What an amazing, exciting, profitable thing all around: Peter Jackson is partnering with Microsoft to create at least two Xbox 360 video games, one of which will be based on Jackson’s upcoming Halo, under the aegis of a new outfit called Wingnut Interactive. I’m getting the chills just thinking about it. Jackson and close partners Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens will dream up the particulars together. Think of the joy, the jazz…the cultural adrenalin that will be felt from these games. Not to mention the truckloads of money to be earned.
I’m saying, in other words, that Jackson is perhaps better attuned or suited to the video-game creator mentality than that of a genuinely intriguing filmmaker, which is to say someone with an ability and/or willingness to hold back at times, to occasionally understate, to not always push the visual pizazz at level 10. Jackson always creates at an extremely showoffy, unsophisticated level, and I think this approach is more in synch with what gamers are looking for than what people who appreciate the sometimes more delicate chemistry that goes into making a truly fine film.
Water always finds its own level, and I think Jackson has just found — accepted — his.