Peter Jackson: what the hell happened?

Does anyone remember when Peter Jackson made hilariously over-the-top horror films like Bad taste and Braindead with a wry and knowing sense of humour? Does anyone remember his surprisingly tender and intelligent drama about troubled teenagers, Heavenly Creatures? Does anyone remember his hugely entertaining, funny and smart Hollywood debut, the supernatural thriller The Frighteners? In short, does anyone remember when Peter Jackson was good?

OK, Lord Of The Rings was a mighty achievement - granted - and his sense of the macabre was well utilised in bringing Tolkien's epic to the screen. But how much you liked the films depended a great deal upon how much you liked the books. I read and enjoyed the trilogy when I was a teenager but my tastes have moved on considerably since then; so by the time Jackson's film adaptation arrived I was not especially interested anymore. They were extremely well-made movies and I enjoyed them but they are not films that I will return to again and again.

And then Jackson decided to become some kind of celluloid remake factory and gave us King Kong. Not only that, he gave us three fucking hours of it. The original King Kong from 1933 was a great story told in 100 minutes - what possible reason could there have been to double the length? OK, sure, the special effects of the original look very primitive compared to what can be achieved today but there is still plenty of striking and iconic imagery. I'm not saying that Jackson's version was bad - it was was much, much, much better than the 1976 remake - but it all felt so unnecessary.

Not as unnecessary as a remake of The Dambusters, though, but that's what Jackson is planning to do next. Yup, Jackson will produce a remake of the 1954 British war movie The Dambusters. Why, for fuck's sake? He apparently saw it as a child and loved it. Jackson says his remake will be "as authentic as possible and as close to the spirit of the original as possible". What's the point of that? Why not just watch the original? Why not just finance a re-release of the 1954 version instead of spending millions of dollars on an utterly pointless and cynical remake? Leave it alone!

Besides, in the context of a world currently shaken by violence and an ill-conceived war on terror, is there a place for such war films? Won't it simply reinforce the erroneous notion that "we" are fighting a clearly defined enemy rather than a widespread ideology with no single leader? Won't it simply make people believe that, hey, all we gotta' do is build some fancy weapon and go destroy some specific building somewhere and the world will be safe once again?

On many levels, I don't think the world needs a glossy CGI remake of The Dambusters. And I want the old Peter Jackson back, the wickedly mischievous little imp.