The Films of Peter Jackson

17 February 2010

Before he explored the realms of Middle Earth and became a name to trust, Peter Jackson started out in the realm of black comedy aliens and zombies.

Famously loyal of his Kiwi routes, with the upcoming book adaptation The Lovely Bones being the first film to be made outside his homeland, FemaleFirst starts there on the journey into the films of Peter Jackson.

Bad Taste (1987):

Originally just a short film to satisfy Jackson’s love of film making while he still worked full time, Bad Taste eventually formed itself into the self trainer director’s first feature.

Bad Taste is the tale of four dim-witted men from the New Zealand National Air and Space Defense League arriving in a sleepy shipping town after reports of a UFO crash.

There they find that the townsfolk have been killed as part of the aliens plans to open up an intergalactic form of McDonalds.

Bringing slapstick humour to the gore-tastic pitch black comedy, Bad Taste is exactly that, defiantly not one for the squeamish.

Bad Taste put Jackson on the map though, his ridiculously low budget film going as far as the Canne Film Festival and in the era of the ‘video-nasty’ gathered him a strong fan base way from his native New Zealand.

Braindead (1992):

Featuring a zombie baby, a kung-fu Priest who “kicks arse for The Lord” and the single bloodiest use of a lawn mower on screen, Braindead took off exactly where Bad Taste left off.

Following the story of mummy’s-boy Lionel, who ends up having to look after a zombiefied version of his overbearing mother after she gets bitten by an evil rat-monkey at the local zoo.

The infection soon spreads and Lionel has to try and keep everything appearing as normal as possible from the outside as he struggles to contain the menace in the basement of his giant family house. Add in his attempts to woo the local shop and stop his uncle from stealing his house and you have a recipe for disaster.

With yet more black, slapstick comedy with lashings of fake blood and all types of goo, Braindead kept Peter Jackson’s new gore-hungry fans happy while delivering enough laughs to make it a cult classic.

Heavenly Creatures (1994):

A huge departure from everything he had previously done, Heavily Creatures saw the maturing of Jackson into the fully formed director that we all see today.

Based on the notorious Parker-Hulme murder from 1954 in New Zealand, Heavenly Creatures stars first time actress Melanie Lynskey (now in TV comedy Two and a Half Men) and a little known British actress, fresh from an episode of Casualty, called Kate Winslet.

They played Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, two young girls who in 1950’s Christchurch formed an obsessive relationship over their love of fantasy books, creating their own world.

Seeing as it’s based off a murder case, it’s fair to say not everything goes well, but saying more would be spoiling the film for anyone yet to see it.

After getting a rapturous reception when shown at the Venice Film Festival, winning Jackson the festival’s award for direction, Heavenly Creatures became a huge critical success, earning Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh (both in writing and life, the two married in 1987) an Oscar nomination for the films script.

Lord of the Rings (2001-2003):

The films that made Peter Jackson’s name known worldwide, this enormous trilogy was a world wide sensation, taking both critics and audiences by storm when they came out each year between 2001 and 2003.

Filming what some had called an un-filmable set of books, Peter Jackson’s epic has now become one of the most influential set of films of the decade, redefining the ‘epic’ genre and becoming the yard stick for any book adaptations since.

Delving into the fantastical world of Middle Earth found in Tolkien’s novels, The Lord of The Rings movies follow Frodo, a miniature Hobbit who must destroy a ring made by the Dark Lord Sauron in the fires of a volcano.

With the help of elves, dwarves a wise wizard and the occasional human warrior, he must overcome impossible odds to destroy the ring and bring peace to the lands of Middle Earth.

After one of the most gruelling productions in the history of cinema, where all three films were shot back to back in the course of years, the films won a total of – Oscars and gained its cast of unknowns and Peter Jackson squarely into the limelight.

Still a stunning set of movies that made swords and sorcerers watchable again, the Lord of The Rings stands as possible the greatest achievement of Jackson’s career so far.

King Kong (2005):

After the phenomenal success of the Lord of The Rings movies, Peter Jackson was able to finally do the project he had wanted to do since the age of nine, a remake of the 1933 classic King Kong.

King Kong the timeless tale of the giant gorilla that is captured and brought to New York as a Broadway show, only to escape and wreak havoc in the city.

Jackson super sized the big monkey story though, making his version twice the length of the depression era original and making it at the time, the most expensive movie of all time.

Bringing a before untapped level of humanity to Kong, played by Andy Serkis of Gollum fame, Peter Jackson’s version of the yarn brought fleshing out to a whole new level, with some scenes in the film being genuinely touching, something the original never approached.

Despite some mixed reviews, the film was a huge success, and featured in quite a few top ten lists for 2005.

Jackson had delivered on the epic front once again and had fully established himself as a household name, something that he will now be using with the release of The Lovely Bones.

The man from Pukerua Bay has come a long way from baking his own prosthetics for Bad Taste in his mother’s oven and is bound to go much further after producing last year’s sci-fi stunner District 9 and still in the process of exploring the world of videogames with his involvement in the Halo game series.

FemaleFirst Cameron Smith