When the gore geeks got the blockbusters

It's been a long, long time since it was first announced that Peter Jackson would be directing the Lord of the Rings films. It really was a different time - the internet had only really made an impact as a cultural force in the past couple of years, and people actually gave a shit what Harry Knowles thought about things.

But that announcement was one of the first times I saw something blow up online. The message boards were full of a lot of talk about how appropriate it was for Jackson to do the movie - he'd only really brushed against the Hollywood way of making movies with Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners, and there was sheer incredulity that the guy behind the splatter puppet opus Meet The Feebles could pull it off.

But I had faith, and had been a huge fan of Jackson's stuff since the start, and knew that if he could pull off Bad Taste, he could pull off anything.

The scenes on the cliff in that film were enough. It's Jackson playing two characters at the same time, with one of them getting involved in a massive fight. It was shot on weekends, over years and years, and some shots were spliced together from footage shot months apart, and it somehow worked.

If creating Lord of the Rings was a giant jigsaw puzzle, Jackson had shown he knew how to pull things together and produce something with vitality and life, and put that puzzle together. All that other stuff that was needed to make the ultimate blockbuster could follow from that.

Around the same time, there was also a lot of talk about Sam Raimi getting mega-millions to make a Spider-Man film, and that also brought on the doubters. But I had even more faith, because big Sam had more than proven himself.

Obviously there was his Darkman, but the way Raimi and his pals innovated on the Evil Dead films - usually with the boundless help of the endlessly watchable Bruce Campbell - could only level up with more money. If he could pull off a full-on castle siege scene on a budget of five bucks with Army of Darkness, he was an obvious fit for Peter Parker, even if the two films were worlds apart.

The work of both directors has certainly dated over the years, but also have an energy to them that still seeps through. There is always the odd gratuitous zoom, or overly sweeping camera in the blockbusters that come through.

But it's the resourcefulness of the low budget that always convinced me they had what it takes to make the bigger efforts, and it's always nice to be proven right.