His Success: Jackson started his career in the mid-1980s with a string of bizarre movies such as Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Braindead, which became instant cult favourites and have endured over the years. Then Heavenly Creatures helped elevate him substantially thanks to wide critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. After acclaimed movies The Frighteners and Forgotten Silver, he of course released his magnum opus, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which grossed a combined $2.9 billion and won Jackson three Oscars for the final movie, Return of the King (Best Director, Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay). Hollywood's next master filmmaker had arrived. 2005's critical and commercial hit King Kong came next, but after that, everything started to go sour. His Failures: Jackson's first foray into non-blockbuster filmmaking in 13 years, The Lovely Bones, fell far short of its Oscar hype thanks to a flimsy script (co-written by Jackson himself) which neutered the essence of the source material, and it didn't make too much money either. Jackson then followed up with his wildly divisive Hobbit trilogy, which was of course financial gangbusters (also making $2.9 billion worldwide), but received a decidedly more mixed reception from critics and fans, who felt that Jackson was milking too much out of Tolkein's relatively short novel. When Jackson decided to split The Hobbit from two films into three, nobody from the studio to the fans themselves were going to tell him no: Warner Bros. wanted more money, and the fans allowed themselves to be exploited by actually paying to see all three movies rather than waiting for Netflix. And sadly, all this has done is reinforce Jackson's perception of his work, and tell the rest of Hollywood that people love these ridiculous split movie franchises. How He Can Save His Career: Get back to basics and tell an interesting story with a much smaller budget, back on the scale of something like Braindead or Heavenly Creatures. Wouldn't it be awesome to see the Oscar-winning director helming another splatter film? With The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun next on his slate, however, it's unlikely he'll be shaking off the big budgets any time soon, at least unless he encounters a Wachowski-like crash and burn, which seems unlikely given the commercial power of the words "from the director of The Lord of the Rings".
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
