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My Movie Week... Mike Shaw

Among geeky, nerdy types, I’m a bit of an anomaly in that I really don’t care for Peter Jackson’s work on Lord of the Rings. You wouldn’t believe the sheer opprobrium I received when the films were released and my general reaction was ‘meh’. I had two problems with them.

Award-winning Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson
Award-winning Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson

Point one: the screenplay was structured so badly and the story told so poorly it was almost nonsensical in places. The argument friends would give was “Yes, but if you’d read the books…” to which I replied “I shouldn’t have to read the books for it to make sense, I’m watching a film, IT SHOULD STAND ALONE.”

Anyway, point two: the CGI was embarrassing. Jackson undoubtedly did some incredible work in finding locations that looked otherworldly and wrangling an enormous cast each with astonishing make-up; but then he’d cram in some computer-generated garbage and wrench the viewer away from the reality he had so carefully created.

Again, people weren’t particularly fond of that opinion either, but finally, I am vindicated.

Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn
Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn

Viggo Mortensen, the man whom everyone praised for his performance in the films as Aragorn has come out in support of my 13-year-old argument, saying that Jackson’s focus on special effects led to a “mess”.

The 55-year-old said: “Peter was always a geek in terms of technology but once he had the means to do it and the evolution of the technology really took off, he never looked back.

“In the first movie there’s sort of an organic quality to it, actors acting with each other and real landscapes – it’s grittier. The second movie already started ballooning, for my taste, and then by the third one there were a lot of special effects.”

Mortensen also came to my defense on the horrible, horrible, hateful, awful The Hobbit films, claiming they were like the Lord of the Rings series only “to the power of ten”.

He also described shooting the movies as “chaos” while saying the initial footage was “very sloppy”.

“It needed massive reshoots which we did, year after year,” he said. “But (Jackson) would have never been given the extra money to do those if the first one hadn’t been a huge success.”

I mean, it’s sad that he is unhappy with the films that made him who he is today and something must have happened between him and Jackson to lead to this attack, but on the other hand - hahahahahaha I was right all along and Aragorn is on my team.


Former Friends star Paul Rudd, here with Tina Fey, is in Ant Man
Former Friends star Paul Rudd, here with Tina Fey, is in Ant Man

And there’s been another falling out in Hollywood…

Ant Man was always a strange choice for a Marvel with a lot of internal arguments about whether it should be made at all. That fight was ultimately won, and then casting was the next battle. While the question over exactly who will be filling all the roles still hasn’t been answered, the project has been thrown into serious turmoil.

British director Edgar Wright has left the film due to ‘creative differences’, the catch-all term for ‘I hate that person and they hate me’.

However, despite the man who helped mastermind the entire project walking away, apparently the film’s proposed summer 2015 release date will not change, with a new (as yet unannounced director) already being tapped up.

Directors leave movies regularly, but this story is slightly more surprising than the standard ‘director flounces off’ story, because Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) has been attached to Ant Man for the last eight years.

He started work on the screenplay with Joe Cornish back in 2006 and has also shot test footage for the film and was more involved with the film than most directors are with big-budget movies.

His departure has even shocked his peers and Guardians Of The Galaxy director James Gunn has spoken about the situation.

Posting on his Facebook page, Gunn referred to the split as a “breakup”, saying that Wright and Marvel are both “friends” but expressing his sadness at seeing them go their different ways.

He wrote: “Sometimes you have friends in a relationship. You love each of them dearly as individuals and think they’re amazing people. But little by little you realize (sic), at heart, they aren’t meant to be together – not because there’s anything wrong with either of them, but they just don’t have personalities that mesh in a comfortable way.”

He concluded by saying that neither party is to blame and “not everyone belongs in a relationship together. It doesn’t mean they’re not wonderful people.”

I’ll let you know when a new director is in place. Marvel doesn’t have long though; Ant Man - currently starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly and Michael Douglas - is still set to open on July 17, 2015 in the US and the UK.

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