Peter Jackson: The Life Story Behind the Lord of the Rings Director

Peter Jackson was born on 31 October 1961 in Wellington, New Zealand, and he became one of the most successful directors in film history, the man who turned J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings into three films that won seventeen Academy Awards and changed fantasy cinema forever. He grew up in Wellington, in a working-class family, making short films with a Super 8 camera, and he became famous first for low-budget horror comedies, with titles such as Bad Taste and Braindead, that were as gory as they were funny. His career moved from splatter films to a serious drama, Heavenly Creatures, to the most ambitious trilogy ever made, and then to King Kong, The Hobbit, and a new career as a documentarian, restoring First World War footage and the Beatles’ Let It Be sessions. Peter Jackson’s story is about a boy from Wellington who loved monsters, and who grew up to make the biggest films in the world, without ever leaving home.

Wellington: A Boy With a Camera and a Love of Monsters

Peter Robert Jackson was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on Halloween, 31 October 1961, a fitting birthday for a director who would become famous for monsters, and he grew up in Pukerua Bay, a small coastal town north of Wellington, where his parents, William Jackson, a wages clerk, and Joan Jackson, a housewife, raised him and his younger sister. As a child he was fascinated by films, particularly the horror and fantasy films he watched on television, including the original King Kong from 1933, which became his favourite film, and he began making short films with his parents’ Super 8 camera, filming his friends in horror stories that he wrote and directed himself. The Pukerua Bay childhood was happy, creative, and full of movies, with Jackson spending hours watching films, reading film magazines, and dreaming of becoming a director. The family was not wealthy, and Jackson left school at sixteen, without qualifications, to work in a series of jobs, including as a photo engraver at a Wellington newspaper, a job that gave him an income while he made films in his spare time. The boy with a camera was already a film-maker, even if the world did not know it yet.

As a teenager Jackson made short films with his friends, using a Super 8 camera and homemade special effects, and he learned the craft of film-making by doing it, without formal training, a self-taught education that would define his career. He was influenced by the horror films of the 1970s, by the work of Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animator who created the creatures in Jason and the Argonauts, and by the low-budget films he saw at the Wellington film society. The teenage years were a period of intense creativity, with Jackson making films, building models, and writing stories, and with his parents supporting his ambitions, even when they did not understand them. He has spoken about the influence of King Kong, which he first saw on television as a child, and about the dream of remaking it, a dream that would take him forty years to realise. The Pukerua Bay years were the foundation, and the monsters he filmed as a teenager would become the monsters of his films.

By the time Jackson was in his twenties, he had decided to make a feature film, and he began work on Bad Taste, a science-fiction horror comedy about aliens who invade a small New Zealand town, which he filmed over four years, on weekends, with his friends as the cast and crew, and with a budget of only a few thousand dollars. The film was made in his spare time, while he worked as a photo engraver, and its production, which involved Jackson playing multiple roles, building models, and creating gore effects in his parents’ garage, is legendary in New Zealand film history. Bad Taste was completed in 1987, and it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was bought for distribution, and its success, as a low-budget cult film, gave Jackson the credibility to make his next film. The years of weekend film-making were over, and the professional career had begun, with a film that was as funny as it was gory, and that showed a director with a distinct, anarchic imagination.

Bad Taste, Braindead and the Splatter Years

Bad Taste, released in 1987, was Peter Jackson’s debut feature, a splatter comedy about a group of aliens, known as the Astro Investigation and Defence Service, who come to Earth to harvest humans for fast food, and who are fought by a team of New Zealand soldiers. The film was made for very little money, with Jackson playing two roles, including the alien leader Robert, and with special effects created in his parents’ home, including a famous scene in which a character’s brain falls out and is stuffed back in. The film was a cult success, praised for its humour, its inventiveness, and its gore, and it established Jackson as a director who could make a film on almost no budget. Bad Taste’s success at Cannes, where it was shown in the market, led to distribution around the world, and its reputation as a cult classic has grown over the years. The film is a useful introduction to Jackson, because it shows a young director who was willing to do anything, to play any role, and to make a film with his friends, for the love of it. Bad Taste is the beginning, and it is a gloriously messy one.

Jackson followed Bad Taste with Meet the Feebles in 1989, a dark comedy featuring puppets, in which a variety show’s cast, including a hippo, a fox, and a rat, engage in sex, drugs, and violence, a film that is as disturbing as it is funny, and that showed Jackson’s willingness to push boundaries. The film was a commercial failure, but it has since gained a cult following, and its puppetry, which was created by Jackson and his team, is a technical achievement. He followed it with Braindead, released in 1992 and known in the United States as Dead Alive, a zombie comedy about a young man whose mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey and becomes a zombie, a film that is famous for its extreme gore, including a lawnmower scene that is one of the bloodiest in cinema history. Braindead won awards at international fantasy festivals, and its success established Jackson as a master of splatter comedy, a director who could make audiences laugh and scream at the same time. The splatter years were a period of low-budget, high-energy film-making, and they gave Jackson a reputation as a cult director, a reputation that would change with his next film.

The splatter films were made with a regular team, including the writer Fran Walsh, who would become Jackson’s wife and his most important collaborator, and the special effects artists who would later form Weta Workshop, the company that would create the creatures for The Lord of the Rings. The team, which worked in Wellington, in a small workshop, was a close-knit group, and their shared sense of humour, their work ethic, and their inventiveness were the foundation of Jackson’s later success. The films’ budgets were tiny, but their ambition was large, and the team’s ability to create convincing effects on almost no money was a skill that would serve them when the budgets grew to hundreds of millions. The splatter years were not a detour; they were Jackson’s film school, and they taught him how to direct, how to work with a team, and how to make a film that audiences would remember. The cult director was about to become a serious one, and the change would come with a true-crime drama about two teenage girls in Christchurch.

Heavenly Creatures and the Turn to Serious Film

Heavenly Creatures, released in 1994, was Peter Jackson’s breakthrough as a serious director, a film based on the true story of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, two teenage girls in Christchurch, New Zealand, who murdered Pauline’s mother in 1954. The film starred Melanie Lynskey as Pauline and Kate Winslet, in her film debut, as Juliet, and it told the story of the girls’ intense friendship, their fantasy world, and the murder that shocked New Zealand. The film was a critical success, winning the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and earning Jackson and Fran Walsh an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and it established Jackson as a director who could handle serious, emotional material. The film’s fantasy sequences, in which the girls’ imaginary world comes to life, showed Jackson’s visual imagination, and its performances, particularly Winslet’s debut, were praised. Heavenly Creatures is a remarkable film, and it is the turning point in Jackson’s career, from splatter comedy to serious drama, and it remains one of his best works.

The success of Heavenly Creatures led to The Frighteners in 1996, a horror comedy starring Michael J. Fox as a psychic who can see ghosts, which was Jackson’s first Hollywood studio film, and which was a commercial disappointment, although it has since gained a cult following. The film’s production, with a larger budget and a Hollywood star, was a new experience for Jackson, and its failure taught him about the difficulties of working in the studio system. He followed it with a decision that would change his life: to adapt J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as three films, shot back to back in New Zealand, a project that no studio had been willing to finance, because of its scale, its cost, and its perceived risk. The decision was a gamble, and Jackson spent years developing the project, writing the scripts with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and building the production in Wellington, with Weta Workshop creating the creatures, the weapons, and the sets. The Frighteners was the last film before the trilogy, and the trilogy would make Jackson the most famous director in the world.

The Lord of the Rings project began in the late 1990s, when Jackson and his team approached the studios with a plan to make three films, based on Tolkien’s three-volume novel, shot simultaneously over eighteen months in New Zealand, with a budget that would eventually reach nearly three hundred million dollars. The studios were sceptical, because no one had ever made three blockbusters at once, and the risk was enormous, but New Line Cinema, under Bob Shaye, agreed to finance the trilogy, a decision that is now regarded as one of the bravest in Hollywood history. Jackson cast the films with a mix of established actors, including Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Christopher Lee as Saruman, and Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, and younger actors, including Elijah Wood as Frodo, Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, and Orlando Bloom as Legolas. The production, which involved thousands of crew members, locations across New Zealand, and years of post-production, was the largest in film history to that point, and its success would depend on Jackson’s ability to hold it all together. The boy from Pukerua Bay was about to make the biggest films ever made.

The Lord of the Rings: The Impossible Trilogy

The Fellowship of the Ring, released in December 2001, was the first film in the trilogy, and it told the story of Frodo Baggins, a hobbit who inherits the One Ring, and who sets out with a fellowship of nine companions to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing more than eight hundred million dollars, and it was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, winning four, including Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. The film’s success was immediate, with audiences and critics praising its faithfulness to Tolkien, its visual beauty, and its performances, particularly Ian McKellen’s Gandalf and Ian Holm’s Bilbo. The Fellowship’s opening, with its prologue explaining the Ring’s history, its Shire sequences, and its journey through Middle-earth, set the template for the trilogy, and its cliffhanger ending, with the Fellowship broken, left audiences eager for the next film. The trilogy had begun, and it was a triumph.

The Two Towers, released in December 2002, was the second film, and it told the story of the Fellowship split into three groups, with Frodo and Sam journeying to Mordor, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli fighting in Rohan, and Merry and Pippin encountering the Ents, the tree-people. The film’s centrepiece, the Battle of Helm’s Deep, a night-long siege, was one of the most spectacular battle sequences ever filmed, with thousands of digital warriors created by Weta Digital, and its success confirmed that the trilogy’s ambition was justified. The Two Towers grossed more than nine hundred million dollars, and it was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two, for sound editing and visual effects. The film’s darker tone, with its focus on war and its moral complexity, was praised, and its performances, particularly Andy Serkis’s Gollum, created through motion capture, were revolutionary. Gollum, a computer-generated character voiced and performed by Serkis, became one of the most famous characters in cinema, and his creation changed how digital characters were made. The trilogy was now a phenomenon, and its conclusion was eagerly awaited.

The Return of the King, released in December 2003, was the third film, and it told the story of the final battle for Middle-earth, with Aragorn claiming his throne, Frodo and Sam destroying the Ring, and the hobbits returning home. The film was a massive success, grossing more than a billion dollars, and it won all eleven Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including Best Picture and Best Director for Jackson, tying the record for most Oscars won by a single film. The film’s eleven wins, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Score for Howard Shore, made it one of the most honoured films in history, and Jackson’s Best Director win was a personal triumph. The trilogy as a whole won seventeen Academy Awards, and its total gross, of nearly three billion dollars, made it one of the most successful film series ever. The Return of the King is the conclusion of a story that took seven years to tell, and its success made Peter Jackson a legend, and New Zealand a centre of world cinema.

King Kong, The Hobbit and the Blockbuster Years

After The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson directed King Kong in 2005, a remake of his favourite film from 1933, starring Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow, Jack Black as Carl Denham, and Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll, with Andy Serkis performing Kong through motion capture. The film was a major production, with a budget of more than two hundred million dollars, and it was a commercial success, grossing more than five hundred million dollars, although its length, at over three hours, divided critics. The film’s Kong, a twenty-five-foot gorilla created with motion capture and computer graphics, was a technical achievement, and its Skull Island sequences, with their dinosaurs and their monsters, were spectacular. King Kong was a personal project for Jackson, who had dreamed of remaking it since childhood, and its success, although not on the scale of The Lord of the Rings, confirmed his place as a blockbuster director. The film’s production, in Wellington, with Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, showed that New Zealand could make films on the largest scale, and Jackson’s dream, forty years in the making, was realised.

The Hobbit trilogy, released from 2012 to 2014, was Jackson’s return to Middle-earth, with three films, An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies, based on Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, and starring Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, Ian McKellen as Gandalf, and Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield. The films were originally planned as two, but were expanded to three during production, a decision that was controversial, with critics arguing that the story was stretched too thin, and that the films’ use of high frame rate, at forty-eight frames per second, was distracting. The trilogy was a commercial success, grossing nearly three billion dollars, but its critical reception was mixed, with many reviewers finding it less focused than The Lord of the Rings. The films’ production was also marked by controversy, including a labour dispute in New Zealand and Jackson’s own health problems, with an ulcer that required surgery. The Hobbit trilogy is a flawed but entertaining return to Middle-earth, and its success confirmed Jackson’s commercial power, even when the films did not match the original trilogy’s acclaim.

The blockbuster years also included Jackson’s work as a producer, on films such as District 9 in 2009, directed by Neill Blomkamp, a science-fiction film that was nominated for Best Picture, and The Adventures of Tintin in 2011, directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Jackson, a motion-capture animated film based on Hergé’s comics. The producing work showed Jackson’s interest in supporting new directors and in new technologies, and his Wellington studios, with Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, became a centre for film-making in the Southern Hemisphere. The years after The Lord of the Rings were a period of large-scale film-making, with big budgets, big crews, and big expectations, and Jackson handled them with a visual imagination that few directors possess. The films of this period, King Kong and The Hobbit above all, are spectacles, but they are also personal, because Jackson’s love of monsters, which began in Pukerua Bay, is visible in every creature. The blockbuster director was still the boy with a Super 8 camera, only now the camera was bigger.

They Shall Not Grow Old, The Beatles and the Documentarian

In 2018 Peter Jackson released They Shall Not Grow Old, a documentary about the First World War, in which he restored and colourised archival footage from the Imperial War Museum, using modern technology to make hundred-year-old film look as if it had been shot yesterday. The film, which was made to mark the centenary of the war’s end, was a critical and commercial success, and its restoration, with its colour, its sound, and its 3D version, was a technical marvel. The film’s power comes from its immediacy: soldiers who had been black-and-white figures in history books became young men, with faces, voices, and personalities, and the audience’s connection to them was profound. Jackson’s work on the film, which took years, showed a new side of him, as a historian and a preservationist, and his passion for the First World War, which he has collected memorabilia from since childhood, gave the project a personal dimension. They Shall Not Grow Old is one of the great documentaries of recent years, and it is a testament to Jackson’s skill as a restorer as well as a director.

Jackson followed They Shall Not Grow Old with The Beatles: Get Back in 2021, a documentary series for Disney+, based on more than a hundred hours of footage shot in 1969, during the Beatles’ Let It Be sessions, which Jackson restored and edited into a series of nearly eight hours. The series, which showed the Beatles rehearsing, arguing, and creating, was a revelation, because it corrected the myth that the sessions were miserable, showing instead a band that was funny, creative, and collaborative. The series was a critical and commercial success, winning Emmy Awards, and its restoration, with its cleaned-up audio and video, was a technical achievement. Jackson’s work on Get Back showed his ability to tell a story from archival material, and his love of music, which had been visible since his early films, gave the series a warmth that other documentaries lack. The Beatles series is a major work, and it established Jackson as a documentarian of the first rank, alongside his career as a feature director. The boy who loved King Kong now loved the Beatles, and the love showed.

The documentary years have also included Jackson’s work on the restoration of other films and on the development of new technologies, including his work with Weta Digital, which was sold to Unity Technologies in 2021, and his continued work in Wellington, where his studios remain a centre of film-making. The years since The Hobbit have been quieter in terms of feature films, with Jackson taking time to work on documentaries, to restore films, and to develop new projects, including a film about the First World War and a return to feature directing. The documentary work is a new chapter, one that shows a director who is interested in history, in preservation, and in telling true stories, as well as in fantasy. The boy from Pukerua Bay, who made horror comedies with his friends, is now a historian, a restorer, and a documentarian, and the range of his career, from Bad Taste to Get Back, is one of the most remarkable in cinema. The next feature film is awaited with curiosity, because no one knows what form it will take.

The Director Today: Weta, Wellington and the Next Films

Today Peter Jackson lives in Wellington, works in his studios there, and continues to direct, to produce, and to restore, with a career that spans more than thirty-five years, from Bad Taste to The Beatles: Get Back, and with a place in film history that is secure. He is a husband, to Fran Walsh, his wife and collaborator, a father of two, and a knight, having been knighted in 2010 for his services to film, as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. His honours include three Academy Awards, for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture, all for The Return of the King, as well as BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and awards from festivals around the world. The story that began in Pukerua Bay, with a boy and a Super 8 camera, became one of the great stories of modern cinema, and it continues, with the next chapter likely to include more documentaries, more restorations, and more of the imagination that has defined his career. Peter Jackson’s story is about a boy who loved monsters, and who grew up to make the biggest films in the world, without ever leaving home, and that story is still being written.

My Take:

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the greatest achievement in fantasy cinema, and Peter Jackson’s direction is the reason why, because the three films, shot back to back over eighteen months, form a coherent, epic story that is faithful to Tolkien and that works as cinema. The Fellowship of the Ring is the best of the three, with its Shire sequences, its journey, and its performances, particularly Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, and the film’s faithfulness to the novel, combined with Jackson’s visual imagination, makes it a perfect adaptation. The Two Towers is the darkest, with the Battle of Helm’s Deep as its centrepiece, a sequence that remains one of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed, and Andy Serkis’s Gollum, a motion-capture character who changed cinema. The Return of the King is the most honoured, with eleven Oscars, and its ending, with the hobbits returning home, is one of the most moving in film. The trilogy as a whole is a masterpiece, and Jackson’s achievement, in holding together a production of this scale, is extraordinary.

Heavenly Creatures is the film that proves Jackson is more than a fantasy director, because it is a serious, emotional drama about two teenage girls who commit murder, and its performances, by Melanie Lynskey and by Kate Winslet in her debut, are extraordinary. The film’s fantasy sequences, in which the girls’ imaginary world comes to life, show Jackson’s visual imagination, and its story, about an intense friendship that becomes dangerous, is told with a sensitivity that is rare. The film won the Silver Lion at Venice and earned Jackson an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and its success established him as a director who could handle serious material. Heavenly Creatures is a remarkable film, and it is the turning point in Jackson’s career, from splatter comedy to serious drama, and it remains one of his best works. A viewer who only knows Jackson from The Lord of the Rings should watch Heavenly Creatures, because it shows a different director, and it is a great one.

King Kong is a film that I love, even though it is flawed, because it is a personal project for Jackson, who had dreamed of remaking the 1933 film since childhood, and his love for the material is visible in every frame. Naomi Watts, as Ann Darrow, gives a performance that is the film’s heart, and her relationship with Kong, created through motion capture by Andy Serkis, is genuinely moving, because Jackson makes the audience believe in a twenty-five-foot gorilla. The film’s Skull Island sequences, with their dinosaurs and their monsters, are spectacular, and its New York climax, with Kong on the Empire State Building, is a fitting tribute to the original. The film’s length, at over three hours, is a problem, and some of its sequences drag, but its best moments, particularly Ann and Kong on the ice in Central Park, are among the most beautiful in Jackson’s work. King Kong is not a perfect film, but it is a heartfelt one, and its flaws are the flaws of a director who loved his subject too much to cut it.

Bad Taste is a film that is easy to dismiss as a gory joke, but it deserves respect, because it is a debut made on almost no budget, over four years, on weekends, with friends as the cast, and its inventiveness, its humour, and its energy are remarkable. The film’s aliens, who harvest humans for fast food, are a satire of consumer culture, and Jackson’s performance, in two roles, shows a director who was willing to do anything to make his film. The famous scene, in which a character’s brain falls out and is stuffed back in, is both gross and funny, and it is a perfect example of Jackson’s splatter comedy. Bad Taste’s success at Cannes, where it was bought for distribution, gave Jackson the credibility to make his next films, and its cult reputation has grown over the years. The film is a useful introduction to Jackson, because it shows a young director who was already, in his twenties, a complete film-maker, with a vision, a sense of humour, and a determination that would carry him to The Lord of the Rings.

They Shall Not Grow Old is a documentary that is hard to watch and impossible to forget, because it restores First World War footage, colourises it, and adds sound, making soldiers who died a hundred years ago feel alive. Jackson’s restoration, which took years, is a technical marvel, and the film’s power comes from its immediacy: the soldiers’ faces, their voices, their laughter, and their fear, are all present in a way that black-and-white footage never allowed. The film’s structure, with veterans’ voices narrating over the restored footage, is simple and effective, and its final sequence, in which the colour fades back to black and white, is profoundly moving. They Shall Not Grow Old is one of the great documentaries of recent years, and it shows a new side of Jackson, as a historian and a preservationist. The film is a testament to his skill, and to his passion for history, and it deserves to be seen by everyone.

The Beatles: Get Back is a documentary series that is a revelation, because it corrects the myth that the Let It Be sessions were miserable, showing instead a band that was funny, creative, and collaborative, even as it was falling apart. Jackson’s restoration, of more than a hundred hours of footage, is a technical achievement, and his editing, into nearly eight hours, gives the viewer a sense of being in the room with the Beatles, watching them create. The series’ best moments are the small ones: Paul McCartney writing Get Back on camera, John Lennon and Paul joking, Ringo Starr keeping the beat, and George Harrison, quietly brilliant, and Jackson’s decision to let the footage speak for itself, without narration, is a wise one. Get Back won Emmy Awards, and its success established Jackson as a documentarian of the first rank. The series is a joy, and it is a major work, not only for Beatles fans but for anyone interested in how music is made.

Braindead, known in the United States as Dead Alive, is a film that is famous for its gore, including a lawnmower scene that is one of the bloodiest in cinema, but it deserves to be remembered for its comedy as well, because Jackson’s zombie film is as funny as it is gory. The film’s story, about a young man whose mother becomes a zombie, is played for laughs, and its performances, particularly by Timothy Balme as Lionel, are charming and funny. The film won awards at fantasy festivals, and its cult reputation has grown, with fans regarding it as one of the best splatter comedies ever made. Braindead’s gore is extreme, but its humour is what makes it work, because Jackson never forgets that a horror comedy must be funny first. The film is a useful reminder that Jackson’s early work, although low-budget, was already sophisticated, with a sense of timing and a visual imagination that would later define The Lord of the Rings. Braindead is a cult classic, and it is a lot of fun.

The Hobbit trilogy is a flawed but entertaining return to Middle-earth, and its problems, including the decision to expand two films into three, and the use of high frame rate, are real, but its pleasures are also real. Martin Freeman, as Bilbo Baggins, gives a warm, funny performance, and his chemistry with Ian McKellen’s Gandalf is the trilogy’s heart. The films’ visuals, with their New Zealand locations and their Weta creations, are beautiful, and their action sequences, particularly the barrel escape in The Desolation of Smaug, are thrilling. The trilogy’s reception was mixed, with critics finding it less focused than The Lord of the Rings, and the labour disputes and Jackson’s health problems during production did not help. The Hobbit is not as good as The Lord of the Rings, and it was never going to be, because the novel is a children’s book, not an epic, and stretching it into three films was a mistake. But the films are enjoyable, and Freeman’s Bilbo is a delight, and the trilogy deserves to be watched, with its flaws acknowledged and its pleasures enjoyed.

My honest assessment is that Peter Jackson is one of the great directors of his generation, and that his career is defined by a unique combination of imagination, technical skill, and a love of storytelling that few directors possess. His strength is his visual imagination: no director working today creates worlds as richly as Jackson, and his films, from Middle-earth to Skull Island, are a feast for the eyes. His weakness, if it can be called one, is that his films can be long, with some, like King Kong and The Hobbit, overstaying their welcome, and his love of spectacle sometimes overwhelms the story. That is not a fatal flaw; it is the other side of his ambition. His legacy will be The Lord of the Rings, Heavenly Creatures, and They Shall Not Grow Old, and the studios he built in Wellington, which made New Zealand a centre of world cinema. He changed what was possible for a boy from Pukerua Bay, and he did it by loving movies, completely and without apology.

If a new viewer wants to approach Jackson, the order is straightforward: start with The Fellowship of the Ring, then Heavenly Creatures, then They Shall Not Grow Old, and then Bad Taste, because those four films show his range, from epic fantasy to serious drama to documentary to splatter comedy. King Kong will show the personal project, The Beatles: Get Back will show the documentarian, and The Hobbit will show the blockbuster. The order matters, because it shows the arc from a boy with a Super 8 camera to a director who won Oscars, and it avoids the temptation to judge him by a single film. Jackson’s career is a long one, and it repays patience, because each film adds a layer to the last, and the whole is a portrait of a director who loves movies, and who loves the people who love them. He is one of the best, and his best is still coming.

One final point about Jackson is that his Wellington studios, Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, are a major part of his legacy, because they turned a small city in New Zealand into a centre of world cinema, employing thousands of people and creating the creatures, the weapons, and the worlds for films from around the globe. The studios’ work, on The Lord of the Rings, on Avatar, and on many other films, is a testament to Jackson’s vision, in building a film industry in his home country, rather than moving to Hollywood. The studios are a physical manifestation of his belief that great films can be made anywhere, and that New Zealand, with its landscapes and its talent, is as good a place as any. The Wellington film industry is Jackson’s gift to his country, and it will outlast his own films.

Jackson’s knighthood, in 2010, when he was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, deserves a last word, because it recognised not only his films but his contribution to New Zealand, in putting the country on the world map and in building an industry there. The honour was a fitting one, for a boy from Pukerua Bay who became a Sir, and it shows how far he travelled, from a Super 8 camera to a knighthood. The title, Sir Peter Jackson, is one that he carries lightly, with humour, and it is a reminder that a film-maker can be both a popular entertainer and a national treasure. The knight from Wellington is a fitting end to the story, and a beginning for the next chapter.

Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, released in 2009 and based on Alice Sebold’s bestselling 2002 novel, is a film that divides audiences, because it is a fantasy drama about Susie Salmon, a fourteen-year-old girl who is murdered and who watches her family from the afterlife, and its mix of grief and visual fantasy was difficult to get right. The film starred Saoirse Ronan, in a performance that was widely praised, as Susie, with Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz as her parents, and Stanley Tucci, in an Oscar-nominated performance, as her murderer. The film’s production, in New Zealand and the United States, was a major undertaking, and its visual sequences, in which Susie’s afterlife is shown as a beautiful, shifting world, are striking, even when the story’s tone is uneven. The Lovely Bones was a commercial disappointment, but it is a useful part of Jackson’s story, because it shows a director who was willing to take a risk on a difficult novel, and whose visual imagination, even in a flawed film, is extraordinary. The film also brought Jackson to Saoirse Ronan, one of the finest young actors of her generation, and her performance is its best feature.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was Peter Jackson born?

Peter Jackson was born on 31 October 1961 in Wellington, New Zealand, and he grew up in Pukerua Bay, a small coastal town north of Wellington. He left school at sixteen and worked as a photo engraver while making short films.

What was Peter Jackson’s first film?

His first feature film was Bad Taste, released in 1987, a science-fiction horror comedy about aliens who invade a small New Zealand town. Jackson filmed it over four years on weekends, with friends as the cast, on a tiny budget.

How many Oscars did The Lord of the Rings win?

The Lord of the Rings trilogy won seventeen Academy Awards in total. The Return of the King alone won eleven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Jackson, tying the record for most Oscars won by a single film.

What is Heavenly Creatures about?

Heavenly Creatures, released in 1994, is based on the true story of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, two teenage girls in Christchurch who murdered Pauline’s mother in 1954. The film starred Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet in her film debut, and it earned Jackson an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

What is They Shall Not Grow Old?

They Shall Not Grow Old, released in 2018, is a documentary about the First World War in which Jackson restored and colourised archival footage from the Imperial War Museum. The film was a critical and commercial success and showed soldiers as young men with faces and voices.

What is The Beatles: Get Back?

The Beatles: Get Back, released in 2021, is a documentary series for Disney+ based on more than a hundred hours of footage from the Beatles’ Let It Be sessions in 1969. Jackson restored and edited the footage into nearly eight hours, winning Emmy Awards.