Here Today... Gone To Hell!

From BBC News:

The decision to drop Oscar-winner Peter Jackson as director of The Hobbit film has led to an online petition of 1,100 people asking for him to be reinstated.
A website has also been set up urging a boycott of producer New Line Cinema, and fans have used weblogs and forums to question the studio's judgement.

Jackson refused to discuss a follow-up to his Lord of the Rings trilogy until a dispute about DVD royalties was over.

But New Line said it had only "limited time" and was proceeding without him.

A petition created this week on the Petition Online website - and signed by more than 1,100 people - called for The Hobbit to be filmed "the way it was meant to be or not at all".

The petition said that a Hobbit movie without Peter Jackson and his writers and special effects team was not what fans wanted.

"The characters and scenery will all be new and unfamiliar and props, costumes, and the backdrop of New Zealand will all be lost," it said.

"Most likely even the original actors will not sign on to do it - can you imagine someone other than Ian McKellen playing Gandalf the Grey?"


Sign the petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/hobnow/petition.html

I was #1695!

I love what Peter Jackson did with the LOTR trilogy, I think it's only right that he be brought back since he knows what he is doing.

I signed, # 1699

In fact the Hobbit was my favorite book of the series, so if some other director ruined it, I would be royally pissed off.  >:(

THIS IS CRAPPY NEWS
 :rant:

People protesting over Hobbits. There's a cause I can get behind :P

Wow - interesting.

I love Peter Jackson's LotR films but maybe a new director would be better for this film.? The Hobbit has a very different feel to the other 3 books, it's a lot more simple and...pleasent.? It's all very English, you know?? I can't see Jackson pulling it off - he'll make it MASSIVE and do a MASSIVE battle scene and it'll all be irritatingly MASSIVE.

However, the loss of New Zealand and the props and cast would be a MASSIVE blow and for that reason alone I will sign this petition.? I don't trust Hollywood not to ruin everything!

#2238 :-*

Agree with most of what you say. I thought Peter Jackson blew LOTR though - the tone was so different to the books. Well, thats my 2 and only cents on the subject.

I signed it, i loved fellowship, to me the that was the one that was closest to the book in terms of feel, the other two could do with some big changes, especially two towers, i though that was very average. If he comes back for the hobbit, i hope he gets it right.

Couldn't agree more.  The first one was pure genius, the 2nd one was awesome, but return of the king, while it has its moments was too much.  And King Kong was just ridiculously long and had a lot of scenes that could have been cut.  Still, I love the look Jackson brought to the stories and he did have great respect for the source material.  So long as they get ian mckellan back though it should still kick ass.

first one was indeed the best one.
the two others were way off. you could tell the studios were behind him.

Money talks and..

New Line offered Jackson a deal, if he drops the law suit he can direct The Hobbit and get money from it, but for him thats not what making movies is about.

I don't know what you people have smoked who think he couldn't pull of The Hobbit, offcourse he could and he'd make it with the same way he did LOTR, what he did was, he transfered the books to movies that work, offcourse there are some differences in the books and the films but I haven't heard anyone bitching about how there's no Bombadil in FOTR.

Kong was long but he did pay some 20 million dollars from his own pocket to shoot some scenes that he tought were important for the movie, I have no idea what those scenes were but this shows how much passion he has for making films.

oh people bitched, and they were right
FOTR was respectful to the books. the two others were insane. but we're not going on that matter again.

and i think we had enough of jackson's style, it's like too much chocolate, they should let someone else try it ...

What great news

The guy is a hack

I'm really pumped about the Hobbit now. Without Jacksons awful cgi work, total inability to edit footage and baffling attempts to drag everything past three hours the Hobbit might just be the film the LOTR films werent....

Update, again from BBC
Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films, has voiced dismay over the decision to drop Peter Jackson as director of The Hobbit.
"I'm very sad as I should have relished revisiting Middle Earth with Peter again," the actor wrote on his website.

"It's hard to imagine any other director matching his achievement in Tolkien country."

There's nearly 7,000 signatures now.  I know Jackson can be ham-fisted but I think it could go drastically 'hollywood' without him behind the helm.

You must be joking right?

Jackson did a fantastic job by remaining as true to Tolkiens work as possible...and the producers for sparing no expense, the team must reunite for the fil to be done properly IMO (that includes, Ian Holme, Ian McLellan, Andy Serkus and Hugo Weaving)

hope for the best

That's pretty crazy, that petition went up 5000 signatures over night... I wonder if people actually take notice to these things?

i signed - i loved the trilogy and think that jackson should DEF do the Hobbit.    he couldnt have made them shorter in length either, Izzy - imagine the outcrys that too much had been taken out of the books.  Have you read the books?? they are rammed full of content and I thought Jackson and his obviously exceptionally loyal cast put a shedload of feeling and care into it.  each to their own though.

wrong.

care to elaborate a bit on that :hihi: I've read the series 3 times and i thought he did great, there are some pretty shitty book adaptions out there, i wouldn't count LOTR as one of them...yeah sure there are a few parts made a bit too hollywood (Gimli/Legolas interatcion mostily) and a few things left out (return to the shire for one) but i really got no complaints about them in fact i miss my yearly trek to the theatres to see them, they are by far the best Fantasy Movies in existence IMO

unless of course you are more partial to Krull and Conan....maybe the wonderful Dungeons and Dragons movie :P

Well according to the reviews on IMDB.com i wasnt the only one to wonder if the effects in King Kong had been done ten years ago....

Seriously that film would have looked dated in 1995, i was embarrassed for Mr Jackson - go check the sequence where Kong breaks through the gate on monkey island or whatever cliche name it had, watch the people getting flung about and the general level of effects throughout that scene. Ghastly, just ghastly

...or better yet watch the scene in return of the king where Legolas ''surfs'' on those elephant things. Ye gods.....

i agree izzy there were some pretty cheesy parts....2 others are the skateboarding down the stairs bit in two towers or the counting off the kills between legolas and gimli.

but like i said previously ... look at the D&D movie....that is a perfect example of a really bad fantasy film, you can't hoently group LOTR with that trash :nervous:

Oh, so we're citing IMDB now, oh, eh, are we? We're trusting the judgement of IMDB users are we, yeah, eh, hey?

Well, in that case, then ROTK is the fourth best film ever made. Case closed, discussion over.



 ;D

Your right, look at Kong itself and it's photorealistic fur, those photorealistic things that ate Serkis, the old new york, Gollum, and all the other stuff Weta was able to accomplish just in the LOTR movies before any other effects company, including the effects power house ILM, much of the cgi work in Episode 2 is just simply bad, they did pull of Episode 3 a lot better, come on, I can understand if you didn't like those movies but atleast show some respect and give gredit where gredit is due (not sure if that sentence goes like that)

Seems like you have something personal against Jackson and everything that he has done, before FOTR came out I was like wtf, the guy who did Bad Taste is directing LOTR, and wtf, his own effects company Weta is doing the effects and John Williams ain't doing the score, wtf, this is going to be so bad, after hearing and reading the reviews I went to see if that movie could be that good and after seeing it, I have to say I changed my mind, Jackson, Weta and Shore did something amazing, and that didn't change in the two others.

Jackson is a movie maker of the best kind, he isn't set out to make money with movies, his set out to make entertainment with movies.

Actually the reference to the frightful IMDB was evidence that it wasnt just myself that had noticed the dated effects - i was initially concerend i was the only one who had

I did notice that....and i also noticed all the stuff around Kong

Mr Jackson was evidently so focused on the 2nd giant ape in his life (the first existing in his mirror) that he forgot about the rest of the effects. I assume the effects for Kong were so time consuming and expensive everything else was slightly lower on the list of priorities

I dont have anything against Peter Jackson, i just think he's a fairly unremarkable director

Watch Kong again, but watch whats around Kong, not just the ape - then tell me the effects are good

Have you seen Mr. Peter Jackson recently? Clearly not. He's lost a ton of weight.


Mate. You can find people, somewhere or other, that will agree with you on anything.

:-[ i liked those bits

Well it is getting pretty close to Christmas, I can think of one guy.

Signed number: 10041.? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

As the 'shat' says: "I can't get behind that!"

Peter Jackson should really be doing this one, it makes sense.

Nobody else than Jackson should direct this. Those people at New Line are insane.

he created on film everything Tolkien wrote. The whole Tolkien's world. He knows every piece of it.