I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands as of late and I decided to watch the 6 hours of Appendices that come with the extended editions. I have finally finnished and I can not believe how much work Peter Jackson, those guys and gals at WETA, and everyone else has invested into making the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. PJ is entering the realm of George Lucas and the amount of work he put into Start Wars…But I am wondering something: Star Wars has had a cult following since the late 70’s. Lord of the Rings has had a following since the late 50’s (I think)…Now put into film LOTR is completely epic…how does a man such as PJ do any better? He can’t possibly top LOTR…however, if he were to try what do you think he would/could try with? Meaning, what story or event or book would PJ try and bring to the size and eminence of LOTR, in film?
Yes.
He can’t. As Tolkien himself acknowledged (through Yavanna, in the Silmarillion), “Even for those who are mightiest under Ilúvatar there is some work that they may accomplish once, and once only.”
Coming soon to a theater near you: Peter Jackson’s King James Version of the Holy Bible. Included as extras on DVDs: the Apocrypha!
(Personally, I think Jackson’s film to beat in terms of quality is Heavenly Creatures. But it’s hardly epic.)
I think he already has. I love LOTR, and thing it really is the best film trilogy of any type I’ve seen. But I think his previous film “Heavenly Creatures” is better. I also think his film “Dead Alive” is more fun than LOTR, but probably not a better movie.
I think all future Jackson movies will judged against Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles.
Probably? Yikes! I disliked that film very much when I saw it as a teenager.
At least he keeps his foot out of his mouth and thus avoids the James Cameron A-Hole Syndrome.
I think LOTR was such an epic and in a class so removed from ‘normal’ movies that other works by Jackson won’t be able to be compared to it. (unless he tries to make some other epic just as large and as complicated, like…uh… the Foundation Trilogy?)
ahahaha… triology? We should be so lucky. Don’t get me wrong, the Foundation series were fascinating books with enthralling storylines but after a while you start to wonder if maybe they could compress two millenia just a wee bit more.
If I were him (and “Bob” knows I wish I were!), I wouldn’t even try. He’s proved he can do Epic as good or better than anyone. He knows his next movie, whatever it is, will get made for for the forseeable future. He’s got at least ten years of total creative freedom. He can do anything he wants, and he should.
Right now, he’s in kind of the same position the Beatles were in. They were extremely creative, the tops in their art form, and their huge commercial success gave them the freedom and the confidence to push the boundaries of the form and have it seen by a huge audience. Or he could revert to a formula and try to do the same thing over and over again. Or he could get the Big Head and turn out self-parodying slop. This is a very difficult position to be in, and very few people have managed to make it work: the Beatles, Mark Twain, Dickens, for example. It’s a short, very esteemed list. Notice the names “Lucas” and “Speilberg” are not there.
Personally, I’m looking forward to King Kong, but IMHO it’s the project after that one that will be big test. When he does Kong, he’ll have completed his “dream” projects and he will have to come up with a new idea.
Well, for starters, he could top it by filming ROTK with the Scouring…
(Not to say that LOTR were not the best films ever made.)
I think he can be like Speilberg and produce blockbuster after blockbuster and just be an all-around A-list guy… he doesn’t have the weight of a Bergman or a Minelli or even a Woody Allen - where everyone - at least serious critics and Industry folk - expect him to produce materpeice film school stuff that pushes the enevelope and innovates every time. The Cameron comparison is right on.
All he needs to do is King Kong, the Hobbit and X, X… each making +125 million and he will will continue to make those 100 most powerful people in Hollywood top 10 lists and have the power to make any project he wishes for the next 10 years.
I just don’t see WHY Kong needs to be re-made AGAIN.
So we can see a CGI Kong this time? (Already saw it in Mighty Joe Young)
So the story can be retold differently? (Already saw it in Jurassic Park II)
So why?
King Kong has always been Peter Jackson’s passion-the original movie was what inspired him to get into film making. I would say his desire to remake his childhood passion is his reason to remake the movie again. 
Why not remake King Kong? 30s adventure films are popular (Indy, the Mummy movies.) Giant monster movies are popular (even the much-maligned Godzilla made $200 million–imagine how much it could have made if it had been good!)
The vast majority of the public flat-out refuses to watch the original Kong because its an ancient B&W movie with, by modern standards, primitive effects. The various remakes and ripoffs range from horrible (the De Laurentis movies) to mediocre (Mighty Joe Young.) And just as with LOTR, the original classic has already been desecrated by an inferior version. Anything Jackson does can only be an improvement.
Anyway, how does Jackson top LOTR? Answer: by not trying to top it, and staying miles away from epic fantasy. Kong will be more of a traditional adventure story/Hollywood blockbuster, and after that Jackson has shown an interest in doing some smaller pictures.
Selznick made a gigantic mistake by trying to top Gone With The Wind with the similar Duel in the Sun; Spielberg, by contrast, has never let himself be defined by one genre and has hopped around trying a variety of things. Some have worked, some haven’t, but he’s never had his career defined by just one film.
As far as I understand, he probably has no plans to top LOTR. He’s proven himself as a commercial and critical success. He’s made enough off of this that he’ll never have to work again. And he’s such a maverick that I can easily see him going back to smaller pictures that INTEREST HIM regardless of how the moviegoing public will respond to them. One thing I know PJ is doing is refusing to move to Hollywood and become part of the system. He’d rather stay in New Zealand. And I certainly can’t blame him.
As vibrotronica says, if PJ is smart, he won’t try to top himself by doing anything that can even vaguely compared to LOTR. He can use his artistic freedom to take on “big” projects like King Kong, which will be similar to LOTR only in that it has lots of visual effects. Other than that, it’s totally different. The last thing PJ will want to do is try to adapt another classic epic, like Foundation or whatever, because of the inevitable “it doesn’t measure up” factor.
Me, I’m hoping he makes another zombie movie. 
Oh, bah.
He just has make the big-budget, 10-film, 40-hour version of the Silmarillion :D. Not only would it top LotR as an epic, it’ll keep him working until retirement ;).
- Tamerlane
That. Would. Be. SO FUCKING COOL!
With all love to LOTR…the Silmarillion was dry, dry, dry.
Ya done Tolkien good, PJ…walk away.
Maybe he can put back the missing reels in “Greed” that were stolen from Stroheim.
Silmarillion was better written than the LOTR series! (Maybe that speaks to Tolkein’s prowess as editor more than writer?) But most of the tales would not film well (NOTHING could be epic enough for their epicness, ifyouknowwhatimean). Possible exceptions: Beren and Luthien (of course,) and the War of Wrath (as animation.)