I didn’t bother running this story earlier because I just didn’t care, but boy, you guys do. I’ve gotten this one submitted a zillion times, so I guess the readers demand to know that Peter Jackson is producing a remake of the WWII film Dam Busters.
Jackson’s name had been attached to the film earlier in the year and there were the usual shuffles and denials, but now it’s official – he’s producing and WETA animator Christian Rivers. The Dam Busters tells the true story of how the Brits developed bouncing bombs that would blow up German dams, and maybe were the inspiration of Bouncing Betties, which deballed so many of our boys in Vietnam. A moment of silence for their sacs.
"There’s that wonderful mentality of the British during the war," Jackson told Screen Daily. "That heads-down, persevering, keep-on-plugging-away mentality which is the spirit of Dam Busters."
The spirit of Dam Busters is also Nigger. If you’re like me, you only know Dam Busters from its appearance on Pink’s TV in Pink Floyd’s The Wall. In the film there’s a black lab owned by one of the flyboys, and the dog’s name is Nigger, and all they show in The Wall is footage of some guy whistling for Nigger. Nigger was also the radio codeword for blowing up one particular dam. Oh jolly good fun. I do hope Nigger had fun playing with his fellow dogs Wog, Spic and Chink. Also, I hope that Nigger is CGIed in the new Dam Busters, since surely 90% of the film will be.
Sorry, I know I sound like Jeff Wells (you would think Peter Jackson raped that guy’s dog, which I am sure is not named anything offensive), but a WWII should be about as practical as possible. You’re not creating a new world, and no matter how good the CGI is – and we have seen state of the art stuff in the last few years – CGI stuff still often looks fake. There’s a textured reality to models and real planes that can’t be recreated, but Jackson – for all of his employing of bigatures – is pretty wedded to massive CGI use. Hiring a CG animator to direct only confirms some of these fears for me.
What will be interesting, though, is that this film will have new stuff in it not available to the version in the 50s – back then many details of the bombs and the missions remained classified. Those restrictions have been lifted, and maybe now we’ll find out how reverse-engineered UFO parts made all the difference!