Though many Tolkien fans still enjoyed them, plenty of audiences found Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies to be slow-moving slogs with hours of walking and too much garish CGI. As it turns out, Jackson was winging it the whole time.
No really, those are his words. As the Guardian points out, Jackson admitted that the films were flawed in a supplementary feature for the home release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. The director admits that he was forced to rush into the trilogy after original director Guillermo del Toro had to back out due to timing issues.
"Because Guillermo Del Toro had to leave and I jumped in and took over, we didn't wind the clock back a year and a half and give me a year and a half prep to design the movie, which was different to what he was doing," Jackson admitted. "It was impossible, and as a result of it being impossible I just started shooting the movie with most of it not prepped at all.
"You're going on to a set and you're winging it, you've got these massively complicated scenes, no storyboards and you're making it up there and then on the spot.... I spent most of The Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it... even from a script point of view Fran [Walsh], Philippa [Boyens] and I hadn't got the entire scripts written to our satisfaction so that was a very high pressure situation."
So there you have it — if you found The Hobbit movies to be flawed, it was likely because Peter Jackson was in way over his head.
No really, those are his words. As the Guardian points out, Jackson admitted that the films were flawed in a supplementary feature for the home release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. The director admits that he was forced to rush into the trilogy after original director Guillermo del Toro had to back out due to timing issues.
"Because Guillermo Del Toro had to leave and I jumped in and took over, we didn't wind the clock back a year and a half and give me a year and a half prep to design the movie, which was different to what he was doing," Jackson admitted. "It was impossible, and as a result of it being impossible I just started shooting the movie with most of it not prepped at all.
"You're going on to a set and you're winging it, you've got these massively complicated scenes, no storyboards and you're making it up there and then on the spot.... I spent most of The Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it... even from a script point of view Fran [Walsh], Philippa [Boyens] and I hadn't got the entire scripts written to our satisfaction so that was a very high pressure situation."
So there you have it — if you found The Hobbit movies to be flawed, it was likely because Peter Jackson was in way over his head.
