How to crush LotR and SW Trilogies!

[jdrakeh]

God knows we could use a great fantasy epic.

The first Dungeon Siege movie (based on the video game of the same name) is in post production at the moment. It is apparently four hours long and recreates large swaths of the first PC game - it also has some great actors like Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, and Leelee Sobieski on board. The next Lord of the Rings? Probably not, but it should easily be the next fantasy blockbuster.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The first Dungeon Siege movie (based on the video game of the same name) is in post production at the moment. It is apparently four hours long and recreates large swaths of the first PC game - it also has some great actors like Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, and Leelee Sobieski on board. The next Lord of the Rings? Probably not, but it should easily be the next fantasy blockbuster.

I doubt it.

Don't get me wrong, I hope it's great. Ron Pearlman is cool, and Jason Statham is one of the coolest additions to action movies in the last 10 years.

But it's an Uwe Boll movie, and there is literally nothing that man has touched that hasn't been so awful, it's actually against the Geneva Convention to make people watch it. So honestly, much as I wish otherwise, I truly expect this movie to be roughly as fun to watch as diseased warthogs mating.

 

[jdrakeh]

But it's an Uwe Boll movie, and there is literally nothing that man has touched that hasn't been so awful

A lot of that has been due to film budgets being eaten up simply to acquire IP and a starring actor or two, leaving little money for decent actors or writers. This doesn't appear to be the case with Dungeon Siege, obviously - it'll be the first Uwe Boll movie to feature more than two A-List actors, plus some acclaimed writers such as David Freeman (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room).

Apparently, Uwe Boll has some talent that he hasn't yet been able to showcase - note that he's also been tapped to direct Hunter: The Reckoning in 2007, and just wrapped Bloodrayne, featuring A-List actors such as Ben Kingsley and Michael Madsen, as well as a handful of well known B-List actors (Billy Zane, Meat Loaf, etc).

I think that House of the Dead was a miserable piece of crap, as was Alone in the Dark - but now that the man has some money and talent to play with (two things that he's never had at his disposal before), I'm willing to wager that he can crank out something watchable... Peter Jackson was in much the same situation, and look where he ended up

[Note: Peter Jackson's sole directing credit prior to the Lord of the Rings movies was a B-Movie zombie flick called 'Dead Alive" (it contained bad dialogue, bad acting, bad writing and was, in every way, on par with Uwe Boll's films to date).]

 

[Mouseferatu]

[Note: Peter Jackson's sole directing credit prior to the Lord of the Rings movies was a B-Movie zombie flick called 'Dead Alive" (it contained bad dialogue, bad acting, bad writing and was, in every way, on par with Uwe Boll's films to date).]

Not true, actually.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001392/

Peter Jackson directed several movies before LotR, though many of them aren't well known in the US. It's also worth noting that "Dead Alive" was, in fact, a poorly cut/edited version of a film, called "Braindead," which showed in other countries in its entirety and is suppoed to be a lot better than the mangled version.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I believe Braindead was great. I haven't seen it. I'm just saying we can't judge it by Dead Alive, and even if we could, he's got others.

 

[jdrakeh]

Not true, actually.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001392/

Whoa! You're right - but looking at that list doesn't make a better case for Jackson's credibility as a director prior to about 1996 (Meet the Feebles is an atrocity of film, although an amusing one).

It's also worth noting that "Dead Alive" was, in fact, a poorly cut/edited version of a film, called "Braindead," which showed in other countries in its entirety and is suppoed to be a lot better than the mangled version.

Mangled is an over-statement. Both films are actually available in NTSC format, and having seen then both, I can say that they're both pretty horrible (although they're also amusing, in the same vein that Meet the Feebles was).

Point being, that Peter Jackson has some really bad films in his past (MTF, if you're wondering, was essentially a re-imagining of The Muppet Show with such great characters as a syphillis-infected rat, a heroin-shooting frog, a bovine female porno star, etc).

If the guy who directed Meet the Feebles can pull off LotR, then there is hope for Uwe Boll.

[Note: Although I've owned the Laserdisc release of MTF for years, I had no idea that the Peter Jackson who directed it was the Peter Jackson until reading the IMDB entries. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.]

 

[Mouseferatu]

Never seen Meet the Feebles. Avoided it like the plague.

I kinda liked The Frighteners, though...

In any event, I suppose anything's possible... But Uwe's got a lot to answer for. I don't know if I can ever forgive him for Alone in the Dark, no matter how good his future movies are. To take one of the most atmospheric, creepiest computer games and turn it into a D-rate action flick is a crime against humanity. (And yeah, I know he's not the only one involved in that, but the buck stops with the captain, and it's certainly not an isolated incident where he's concerned.)

 

[wedgeski]

Never seen Meet the Feebles. Avoided it like the plague.

There's no accounting for taste. MTF was oddball and pretty funny I thought, and The Frighteners is excellent. Despite both of those films to his name, I found Peter Jackson to be an odd choice for the LotR adaptations and didn't really hold out much hope... until I actually *saw* them, that is.

 

[Staffan]

[Note: Peter Jackson's sole directing credit prior to the Lord of the Rings movies was a B-Movie zombie flick called 'Dead Alive" (it contained bad dialogue, bad acting, bad writing and was, in every way, on par with Uwe Boll's films to date).]

Dude, you're dissin' a movie that has a scene where a priest takes on a bunch of zombies, kung-fu style, and says "I kick [bleep] for the LORD!"

You're dead to me.

 

[Nebulous]

[Note: Peter Jackson's sole directing credit prior to the Lord of the Rings movies was a B-Movie zombie flick called 'Dead Alive" (it contained bad dialogue, bad acting, bad writing and was, in every way, on par with Uwe Boll's films to date).]

Sorry, but that's just not right. Jackson's first film was Bad Taste, which was an ultra-low budget film he made with friends, starring himself. He also did Meet the Feebles and Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners, and sandwiched in there somewhere was Dead Alive (or Braindead as it was originally called). And Dead Alive is the best zombie movie i've ever seen, ranking up there with Romero's stuff, but it is a zombie-comedy, not horror by any stretch. And it is so disgusting that i had to turn it off the first time i saw it. No CGI, just pure on-set sfx that featured i don't know how many hundreds of gallons of blood. Funny too, if you like black humor (the priest kung-fu killing the zombies in the graveyard is classic). And the acting is NOT bad, it's perfectly passable, and the story is great. B-movie, yes, but better than the crap we get out of the States.

 

[Warrior Poet]

I'd love to see a company like HBO do a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series.

Get this man a job at HBO, stat!

Warrior Poet