The first World War is generally regarded as one of the more horrible things mankind has ever put itself through, with countless lives lost for basically no reason and the advancement of military technology ramping up to such a terrifying degree that we invented a new bomb that could kill literally everyone within just a few decades. On the other end of the spectrum we have the wars in The Lord Of The Rings, which were just a wonderfully good time. Instead of tanks and poison gas, they had elves and dwarves, a wizard on horseback blasting orcs with his light beams or whatever, and a group of little dudes who really liked breakfast. Having already told the definitive version of the latter conflict (sorry, Ralph Bakshi), Peter Jackson has now set his sights on the former with a new documentary project.
According to Variety, Jackson has been “mining the archives of the BBC and London’s Imperial War Museum” to collect footage concerning World War I, “much of which will not have been seen before.” Apparently, he’s also working to restore and colorize the footage so that “the faces of the men just jump out at you,” allowing Jackson to tell more personal stories about the soldiers who fought in the war. That means, like most documentaries, this will probably be a lot more grounded than those Lord Of The Rings movies were, to the extent that there most likely won’t even be some kind of CG creature for Andy Serkis to play.
As for when people will be able to see this, the unnamed film will premiere as part of the BFI London Film Festival in the fall and copies will be distributed to British schools. It’s unclear if or when it might come to the United States, but in the spirit of World War I, it’ll probably take a few years for us to get involved anyway.