your little people...

[EXO]

with little tiny phones!!!

[Mr March]

"I said he'll flip ya! Flip ya for real!"

[EXO]

But you have to admit that making three movies of that scale is an impressive accomplishment.

Ah, but Hollywood made huge epics long before LOTR. All PJ really did was throw in excessive amounts of CGI. And you'd think he could have found a live volcano to stand in for Mount Doom. Instead he just took the easy CGI shortcut.

It's funny, but when you watch the Superman movie with director's commentary, they always mention how each shot was an amazing feat and now it's really nothing because all you do is call up the CG guys and they'll have it for you. I'm sure they're glad for budget and safety reasons they prefer it the way it is today, they miss all the ingenuity that the filmmakers had before. I've since stopped my subscription to Cinefex, because now it's pure CG explanations and less modelling marvels.

I'm certain the CG people are laughing at how they think it's that easy, I just feel that it's less fun to read about the behind the scenes stuff unless you want to read about textures and AI behaviour.

Also in the Superman commentary, they talked about how they destroyed part of the environment when they brought in some dirt from on place to another and the bugs from the dirt attacked the new location's vegetation...

[armentage]

Personally I thought the LOTR movies were very poorly acted and directed. The FX shots are amazing, but over all the make-up (orcs in particular) were crap, far less interesting than movies like Star Wars Ep4 were back in the day.

You get some pretty flying camera shots of New Zealand, and lots of pictures of trees, but that's about it...

I liked the LOTR books, but I'm also sensible - long, slow paced books directly translated to the screen do not an exciting movie make. I've read the books - hell I read them just before watching the movies, but I had no idea what was going on half the time, because the use of direct novel dialog was just catastrophically bad.

I really would have prefered movies "based" on the novels, were events, dialog, etc. were modified to to make a good 2-hour movie, rather than trying to be a transliteration of the books.

[bsu legato]

...A bunch of stuff...

You're absolutely right, EXO. The LOTR movies would have benefitted so much from some old school techniques. Just think about how much more believable the cave troll would have been if they had realized it with stop motion animation! The all the exteriors of the white city could have been painstakingly done with glass mattes, not scale models.

[EXO]

lies all lies

WTH?

I never said, they needed to go old skool. I said LOTR was OK the way it was. And it was just more fun reading and watching behind the scenes stuff than it is now. Actually LOTR had the most fun "making of" stuff in a long while.

[Prime]

But you have to admit that making three movies of that scale is an impressive accomplishment.

Ah, but Hollywood made huge epics long before LOTR. All PJ really did was throw in excessive amounts of CGI. And you'd think he could have found a live volcano to stand in for Mount Doom. Instead he just took the easy CGI shortcut.

But I don't think Hollywood has filmed three huge epics of that scale at the same time to my knowledge. And I don't really see how creating a entire CG volcano is taking the easy way out when you could simply stick and camera on a mountain. CG isn't overly easy, especially when you are trying to recreate real life objects and environments. As much CG as there is, much of the film was filmed on location and took advantage of the natural beauty of New Zealand.

In any event, my original point was that Peter Jackson should get some props for taking on such a huge undertaking and delivering what most would say are pretty good movies.

[CoryHolmes]

...A bunch of stuff...

You're absolutely right, EXO. The LOTR movies would have benefitted so much from some old school techniques. Just think about how much more believable the cave troll would have been if they had realized it with stop motion animation! The all the exteriors of the white city could have been painstakingly done with glass mattes, not scale models.

See, this is something that amazes me to no end:

Why do people time and time again complain about how fake the CGI is, when they'd much rather have a fake rubber puppet involved? Or how a fake CGI environment is so much worse than a fake matte painting in the background.

CGI is no less fake than almost every other aspect of filmmaking.

[CoryHolmes]

In any event, my original point was that Peter Jackson should get some props for taking on such a huge undertaking and delivering what most would say are pretty good movies.

The other thing people seem to forget is that Lord of the Rings was pretty much a niche, fantasy series that had no chance of ever getting into the mainstream novel world. As well, the novels themselves are pretty horribly written, in my opinion. I tried to read them and simply gave up because they had absolutly nothing that kept my interest.

The movies, on the other hand, somehow managed to reach past that niche market that the novels live in and got to the mainstream audience and made Tolkien's story accessable to people who didn't like the books.

One last thing, to all the people who have demonized Jackson's work with the movies: If you think he's such a hack and did a piss-poor job of it... do it yourselves. If you honestly think the movies are crap, I'd love to see you do a better job.

[ewilen]

If you honestly think the movies are crap, I'd love to see you do a better job.

Lamest argument ever, whether it's applied to Jackson or Lucas or anyone else. Perhaps there's an element of hyperbole and lack of appreciation for the hard work and difficulty involved in making a movie, but if one were to follow this line of reasoning, practically no one should talk about any film, novel, TV show, or piece of music except to praise it.

[CoryHolmes]

If you honestly think the movies are crap, I'd love to see you do a better job.

Lamest argument ever, whether it's applied to Jackson or Lucas or anyone else. Perhaps there's an element of hyperbole and lack of appreciation for the hard work and difficulty involved in making a movie, but if one were to follow this line of reasoning, practically no one should talk about any film, novel, TV show, or piece of music except to praise it.

My point is that people were saying that Jackson screwed up in presenting the books in a movie medium. If he really did such a horrible job of translating the books to the big screen, why don't you show us how it SHOULD have been done?

What's so lame about that?

[ewilen]

Actually, I think Jackson did an okay job. Not a great job, but not miserable, either. However, that's beside the point. There are obvious obstacles to a random person on MW putting together a motion picture, but these needn't stand in the way of reasoned criticism. And even that gives the "I'd like to see you do better" argument too much credit. All I need is a pencil and paper to write a poem, but if every attempt to discuss the merits of some existing piece of poetry is met with "I'd like to see you do better", then there's little point in the conversation to begin with. Everyone should just shut up, it seems.

But if we're talking about motion pictures, it's worth noting that unlike poets, people in the movie industry make and spend enormous amounts of money, far more than most of us will earn in our entire lifetimes. They owe their earning power to a variety of factors, not least of which is the centralized/capital intensive nature of the industry, from production to distribution. Decisions about which films get made are in the hands of a very few, and the resources that go into them mean that other films don't get made. The viewing public certainly isn't consulted directly, and even then its voice is that of a mass, which encourages the production of films aimed at broad swathes of the population, and discourages attention to special interests. Therefore, everyone who is interested in film has an interest in what sorts of films, in general, get produced. If I like sonnets, it doesn't particularly matter to me if someone out there is writing bad limericks. It's not as if his limerick production is sucking all the air out of the sonnet industry. But with movies there's a far greater competition for production resources and theater seats, so if the studios are hiring "hacks" to make mediocre movies, I really have nowhere else to turn (without giving up movies). So it seems to me there's a very good reason to complain, if that's how someone feels about a given movie or a given director.

[bandit29]

Hmm what has he done...

He's made Stars Wars fanboys whine .....because the LOTR trilogy gets more positive press than GL's new Star Wars movies..

[JsARCLIGHT]

Peter Jackson will forever be a high pitched "eat lead, sucker!" and a spraying of an Uzi to me... I marvel at how much that man let himself go.

... that and I wonder what happened to that cool stand up beatles truck...

[Hurin]

Had major server problems at work (came in at midnight, left at 3pm the next day!). . . look what I missed!!!

Anyways, as a Tolkien freak, my opinion is that Peter Jackson did about as good as possible. . . but those movies still don't do justice to the grandeur of the books. I only had two major problems with the movies that took them down a few notches for me:

1. The army of the dead essentially relegating all the sacrifices made before their arrival moot.

2. Elijah F'in Wood. Some day, I hope to be able to purchase a paperback of a LotR book without his mug on the cover. He doesn't look like Frodo (as described), he isn't anywhere near Frodo's age, and his "acting" is limited to staring into the camera with big, watery eyes.

But, since this is a "parody thread" I've probably already said too much. And I can't believe I missed out on the thread that this thread was intended to mock!

H

[Graham]

Bad Taste is one of the best films ever.

"Mmm......chunky bits".

Graham

[CoryHolmes]

Actually, I think Jackson did an okay job. Not a great job, but not miserable, either. However, that's beside the point. There are obvious obstacles to a random person on MW putting together a motion picture, but these needn't stand in the way of reasoned criticism. And even that gives the "I'd like to see you do better" argument too much credit. All I need is a pencil and paper to write a poem, but if every attempt to discuss the merits of some existing piece of poetry is met with "I'd like to see you do better", then there's little point in the conversation to begin with. Everyone should just shut up, it seems.

But if we're talking about motion pictures, it's worth noting that unlike poets, people in the movie industry make and spend enormous amounts of money, far more than most of us will earn in our entire lifetimes. They owe their earning power to a variety of factors, not least of which is the centralized/capital intensive nature of the industry, from production to distribution. Decisions about which films get made are in the hands of a very few, and the resources that go into them mean that other films don't get made. The viewing public certainly isn't consulted directly, and even then its voice is that of a mass, which encourages the production of films aimed at broad swathes of the population, and discourages attention to special interests. Therefore, everyone who is interested in film has an interest in what sorts of films, in general, get produced. If I like sonnets, it doesn't particularly matter to me if someone out there is writing bad limericks. It's not as if his limerick production is sucking all the air out of the sonnet industry. But with movies there's a far greater competition for production resources and theater seats, so if the studios are hiring "hacks" to make mediocre movies, I really have nowhere else to turn (without giving up movies). So it seems to me there's a very good reason to complain, if that's how someone feels about a given movie or a given director.

That's not quite the point I was trying to make.

It's easy and appropriate enough to say, "I don't like this movie/game/show/etc." There's nothing wrong with that, and that can even lead to some decent constructive critisism.

But where I draw the line is people saying that (in this example specifically), "Jackson is a hack who doesn't know what he's doing and totally screwed over the books." If anyone says that, they should have the balls to step forward and show us how it should be done, in a non-hack manner. As long as you open the door with comments like that, expect people to step in and call you on it (and no, I'm not saying you specifically, ewilen).

And it's not really that hard. It's called a Fan-Film. People have been making them for Star Wars for years now with some fairly sophisticated technical effects. If the acting was mediocre and the strength was all in the writing, a fan-film should be all that's needed to prove that fact.

[Mr March]

"Jackson is a hack who doesn't know what he's doing and totally screwed over the books." If anyone says that, they should have the balls to step forward and show us how it should be done, in a non-hack manner. As long as you open the door with comments like that, expect people to step in and call you on it (and no, I'm not saying you specifically, ewilen).

*someone walks on MrMarch's grave*

hehehe

[JsARCLIGHT]

Bad Taste is one of the best films ever.

"Mmm......chunky bits".

Graham

My personal favorite is:

"The Bastards have landed!"

(Aside from Peter Jackson spraying with the Uzi making "Atatatataattatata" noises...)

If anyone has not seen Bad Taste or Brain Dead (Dead Alive in the US), you are missing the "true" Peter Jackson. He can take is Heavenly Creatures and LotR and shove it, I want Bad Taste 2 dammit!

[Graham]

If anyone has not seen Bad Taste or Brain Dead (Dead Alive in the US), you are missing the "true" Peter Jackson. He can take is Heavenly Creatures and LotR and shove it, I want Bad Taste 2 dammit!

I'll second that.

Graham

[Gabe Q]

I'll have my little people call your little people...

That's the funniest shite I heard in a long time.