Peter Jackson's take on film-revisionism on the example of Lord of the Rings

[Source: Digg Dialogg with Peter Jackson]

Interviewer: "Now that it has been around ten years since you actually shot footage for Lord of the Rings, is there anything that you can see in retrospect that you would have changed?"

 

Peter Jackson: "Sure. I can't give you a specific example, but absolutely. You know, if I was making Lord of the Rings today I would do a lot of things differently. Because you just naturally after ten years.

You get more expierence, the technology has improved, there's things we couldn't do ten years ago that we could do much easier now. But, however ... the other part of the answer is that I wouldn't want to change a thing.

Because any movie represents a snapshot in time, it's you freezing a moment in time, which represents the experience of the filmmaker at that time, it represents popular culture at that time, it represents the level of technology at that time, and you know the Lord of the Rings movies that we made, they belong to 2001, 2002, 2003.

They belong to those years and collectively our expierence as it was at that time. They would be different today. And you know, its not about making them different. I mean, those movies exist and they should stay the exact way they are.

Just wanted to share this with you guys. Hope it's not too far off-topic, since it's not directly associated with StarWars.

He's spot on with my own view. Also-

When things have significantly improved, then, and only then, perhaps, and just perhaps, it is worth considering, and only considering, a full on re-make by a new fresh director for a new fresh generation. Or reboot or whatever the buzzword becomes in the next 50 years. IMO Star Trek is a good example of getting it "right".

Personally I still prefer Bakshi's LOTR, I just think the narrative is presented in a less boring manner. Pity he never finished the story.

I agree with Peter Jackson, however in the defense of (ugh) George Lucas, Peter Jackson's movies are less than 10 years old, whereas Star Wars was 20 years old when it was "Lucased," and the original production was pre-digital.

I don't hate the concept of the SE trilogy-- in fact, for me some of the enhancements make the movies more enjoyable for me. However, I think that it was better in concept than in execution, and many of Lucas's changes (not to be confused with "enhancements") are downright aggravating to watch (case in point: Greedo). Also, the fact that Lucas is not yet making the original versios available in acceptable picture quality, for me is what makes the SE's cross the line from perfectionism to revisionism.

The SE is kind of neat when you view it as it was: a 20th anniversary special for the fans to show how the films might look with modern effects put in and some of the dated effects re-done, plus some things just for fun's sake (i.e. Jabba, Han's run-in with the stormtroopers), along with restored picture and digital surround.

Fun concept--plus a theatrical showing? No wonder I saw it six times in theatres in 1997.

Where it crosses the line, as was said, was when this becomes an excuse to literally let the original film rot to death.  And where Jackson is different than Lucas is that he can accept that his film was made at a certain point in time and certain time in his life--the SW SE is fun, but it should never let you forget this. It has, and thats why the original is no more. Lucas doesn't have to acknowledge that SW was a film he made in 1977 when he was 33 years old, because he can just look at the SE and live in the fantasy.

Well said!

My opinion may not matter much, but I realize that a lot of people on here grew up with the original trilogy.  I grew up with the prequel trilogy.  TPM came out when I was in 6th grade.  I went to see it.  I LOVED it.

I was already a huge Star Wars fan.  I still have my original pre-1997 VHS trilogy which I watched over and over as a kid.  In fact, ANH is barely playable because I saw it so many times.  As a kid growing up with the prequel trilogies, the OT started making less sense.  Who the heck was that guy playing the Emperor in ESB?!  Why does technology look so much more advanced earlier in the timeline?!  Etc.

Then the DVDs came out.  (I was unaware of the SE VHSs until afterward).  I LOVED most of the changes.  The new CGI elements were cool and helped link the two trilogies together.

Then Attack of the Clones came out.  O.. M.. G.. Terrible movie.  So bad, I did not even see ROTS til it came out on DVD.  I just hated it.  And then it hit me.  The prequels started sucking because they LOOKED so different.  Lucas really should have made the sets look more like 70's sci-fi rather than 21st century sci-fi.  SW takes place in another galaxy, not on Earth.  Who cares if it doesn't match up with our timeline?  Yet he didn't. 

In the end, that's what killed the PT.  The Phantom Menace still remains my favorite of the prequels because of the nostalgia.  Most of you probably love the OT because of the nostalgia.  Kids growing up now may love all 6 movies with all of their alterations because it will be nostalgic for them.

In truth, that nostalgic value alone should never have been tampered with.  Instead of trying to make the OT match the PT, Lucas should have put some thought into the movies and made the PT look more outdated.  Maybe not the special effects, but certainly the sets.  It would have "made sense" for everybody.  Instead, we get 6 movies that he will never be happy with because no one thought of the awkward clash between 70's and 21st century sets.

I'm glad Peter Jackson thinks differently.  He recently signed up to direct the 2 Hobbit movies after all.  I'm sure that he will make them reminiscent of LOTR rather than create new creatures and themes and then try to sneak them into LOTR.

Cleopatra said:

I'm glad Peter Jackson thinks differently.  He recently signed up to direct the 2 Hobbit movies after all.

Is this confirmed?  I thought he just said he would do it as a last resort if they couldn't find anyone else.

They can't have possibly asked everyone yet...

...I'm pretty sure Chaz Solo would be up for it.

Easterhay said:

The reason, though, that the prequels look so differently to the originals is that we're seeing The Republic in its prime

I disagree.  The biggest source of the visual difference between the prequels and the originals is the over-use of blue screen and computer generated imagery in the prequels.  George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola talk about the idea of a "used future" in the special features to THX-1138.  Just because the Republic was at its height does not mean that everything would have looked the way it did in the prequels: there should still be more of a used feel in the Old Republic, which, we are led to believe, had been around for quite a while.

Very well, greenscreen it is!

1. The Republic would still be old in TPM, so I do not see why we should limit analysis to films following TPM.
2. I do not think that the greenscreen does show a much more used universe in AOTC and ROTS.
3. Even if it did, it would not affect the view that I expressed that the biggest source of visual difference between trilogies was the excessive use of CGI in the prequels.

Yes; let us agree to disagree.  Since you know what I am going to say anyway, it saves time.

skyjedi2005 said:

Yes the theatrical cut was restored on a second DVD release,

Is this the seamless-branching limited edition release?  What was the quality like on the NTSC release, if you do not mind my asking?  I hope it was better than the original theatrical DVD.

Easterhay said:

The reason, though, that the prequels look so differently to the originals is that we're seeing The Republic in its prime - well in TPM we are; watch AOTC and see the scuff marks all over the floor in The Jedi Temple; see how refugees now have to travel from planet to planet to find work - this is the beginning of the recession.  Come ROTS and Palpatine is ploughing all the money into the war effort.  So, naturally, we start to move towards the look and feel of A New Hope, were martial law is crushing the people and everything has a delapidated look to it.

I always thought this would make sense except for one big problem - the SE "improvements" that George threw into the OT.  For just one example, at the end of ROTJ we see the celebration montage, and it looks like the prequels, not the originals.

Easterhay said:

The reason, though, that the prequels look so differently to the originals is that we're seeing The Republic in its prime - well in TPM we are; watch AOTC and see the scuff marks all over the floor in The Jedi Temple; see how refugees now have to travel from planet to planet to find work - this is the beginning of the recession.  Come ROTS and Palpatine is ploughing all the money into the war effort.  So, naturally, we start to move towards the look and feel of A New Hope, were martial law is crushing the people and everything has a delapidated look to it.

 I'd say that's reading in to the films meaning that isn't apparent by the films themselves.

TPM looks slick and shiny, AOTC looks slick and shiny and so does ROTS. It looks slick and shiny because CG looks that way naturally, and also because digital cameras render things that way. If you use CG to the extent that Lucas did and then use a digital camera to capture it, its just partly inevitable. Thats why films like 300 and Sin City have similar qualities, except there it was supposed to be a deliberately unrealistic stylization, rather than the failure to emulate reality using the most sophisticated technology possible.

That's true, but there still is a certain level of "phoniness" to it all. Its not that things are "upper crust", as you said, its the way its presented, it simply suffers from the video game syndrome. In retrospect, TPM actually holds up pretty well, and that's because they built real locations and real sets and shot on film; even though it has total "video game" moments like the Gungan-droid battle, which I never for a second believed was real, most of the film has a visceral reality to it. AOTC, on the other hand, feels like the worlds highest budget video game, and while ROTS is a great improvement they never truely got over that digital hump, ROTS made its 80% of the way there but not quite enough, and probably a lot of its success has to do with the fact that they went with a battered sylization to bridge closer to the OT, rather than the quality of FX and set construction itself.

It reminds me of two films that have a very similar colour pallete, environment, and technological time period. Which is Troy, and Kingdom of Heaven. When you compare the special effects, the costumes and the set design, Troy looks like an extended version of Xena, or some made-for-TV movie while Kingdom of Heaven looks like it could have been a documentary in its level of realism, even though they both were made in almost the exact same year.