Among the unruly film conservationist community – an elusive and underloved subsection of society at the best of times – there is much discontent afoot. Peter Jackson’s latest project, a commission from the Imperial War Museum to mark the centenary of the First World War’s conclusion, has been considered by some in said community to be an act of barbarity, an unjustifiable marring of historical record for the sake of empty titillation. This project, entitled They Shall Not Grow Old, is understandably controversial: Jackson has taken archive footage from the Western Front and not only colourized it, but dubbed it with sound and rendered it in 3D. And that’s not even to mention blowing up 4:3 to 16:9, often considered…

I was looking forward to seeing this, until I remembered Peter Jackson made a mockumentary that was in poor taste to silent film lovers: Forgotten Silver (he just never ends the joke, although the end credits specify that it's fiction).

This film is indeed a real documentary, and furthermore, it's a tribute to his grandfather who was a soldier in The Great War. The idea that war is useless is espoused. Young men had to endure horrors that no one should even dream of.

There is an introduction from Peter Jackson. Most of the movie is shown in 3-D. I found it pretty unnecessary, but hey, it was not bad. I do prefer things to jump out at me when…

This, simply put, is an amazing film that everyone should be required to see. Peter Jackson has miraculously restored World War I film footage and colorized it. That is the least of the accomplishments here. There are over 50 different soldiers from Britan, England, Canada, New Zealand & Australia that were recorded around 1914 who share their stories of what we are seeing unfold on the screen. It starts out with the drafting of men as young as 16 years old, to the climax of the final rush to the German trenches & barbed wire during the final battle of the war. Much credit is given to the empathy that the English troops showed toward their captured German counterparts, as neither party…

I've always been fascinated with World War One. Not only is it possibly the most significant event of the twentieth century, it is the disaster to end all disasters, a callous loss of life where the consequences only created decades of worst disasters. It is the point in time where aristocratic elitism flexed its power until it broke, and a new elitism (rooted in people power and wider-reaching ambitions) rose in the aftermath to create the world we have today. 

But I was hesitant to watch They Shall Not Grow Old. Firstly, because I knew I would talk politics and history, and that's always controversial. Secondly, and much more significantly, I disagree with the idea of colourising footage, especially as…

We’ve just gone through four years of events commemorating the centenary of the First World War. I’ve had mixed feelings about these commemorations: they too often feel like celebrations. Like any historical event the relevance of the War is debatable and, over the last one hundred years, contending narratives have been offered to explain the past. The commemorations have tended to focus on the bravery and sacrifice of those who fought, were injured or died. I don’t doubt there was bravery and sacrifice (I don’t know if any bravery was involved, but my grandfather fought in the War, was injured and invalided out minus a leg), but this emphasis on bravery and sacrifice is a sentimentalist response – notably it…

Wow. Uh, so, Peter Jackson's new documentary—which has been one of my most anticipated movies of the . . . anything—They Shall Not Grow Old did not impress me. At all. Sure, from a technical perspective this documentary is quite great with remarkable imagery (some of the 'new' footage still looks like a cheap CGI video game from 2003 though, due to overdone warping and/or bad digital stabilizing) and some of the best sound design you will hear all of 2018, but that novelty wears off about 10 minutes into the colorized footage, and then what do we have left?

The information that's presented to us, the story it tells, (a.k.a. the most important part of a documentary) is repetitive,…

You may completely forget that Peter Jackson directed The Hobbit trilogy before taking in this massive project because when the movie ends, you may find yourself in awe of how the fantasy-driven director switched over to real-life storytelling and elevated it to a whole new level. But this is what Jackson does in converting celluloid over 100 years old into a modern, living document mixed with the actual audio testimony of its veterans.

Focusing on the Western Front in France, Jackson's WWI documentary gives us as close as possible what the scene was in color - for better or for worse. It should not just be the Second World War that has to be remembered because there was one before…