I hated the Hobbit movies. Jackson did OK with LOTR (plenty of flaws, but some nice bits too). Overall, Jackson doesn’t make good movies.
I disagree. He tackles difficult movies and makes okay to good movies. He took over The Hobbit when another director left. It would be very difficult to make that movie with what he was handed. He doesn't make great movies but he does make average ones which nowadays is an accomplishment.
LOTR movies were amazing.
Peter Jackson has talent, but he is typical of a Hollywood director - especially in the modern era.
Such personalities regard everything as negotiable, and give too little respect to the source material - especially if the author is deceased. (Did they even read the trilogy once? I have read it over two dozen times.)
I therefore went to see the LOTR with low expectations, so I found it fairly enjoyable, especially the film score by Howard Shore (which I was privileged to sing live in 2015).
Jackson and company made gratuitous changes to dialogue and character that were unnecessary, and which sometimes violated basic facets of the trilogy. Still, they were creditable efforts.
Then, he tried to replicate that success with the Hobbit: three equally-long movies from a single children’s book one-sixth the length of the adult trilogy. No, thanks.
As for Mortal Engines, this continues the current rage of basing film series on YA [Young Adult] dystopian novels, e.g., The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze.
The Mortal Engines YA books are of the steam-punk genre, and I happen to like the genre: The Wild Wild West (teevee) is an early example; The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (movie) is a modern example. However, it is a genre not easily well done, I opine. (Diesel-punk, e.g., Sky Captain, is a related genre.)
Hollywood has always used best-selling books as fodder for screenplays: Gone With the Wind [1939 Best], Rebecca [1940 Best] were both hit books. But nowadays, they do whatever they want with the story, often shredding it. A Wrinkle in Time is a perfect example.
I just finished watching “Black Panther on Netflicks. It took four viewings and I finally just fast forwarded in chunks to get through it. It was like doing a high school english assignment - painfull.
During the entire movie I was reminded of that old SNL skit where a spaceship lands with “pilgrim” type people, complete with “powerful blunderbusses”, who obviously were from a backward planet and “found” the spaceship.
I couldn’t take the Wakanda culture seriously. They were still stuck in primitive culture, but threw in some high tech all because they found it. I simply could not take it seriously and I considered it an afront to the negro race. They are basically saying that the only way negroes could produce superior technology is if it fell in their laps.
I liked King Kong, but he blew it by making it way to long. The lead up to Skull Island just draaaaagggged...