We started a retrospective on Tolkien’s rise to superstardom, which began with a left-wing movement in the 1970s appropriating his work, and has slowly migrated over time to people realizing how right-wing and Christian Lord of the Rings is. Now, we continue.
Peter Jackson was not anyone’s idea of a Tolkien filmmaker.
He was a New Zealander, raised in the small coastal town of Pukerua Bay, north of Wellington. His filmography, as of the mid-1990s, consisted of Bad Taste (1987), a zero-budget splatter comedy about alien fast-food operators harvesting humans; Meet the Feebles (1989), a Muppets parody featuring puppet drug abuse and puppet murder; Braindead (1992), a zombie film widely considered one of the goriest movies ever made; and Heavenly Creatures (1994), a psychological drama about two teenage girls who commit murder, which earned Jackson his first serious critical attention and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
