Peter Jackson
307 connections found
Filmography
Heavenly Creatures 1994 
The Lovely Bones 2009 
King Kong 2005 
Bad Taste 1987 
The Frighteners 1996 
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001 
Meet the Feebles 1989 
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 2012 
Braindead 1992 
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies 2014 
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 2002 
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 2003 
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug 2013 View:
Connections, in both directions
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Directed by Irvin Kershner
influenced The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
Themes Characters
It's traditional for the middle part of a trilogy to be darker than the other installments (think "The Empire Strikes Back").
Indeed, you have to go all the way back to "The Godfather Part II," "The Empire Strikes Back" or "Superman 2" to find a sequel that flows so naturally out of its setup or expands on its themes with such old-fashioned storytelling verve and satisfaction.
But whereas Fellowship did a nice job of balancing quieter moments with the bombast, this action-packed installment often treats its expository scenes as asides (too many good actors — McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Miranda Otto — are given the short shrift in this outing); what's more, the movie doesn't deepen or expand the tale's themes as masterfully as The Empire Strikes Back added to Star Wars' mystique.
…the dark middle films of Lucas and Spielberg’s Indiana Jones trilogy and of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films are the weakest in their respective series…
No movie creature has been as mesmerizing since the initial appearance of Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back.”
Sort of ET meets Scooby-Doo, the character is set to become an audience favourite as Yoda did in the second Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back.
And, too, it’s a corker of an action/monster movie: part RKO serial (natch); part square-jawed, testosterone infused manly romp; and part classic journey into the unknown that recalls and references, surprisingly and splendidly, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – "Mistah Kong – he dead."
The dialogue is the weakest element and secondary characters, such the young crewman (Jamie Bell) who lifts a copy of "Heart of Darkness" from the New York Public Library, don't add much.
While at sea we meet the grizzled captain of the ship (Thomas Kretschmann); Hayes (Evan Parke), the African-American first mate; Jimmy (Jaime Bell), a castaway who is reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; and Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler), the dashing and egocentric leading man.
New Zealander Peter Jackson of the Lord of the Rings trilogy fame, obviously thinks otherwise and forges ahead with this $200 million budgeted splashy eye-popping special effects extravaganza that mixes schlock and art (shamelessly alluding many times to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," when the two sea stories couldn't be farther apart), and a hokey love story between a young woman so desperate for protection in the cruel world that she falls for a 50-foot gorilla.
Young Jimmy (Jamie Bell) is reading Joseph Conrad’s journey-into-madness classic “Heart of Darkness” and discusses it with father figure Hayes (Evan Parke) as they unwittingly enter into their own horrific adventure.
Jurassic Park (1993)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced King Kong (2005), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Visuals Plot
The dinos are right up to the "Jurassic Park" level.
After a rather slow build-up - it takes almost an hour until we make it to Skull Island - "King Kong" becomes "Jurassic Park" on steroids.
Jackson balances these tender moments with slam-bang action sequences the likes of which haven't been seen since Jurassic Park or Titanic -- and surpasses them.
To try to make up, he crams the island with a Macy's Parade of CGI behemoths, Jurassic Park rejects all, before pausing long enough so the ooga-booga dark-skinned natives can snatch the white woman.
Of course, in all previous versions of Kong, Skull Island has been a haven for prehistoric fauna, but who knew that Jackson would take that as his cue to make a movie that, for most of its second hour, feels like a cross between Jurassic Park and that ersatz insect-world docudrama, The Hellstrom Chronicle?
They come across as something less than believable — more like escapees from Jurassic Park than anything to do with King Kong — and the effects in the frankly preposterous stampede are wanting.
Odd Thomas’ self-aware expositional humor and translucent, shimmering CGI mayhem bring to mind Peter Jackson’s first shot at the major leagues, The Frighteners .
The borrowed plot, reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners, promises a mash up of pulp detective story and supernatural chiller, but in the clumsy hands of Sommers the result is an affected, self-consciously kooky film – curiously monotone from start to finish.
Most of the time, the movie carries the same kind of low wattage charm that Peter Jackson's "The Frighteners" brought almost twenty years ago.
It's like a really lazy rip off of Peter Jackson 's " The Frighteners " if it was made 18 years too late.
Star Wars (1977)
Directed by George Lucas
influenced The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Themes Visuals
In unveiling the Holy Grail for action-fantasy aficionados, director and co-writer Peter Jackson has begun a series to rival Star Wars in the pantheon.
"Fellowship" feels like every other "good versus evil" big-budget epic of $90m plus that has ever been filmed, including "Star Wars."
Before it had reached its second week of release, it had already been anointed as the Star Wars of new era, a populist fantasy of extraordinary visual grandeur, the film that graduated high fantasy from the realm of tacky '80s adventures and kids' films to real, actual cinema.
We saw this pattern play out once, with "Star Wars," and now, alas, it begins again, with "The Hobbit," a movie that is exactly one Jar Jar Binks away from being as bad as "The Phantom Menace."
So while I trusted Jackson I also had flashes of George Lucas' prequel trilogy misfire to his (now Disney's) "Star Wars" saga.
And as big-screen prologue moments go, Bilbo's acquisition of Gollum's precious ring of power may be second only to Darth Vader's first hissy breath at the end of George Lucas' "Star Wars" prequels.
The Other (1972)
Directed by Robert Mulligan
influenced The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
But who will spot the references to Robert Mulligan’s The Other and Henry Hathaway’s How the West Was Won?
My Summer of Love (2005)
Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
influenced by Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Themes Plot
Akin to 1994's "Heavenly Creatures" without the murder and fantasy sequences -- and with a twist of distrust hanging in the air -- "My Summer of Love" is a squirmy parable about two 17-year-old girls from opposite ends of the social spectrum who find in each other's company a powerful but uneasy release from their individual angst.
There are shades of Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures here, as well as echoes of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers.
In this regard, My Summer of Love calls to mind other recent sapphically inclined coming-of-age films: i.e., Show Me Love, Lost and Delirious, The Dreamlife of Angels, and Heavenly Creatures.
Peter Jackson explored one in his incendiary 1994 "Heavenly Creatures," and now Polish-born British director Pawel Pawlikowski gives us another in the exceptional "My Summer of Love," a film as different from its Sandra Dee teensploitation title as its two protagonists are from each other.
Director Pawel Pawlikowski, whose last film, "Last Resort," was a minor revelation (as well as Paddy Considine's first starring role), has chosen to adapt a novel (by Helen Cross) which demands comparison to "Heavenly Creatures," Peter Jackson's better film from 1994.
How the West Was Won (1962)
Directed by John Ford
influenced The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
But who will spot the references to Robert Mulligan’s The Other and Henry Hathaway’s How the West Was Won?
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Directed by David Lean
influenced The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Visuals
You could even throw in more weighty epics like Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" or David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia."
Artistically delivering beyond anyone’s imagination on one of the biggest gambles in Hollywood history, this $330 million masterpiece takes its rightful place among such classics as “The Wizard of Oz,” “Gone With the Wind” and “Lawrence of Arabia.”
His gift hasn't wavered - a series of bonfires to summon the riders of Rohan to the aid of Minas Tirith has a thrilling immensity as astounding as anything in "Lawrence of Arabia."
Before you toss me to the Orcs, fancy lads though they may be, understand that I agree that Jackson’s adaptations are indeed genius – no other epic since David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia has managed the kind of emotionally crunchy and just downright popcorn-pure exhilaration as The Lord of the Rings, flawlessly combining state-of-the-art effects with a streamlined (compared to the novels, anyway) storyline and some of the most engaging acting in a hobbit’s age – and for pure story payoff, they trump Star Wars, The Matrix, and all of the Andy Hardy films combined.
The final battle at Helm's Deep is nothing short of awe-inspiring; it's a cinematic achievement on a par with Ben Hur's chariot race, Lawrence of Arabia's equally outsized desert conflicts, and the final raid on Lucas' Death Star.
District 9 (2009)
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
influenced by Braindead (1992), Bad Taste (1987), Meet the Feebles (1989)
Characters Visuals
Wikus is played by Sharlto Copley as a mix of Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy and Lionel Cosgrove, the dweeby but ultimately heroic protagonist of Peter Jackson�s Dead Alive.
I’ve always been a fan of Peter Jackson (going back to “Bad Taste,” “Meet the Feebles,” and “Dead Alive”).
The casting of Copley is problematic: He's not really an actor; his resume is heavy on producing, directing and effects work, and his overeager hamming would be better suited to a movie such as "Dead Alive," the Peter Jackson zombie romp.
But Jackson knew how to have fun with such grody romps as Dead Alive and Bad Taste.
Wikus is ultimately not very different from the hero of Jackson’s 1992 splatter comedy Dead Alive (aka Braindead), while the officials here are similar to a number of Jackson characters.
I’ve always been a fan of Peter Jackson (going back to “Bad Taste,” “Meet the Feebles,” and “Dead Alive”).
Triumph of the Will (1935)
Directed by Leni Riefenstahl
influenced The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Visuals
In "The Two Towers," he cribs an iconic image of massed troops from Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda reverie, "Triumph of the Will," but the allusion loses its punch when you realize that another shot of goose-stepping troops has been lifted from "The Wizard of Oz." Tolkien built his story on foundation myths; Jackson builds his on movies: The film's most charming new creature, a mossy shepherd named Treebeard, walks like the heron described by Tolkien but looks like a relation of the animated trees in "Oz."
It's all very satisfying in a geometric, "Triumph of the Will" sort of way.
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)
Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner
influenced by Braindead (1992)
Visuals Themes
There are surface elements in Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead that feel familiar — the “monsters” have a distinct 28 Days Later-vibe to them, the energetic camerawork echoes Dead Alive-era Peter Jackson — and you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking movies about the zombie apocalypse have passed their saturation point, but creativity, talent and personality go a long way towards making the mundane feel fresh and exciting.
The model they're hawking is a lively crossbreed of Peter Jackson -style gore comedy of manners (a la "Dead Alive") and "Mad Max" post-apocalypse machine punk, in which brooding antihero Barry (Jay Gallagher), forced to sacrifice his turned wife and daughter, must traverse a zombiefied outback to rescue his sister Brooke (Bianca Bradey), who's been kidnapped by sadistic paramilitaries and subjected to a psycho doctor's evil experiments.
Ran (1985)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
influenced The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Visuals
You could even throw in more weighty epics like Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" or David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia."
If the Smaug havoc recalls Fritz Lang’s fantastical Die Nibelungen diptych, this grandiose blitzkrieg seems like a riff on Akira Kurosawa’s Ran with its symmetrical attack formations, stirring forward charges, and sobering body count.
Akira Kurosawa once told me that when he designed the color-coded armies in Ran , he used ideas he’d developed for an aborted adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.”
Like George Lucas before him, Jackson has unmistakably brushed up on his Kurosawa, and there is at least one image here — of elf warriors leaping over the backs of dwarves and into a head-on orc charge — that could pass as an outtake from “Ran.”
The Odyssey (2026)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Visuals Characters
Akin to Peter Jackson’s first three Lord of the Rings films, Nolan makes brilliant use of practical filmmaking techniques.
I couldn’t help but wish I was watching the Battle of Helm’s Deep from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers…
…the giant Laestrygonians, who here eschew man eating for a ton of ass kicking in a fight that feels like a Middle Earth outtake from The Lord of the Rings…
Akin to Peter Jackson’s first three Lord of the Rings films, Nolan makes brilliant use of practical filmmaking techniques.
Nolan's Polyphemus is an uncanny mix of human and monster, similar to a giant Gollum.
If “Night of the Living Dead” is the granddaddy of all zombie movies, than surely George A. Romero’s 1978 sequel “Dawn of the Dead” is the granddaddy of all wacky shoot-em-up zombie movies, spawning countless others including the outrageous splatter-fest “Dead Alive” by Oscar-winner Peter Jackson.
While the concept may have looked good on paper, in execution it plays too much like something from Peter Jackson's splatter comedy Dead Alive, and is unintentionally funny.
Still, Dawn of the Dead leaves us feeling mildly ambivalent toward the genre, a knee-jerk result of having seen too many over-the-top zombie films in the ensuing quarter century since the release of the original -- including Lord of the Rings maestro Peter Jackson's gore-splendent zombiefest Dead Alive (which featured, among other things, a marauding intestinal tract), and Dan O'Bannon's deliriously entertaining satire Return of the Living Dead.
Tolkien (2019)
Directed by Dome Karukoski
influenced by The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Characters Themes Visuals
None of the other lads are given much definition — the older versions are played by Anthony Boyle, Tom Glynn-Carney and Patrick Gibson — but as a whole we take them as the nascent brotherhood that will later become The Fellowship of the Ring .
The LoTR allusions here are not subtle, and they’re our first reminder that this is a work of fiction based on a legendary man’s now-legendary life, not a strict biography.
A brief scene on the battlefield is clearly aping The Dead Marshes from Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers.
Wicked: For Good (2025)
Directed by Jon M. Chu
influenced by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Themes
The Lord of the Rings trilogy felt like the perfect length, while The Hobbit movies felt stretched out and mostly unnecessary, and that’s what we have here with Wicked: For Good.
And if we really want to take it back in time, perhaps to a film more “Wicked”-adjacent, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” clocked in well past three hours, and that is to say nothing of the popularity of its extended versions.
Like Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “Wicked” should be considered as one sweeping, five-hour canvas.
Fans of movie musicals (me!) needed a multi-part epic to match the Lord of the Rings films and other serialized blockbusters.
Like Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “Wicked” should be considered as one sweeping, five-hour canvas.
Like Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “Wicked” should be considered as one sweeping, five-hour canvas.
Time Bandits (1981)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
influenced The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
Visuals Characters
If the first Hobbit felt a lot like Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits , this one feels perhaps more like Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys , albeit with more slapstick and other physical humor akin to Brazil .
The dwarves remain a squabbling, loudmouthed, ridiculous bunch, distinguished from each other largely by their silly hats and sillier facial hair, and not much more competent or distinguished than the band of little people in Time Bandits .
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Directed by George Lucas
influenced The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
Visuals
A life-or-death chase where orcs pursue Radagast and his rabbit-drawn sledge turns into a giddy, gibe-strewn event that strongly recalls the pod race in The Phantom Menace , and not just because it’s almost entirely CGI.
But the first one, for all its indulgences, is far superior to another much-hyped prequel — George Lucas’ “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.’’
Like George Lucas, with “The Phantom Menace,” he is constructing a six-film saga in peculiar order.
Clearly a new approach was needed this time around--one that del Toro presumably would have supplied had he remained at the helm--and seeing how the original story was initially designed to be a lighter work aimed at younger readers, a sunnier take could have been utilized without getting the fan base unnecessarily riled up with accusations of selling out to the kiddie market as George Lucas did with "The Phantom Menace."
In other words “An Unexpected Journey” may as well be “The Phantom Menace” and God help us all if the next two movies aren’t better than this one.
…fter years stuck in development hell due to the MGM bankruptcy crisis, the most anticipated prequel to come out of Hollywood since “The Phantom Menace” has finally arrived in theaters, although not exactly in the manner that most people were expecting.
As in Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners (to which the plot bears slight resemblance), it’s clear that directors Mike Ahern and Edna Loughman have given thought to the rules of their ghosts and gifted individuals (much of which is made clear in hilarious, VHS-fuzzy clips of the late Vincent).
Ghostly comedies come in all shapes and sizes from the blockbuster-sized Ghostbusters (1984) to the under-appreciated The Frighteners (1994), but the best always seem to share the common trait of pairing their supernatural shenanigans with engaging and likable characters.