From New Zealand to Hollywood: The Rise of Sir Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson celebrated his initial success with splatter films. Today, thanks to “The Lord of the Rings”, he is certain of a place in the director’s Olympus.

Sir Peter Jackson (60) knows the world today mainly as the director of “The Rings of the Rings”. With the three-part film adaptation of the fantasy novel by JRR Tolkien (1892-1973), which was awarded a total of 17 Oscars, the filmmaker, who will turn 60 on October 31, achieved one of the greatest box office successes in recent film history in the 2000s .

Jackson’s career began much earlier, far from the Hollywood dream factory. In his native New Zealand, which he made the home of hobbits, elves and wizards for both “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogy, Jackson made a name for himself with splatter horror films in the mid-1980s . They became the cornerstone of a truly impressive career.

The garden became the scene of the Second World War

As a young boy who grew up near the New Zealand capital Wellington on the North Island, Peter Jackson discovered his passion for filmmaking thanks to a Super 8 camera as a gift. From then on he enthusiastically shot his first films, including “Planet of the Peters”, for which the young director turned his own garden into a battlefield with trenches. Convinced of his skills, Jackson dropped out of school at the age of 17 and from then on devoted himself entirely to the film trade.

His first works were mainly short films. One of them developed over the years into a first longer production entitled “Bad Taste” (1987) – a splatter film of the best kind in which Jackson himself played a double role and which first made him known in his home country.

However, it took several horror films and a change of genre before it also attracted a great deal of international attention. For the drama “Heavenly Creatures” with the later “Titanic” star Kate Winslet (46) in a leading role, the son of British parents won a coveted award in 1994: the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. A first Oscar nomination (“Best Screenplay”) was also included.

From genre hero to Lord of the Oscars

The transition from genre virtuoso to mainstream newcomer was made by Peter Jackson, who has been married to screenwriter Fran Walsh (62) since 1987, thanks in part to “The Frighteners” (1996). The horror comedy with leading actor Michael J. Fox (60, “Back to the Future”) received some devastating expert reviews, but was quite successful with viewers.

Anyway, Jackson didn’t have much time to deal with negative feedback at this point. Instead he started preparing for his most extensive production from 1997 – and like many of his projects he shot the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (2001-2003) in his native New Zealand. Even today, the country in the Southwest Pacific benefits immensely from Jackson’s Middle-earth staging. The Hobbiton film set, for example, is one of the biggest attractions and brings tourists from all over the world to the “land of the long, white cloud”, as New Zealand is also known.

The success of the epic, which exceeded all expectations at the beginning of the new millennium, should leave even the experienced director speechless today. With a total of 30 Oscar nominations, the “The Companions” (2001), “The Two Towers” (2002) and “The Return of the King” (2003) won the blockbusters with Viggo Mortensen (63), Elijah Wood (40) and Orlando Bloom (44) as winners 17 times. The final third film alone won eleven times in 2004 and was able to prevail against the competition in the most important categories “Best Film” and “Best Director”.

With the “Hobbit” trilogy, Peter Jackson rode the Tolkien wave again

Epically staged single films and multi-part series still characterize the oeuvre of Peter Jackson, who received the highest honor of his homeland in 2012 with his appointment as a member of the “Order of New Zealand”. More often, however, they could not meet the high expectations of the critics – like “King Kong” in 2005. And the three “The Hobbit” films (2012-2014) left the Tolkien disciples partly disappointed. Their considerable commercial success is largely due to the huge hype that the name Peter Jackson alone is sparking today.

The New Zealander always dares to venture into other realms, apparently he does not want to be tied to the fantasy epic. One example is the mystery drama “In my Heaven” (2009). The film adaptation of the novel with today’s Golden Globe winner Saoirse Ronan (27, “Lady Bird”) is all about a murdered girl who is trapped in a kind of in-between world and tries to protect her sister who is still alive from her murderer. Together with the legendary director Steven Spielberg (74, “The White Shark”), Jackson also dared to produce a film adaptation of the “Tintin” comic series. “The Adventures of Tintin – The Secret of the Unicorns” was released in 2011, and a sequel is planned with Jackson in the director’s chair.

In 2021, he whisks Beatles fans back to 1969

Most recently, the father of two, who has been immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame since 2014, demonstrated another great talent – as a documentary filmmaker. In 2018 he illuminated the life of British soldiers in World War I in “They Shall Not Grow Old”. The work was dedicated to Jackson, who was privately very interested in the years 1914 to 1918 and who owned more than 40 airworthy combat aircraft from this period, to his grandfather, who served in the war.

In 2021 the documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back” about the creation process of the twelfth and final Beatles album “Let It Be” (1970) will premiere at Disney +. The three episodes, for which Peter Jackson used almost 60 hours of footage from 1969 that had never been shown and restored, will be available on the mouse company’s streaming service from November 25th, 26th and 27th.

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