Image source, New Line Cinema
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Lord of the Rings stars Elijah Wood as Frodo and Sean Astin as Sam.
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Peter Jackson was only 6 years old in 1968 and therefore had no idea what was going on and which would later have a major impact on his directing career.
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That was the year author JRR Tolkien refused to give the British band permission. The Beatles to make a film version of your epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings (“The Lord of the rings”).
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The Return of the King (“The Return of the King”), the latest film in Jackson’s adaptation of the literary classic trilogy, would tie 36 years later the record for the most Oscars at a ceremony: 11, including best director for him. .
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The Beatles may have lost to Jackson when it comes to bringing “The Lord of the Rings” to the big screen, but now these giants of popular culture are reunited in the documentary. Get Back, of three parts and almost eight hours long, premiered this Thursday 25 on the Disney + streaming platform.
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For the Jackson project, he restored more than 50 hours of discarded footage from the 1970 documentary. Let It Be (translated as “Let it be” in some Latin American countries) and put them together to tell a more positive version of what happened in the study in January 1969.
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Working with the Beatles also gave Jackson the opportunity to ask Paul McCartney about what really happened to his version of “The Lord of the Rings.”
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From the Beatles to Tolkien’s work
In an interview with the BBC from his native New Zealand, Jackson admits that he had been curious to know the truth of the matter.
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Image source, Getty Images
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“I’ve been gathering little pieces of information. I’ve been questioning Paul about it. Ringo doesn’t remember much,” says Jackson.
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“What I understand is that Denis O’Dell, who was his movie producer at Apple and who produced The Magic Christian (translated as “The Magical Christian” or “A Beatle in Paradise” in Latin America, “If you want to be a millionaire, don’t waste time working” in Spain), he had the idea of making “The Lord of the Rings”, he adds.
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“When they (The Beatles) went to Rishikesh and stayed in India, about three months with the Maharishi in early 1968, (O’Dell) sent them the books,” says the New Zealand film director.
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“I guess because there are three, he sent a book to each of the Beatles. I don’t think Ringo got one, but John, Paul and George got a” Lord of the Rings “book to read in India. they got excited about it, “he adds.
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However, the intervention of the author, who died in 1973, three years after the separation of the Beatles, meant that it never materialized, explains Jackson.
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“In the end they couldn’t get the rights to Tolkien, because he didn’t like the idea of a pop group doing their story. So it was rejected by him. They tried to do it. There’s no question about it. And at one point, to In early 1968, they were seriously thinking about doing it, “he says.
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It has been suggested that if the film had received the green light, it would have seen McCartney as Frodo, Starr as Sam, Lennon as Gollum, and Harrison as Gandalf.
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What was the Beatles’ choice to direct it? Stanley Kubrick, who had just finished making 2001: A Space Odyssey (“2001: A space odyssey” in Latin America, “2001: A space odyssey” in Spain).
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Image source, Disney+
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Get Back shows 50 hours of footage never seen before.
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Jackson does not contest these suggestions.
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“Apparently,” he says, adding, “Paul didn’t remember exactly when I spoke to him, but I think he did.”
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He also acknowledges how different his own life might have been if the Beatles had already done “The Lord of the Rings.”
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“Paul said, ‘Well, I’m glad I didn’t do it, because you did yours and I liked your movie.’ But I said, ‘Well, it’s a shame they didn’t, because it would have been a musical,'” he recalls. .
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“What would the Beatles have done with a ‘Lord of the Rings’ soundtrack album? It would have been 14 or 15 Beatles songs that would have been incredible to listen to,” he says.
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Image source, Disney+
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“So I have mixed feelings about it. I would have loved to hear that album, and I’m also glad that I had the opportunity to make the movies. But those songs would have been fascinating,” he adds.
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Peter Jackson and the Liverpool Four
More than five decades later, Jackson had his own chance to be a part of Beatles history.
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In the summer of 2017, he met with the Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, to discuss a possible collaboration on a virtual reality exhibition.
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Obsessive of the Beatles – “I never liked any other band but the Beatles” – Jackson asked a question whose answer he had always wanted to know. What had happened to the discarded shots of the documentary Let It Be de 1970 de Michael Lindsay-Hogg?
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The answer delighted him. “They said, ‘We have it all.’ As a fan, I was sitting there and saying, ‘Yes.’ They said they were thinking of using it for an independent documentary and they didn’t have an attached filmmaker.”
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Image source, Imperial War Museum
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Peter Jackson restored recordings from World War I.
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“The only time in my life that I did this, I raised my hand and said, ‘If you’re looking for someone, please think of me.’
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He had been offered the job at the end of the day and he spent the next four years of his life working at Get Back.
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He used techniques similar to those used in his WWI documentary. They Shall Not Grow Old (“They will never grow old” in Latin America, “They will not grow old” in Spain) to restore the hours of glorious invisible images of the Beatles creating some of their best-known songs from scratch.
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Jackson has been at the forefront of technology for more than two decades. Earlier this month he sold the visual effects division of his company Weta Digital for $ 1.625 million.
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Image source, Disney+
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But there is a futuristic project that he believes will never happen. Jackson says there is no way the Beatles will do like Abba and go on tour as digital avatars.
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“The Beatles have the tragic complication that two of them are not alive. So you could do that and represent George and John in a way that they would be happy with, it would be a difficult thing. That becomes much more risky. I don’t think you see that with The Beatles. “
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However, he is very open to more collaborations with the English band.
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“I would love to work with the Beatles again. I loved working with the Beatles now. However, I don’t think there is any other movie collection in the vault that I can get my hands on. This is the golden egg.”
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It may have taken more than half a century, but by teaming up with Jackson, finally “The Lord of the Rings” and the Beatles unite. One gang to rule them all.
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Inspiring or aimless?
In addition to Jackson’s revelation, early criticisms of Get Back They arrived on Thursday, and some critics seemed to dig more than others.
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Alex Petridis, from the British newspaper The Guardian, who awarded him three stars, wrote that in “Peter Jackson’s latest epic,” “moments of inspiration and interest are abandoned amid acres of disjointed chatter (‘aimless ramblings,’ as Lennon puts it) and repetition.” .
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Image source, Getty Images
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JRR Tolkien was not happy with the idea of seeing the Beatles incarnating their characters.
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In the meantime, The Times gave it four stars. Kevin Maher said that the “flashback deeply moving epic shows these charismatic young men (not yet thirty) in sweet and loving harmony. “
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AND The Telegraph opted for the same score, with Neil McCormick saying that “the painstaking work has distilled 200 hours of video and audio into a three-part series, often thought-provoking and exhaustive.”
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Nevertheless, The Independent he was more benevolent and gave it the highest score: five stars. Ed Cumming opined that the “three-part documentary series set the standard for all future evaluations of the band.”
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