this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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I don't think it's that big of a mystery. I'm sure it had a lot to do with him trying to turn The Hobbit into a new epic trilogy. It's a pretty short book, it really just needed one film. Also, the first one was terrible to the point that I never bothered watching the other two, and I love LOTR
The hobbit films being a mess were entirely the fault of new line.
The preproduction of LOTR was in the range of 2 years. That's hammering out the script, but also locations, sets, securing extras, apparently all of the horses in NZ for some of the shots but also all of the costumes and armor.
All of those preproduction things were allowed in the range of 6 weeks(as opposed to over 100) for the Hobbit, and New Line refused to budge at all.
That wasn't really on Jackson from what I understand. He originally wasn't even going to be directing the Hobbit films, but had to come in after the original director had other obligations and things were a mess when he got there. I believe the studio had already decided that it would be three films as well, but I could be misremembering.
He could have quit the project though.
He could've quit as much as you could've started it.
My understanding is that he (at least partially) did it so other people wouldn't be out of their jobs. Some of which he might already know from the LOTR trilogy.
Who knows if the project would have continued without Peter Jackson stepping in.
IIRC: He only wanted to do two movies and that was what was originally announced. Then the studio said,if you want our funding, make three.
So we ended up with the hobbit shitshow.
Annnnd, that's why he's not "doing anything" these days.
I genuinely hope he's living his best life. Fuck Hollywood.
He owns Weta FX which is constantly in demand so I doubt he is short of cash or interesting shit to do.
They made a kick-ass tabletop game of corporate-funded mech gladiator battles called Heavy Hitters, btw. Simply out of a shared love for the themes involved. 🤘🏼
And the idea of two was partly to try buy time and put in more detail. Much of what he took on wasn't prepared and they wouldn't give more time, so he had to improvise on the fly. Very hard turd to polish. Then having to do three, suddenly the opposite problem, but still no time to shift and prep.
I watched all three, and they were all terrible. I've watched the LOTR trilogy a few times, I've only watched The Hobbit trilogy once and I don't think I'm ever watching them again.
There are a few fan edits that dump all the padding bullshit and the LOTR foreshadowing. The results is two Ok movies that follow the book quite well, still nowhere near LOTR but not the pile of shit the studio cuts are.
We watched the six movies not that long ago and it was the first time my GF watched them and she really enjoyed the Bilbo movies but couldn't wait to be done with LotR...
Did you show her the extended lotr cuts or the original releases? Extended editions are better for telling closer to the whole story, but the originals are better films.
Extended and I guess you're right, even for me it felt like the movies didn't age that well
Yeah the long cuts are for existing fans and are generally not good for first time viewing. I've made the same mistake for nearly two decades before I realized that. And Peter Jackson even says as much!