ROTK - Ultimate Best Film winner

[Kitanna]

Originally Posted by Durelin

And really their influence on cinema is pretty strong.

I wonder what other director/creators could have done to enhance/change what PJ did. CGI is great and all, but I wonder what would have been done if someone like Jim Henson had tackled the project before his death. Snuffleupagus has a Mumakil anyone?

Or even how would LOTR been enhanced if scenese like the Barrow Wights had been included? I wasn't extremely impressed with the look of the King of the Dead, so I wonder what the wights would have turned out.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Kitanna

I wonder what other director/creators could have done to enhance/change what PJ did. CGI is great and all, but I wonder what would have been done if someone like Jim Henson had tackled the project before his death. Snuffleupagus has a Mumakil anyone?

Or even how would LOTR been enhanced if scenese like the Barrow Wights had been included? I wasn't extremely impressed with the look of the King of the Dead, so I wonder what the wights would have turned out.

I remember a discussion by the special effects group somewhere in the Extended Edition of RotK that they were rushing to finish their version of the King of the Dead because the production of the Pirates of the Caribbean were working concurrently on the look of Barbarossa and the dead pirates. If you compare the ghastly features of Barbarossa and the King of the Dead, they are virtually kissing cousins -- although I suppose that is a gross analogy.

I am not altogether sure that Jackson has left some great legacy for future directors. WETA technology is certainly evident in other films, of course, and CGI has proliferated to the point where there is almost nothing left of humanity in films like 300 or Beowulf. I don't necessarily view that as a good thing, however. The films Jackson made prior to the Lord of the Rings are Saturday matinee fair, good for the genre they are in but not great, and I would suggest that King Kong was nowhere near the achivement of the original film, nor did it add anything important to that film's legacy. I rented Jackson's King Kong once and was irritated I wasted the four bucks.

Recently, the deplorable site EW issued its top 25 active directors, found here...

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20259843,00.html

Both Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro were on the list. Good for them, I guess, but the list is suspect, and many of the choices are laughable, particularly since such great 'active' directors as Milos Foreman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, People vs Larry Flynt), Roman Polanski (Rosemary's Baby, The Pianist, Chinatown), Francis Ford Coppolla (The Godfather Trilogy, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now), and Jonathan Demme (Melvin and Howard, Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) are not included. Yet they applaud the guy who made Elf and Iron Man as more significant than the directors I just mentioned? Whatever.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

I am not altogether sure that Jackson has left some great legacy for future directors.

I have a similar hesitation. And while polls and popularity speak to the praise of the fans or the masses or the select niches of viewers, backed up by the rings of the cash register, I think in film history what really marks a brilliant director or brilliant film is the effect on future film makers. They are, after all, the artists who create the art and so they sense the pulse of the art in a way that we mere viewers can not. Which is not to say that simple fans can't have an appreciation for film, just that maybe the artists have a special "in".

'course I could be wrong. Maybe in ten years some hot shot will show up on the indy circuit who boldly goes where PJ did not while still having that telling nod to PJ. It wouldn't even have to be in the fantasy genre; it could be any genre.

[alatar]

What of the nod to 'mocap,' which was used to bring Andy Serkis' Gollum to life?

Though this link shows where the technology is headed, and came up when researching 'mocap' and 'Gollum,' Peter Jackson is not mentioned in the article.

[davem]

http://www.emorywheel.com/detail.php?n=26650

“I would suggest that Peter Jackson’s films were better than Tolkien’s books,” (Salman) Rushdie said of the “Lord of the Rings” series. “Jackson directs better than Tolkien writes.”

[Durelin]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Ummm...the intellectual in me wants to throttle you with Jabba the Hut's chain. Star Wars and its pedestrian progeny are the most overrated films in this galaxy, or even in a galaxy far, far away.

Two smilies wasn't enough to calm the intellectual in you a little bit? The intellectual in me laughs. The rest of me doesn't care how 'overrated' anything is if I happen to like it!

As for the influence on cinema, all I know is that the LotR films kickstarted a streak of medieval and/or fantasy epics of various kinds which has kinda disappeared by now. And it feels like the battle scenes in LotR have created a standard.

Is the influence beyond that? Is it a long standing influence? Well, I think that since the LotR release there have been a lot more 2 and 1/2 - 3 hour movies being released, but that may be my lack of awareness previously. But, the old epics like Lawrence of Arabia and religious epics like Ben Hur ran 3+ hours, and you can certainly see how PJ was influenced by those!

Another thing that came to mind is the difference between a "best picture" and "your favorite movie". They don't have to be the same thing. At least, they aren't for me. I like watching movies for entertainment, not necessarily to tackle philosophical questions or to be moved emotionally or to have my head messed with. I love adorable pixar movies. I love a movie when it entertains me.

I can still appreciate aspects such as aesthetic value, good writing, good acting, engaging plot, etc, etc to a certain extent (I mean, I'm no film critic, but I don't know how qualified all the film critics are either), but...most of the time, actually, I don't want to watch a psychological drama or especially like a politically driven film because I like watching movies, most of the time, purely for entertainment. I like to laugh and find escape in movies, not be dragged into a depressing mess that realistically represents the human condition. Not most of the time.

So...I guess all my point is that, when people vote for a "best picture" they are not always voting for a "best picture" as in an excellent piece of cinema based on all those meaty things critics take to be part of good cinema, but they are voting for their "favorite movie" (at least a favorite movie) which entertained them and they don't mind seeing more than once.

You may still condemn anyone who voted for RotK, but hey, storytelling in all its forms was always about entertainment, regardless of what else was and is attached to it. Part of that now in film has to do with things looking cool. Of course you could go off on a whole discussion of the various artforms film incorporates, and how all artforms can "tell a story" but bleh, who has time for that...

[Morthoron]

“I would suggest that Peter Jackson’s films were better than Tolkien’s books,” (Salman) Rushdie said of the “Lord of the Rings” series. “Jackson directs better than Tolkien writes.”

And I care what Salman Rushdie thinks? I'll take Umberto Eco and raise you a Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Jackson directs better than Rushdie writes, and Tolkien is better than either. I'd post that on a Salman Rushdie forum...if I could find one that was active (one I found had no posts and the other's link was dead). Get back to me in 50 years on Rushdie -- this Tolkien forum will likely still be around, although we may not.

Originally Posted by Durelin

Another thing that came to mind is the difference between a "best picture" and "your favorite movie". They don't have to be the same thing. At least, they aren't for me. I like watching movies for entertainment, not necessarily to tackle philosophical questions or to be moved emotionally or to have my head messed with. I love adorable pixar movies. I love a movie when it entertains me.

I thought Wall-E was the best picture I saw this year. I was rather irritated it didn't get a best picture nomination, and also 'In Bruges', another great film that was ignored.