Like a lot of people, I loved Peter Jackson’s authentic Lord of the Rings trilogy (though we could all admit Return of the King didn’t really understand when to leave the celebration ). So I was pretty surprised when Jackson took more than Guillermo del Toro to produce the Hobbit trilogy, and also the first movie turned out to be such a boring mess. Much more so when The Desolation of Smaug rolled around, and the difficulties somehow seemed to get worse. In what could be called the promotional video of all time, we find out why: the films were made completely with no script or any preparation, on the fly.
The clip is from a behind-the-scenes movie on the Battle of the Five Armies Blu-ray, and it features Peter Jackson, Andy Serkis, and other manufacturing personnel imagining that due to the manager changeover — del Toro left the project after nearly two decades of pre-production — Jackson hit the floor running but was unable to hit the reset button to find time to set up his own eyesight. In contrast, he spent years restarting the first Lord of the Rings trilogy, and on the Hobbit things got so bad that when they started shooting the titular Battle of Five Armies itself they were basically just shooting B-roll: footage of people in costumes waving around swords, with no cohesive strategy for the way the arrangement would really perform. (A choice Jackson quote:”I did not know what the hell I was doing.
I didn’t know what the hell I do
They ended up postponing the shoot so Jackson could figure out what he really wanted to create, but between the constant yawning and the gloomy resignation which never leaves his face throughout the clip, it is clear that the movies never had a chance. I’m frankly shocked that any banner could be straightforward about the problems the film had, but whatever gets people discussing the movie.
