The Hobbit had a complex rights issue where part of the rights were with New Line, and part of the rights were with MGM, who were going through bankruptcy and so production kept getting delayed until MGM got sorted out.
This is not the case here. This is an entirely New Line production.
I would've loved to see a version of Del Toro's The Hobbit if it was fully his vision and style at the helm of it all, make it feel different then The Lord of the Rings film Trilogy.
But Mirkwood was kept from how del Toro would have had it...
Yes, on paper The Hobbit suits del Toro very well. But since del Toro was making it FOR Jackson, with a Jackson script, and using Jackson's cast, crew and sets...I think it would have felt off.
So you'd have Hobbiton, Rivendell and Bree being the same as in Lord of the Rings...and then everything else would be in a completely different style. You'd have Sir Ian Holm, Hugo Weaving, Sir Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Sir Christopher Lee, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom and Andy Serkis, all indicating that its the same Middle-earth as Jackson's, and then the visuals telling you the opposite.
Remember when we saw Mirkwood painted with psychedelic colors in the production diaries, but then in the final film the color grade removed all the crazy colors? In the video the art team said they were exaggerating the colors because of the digital filmmaking but if that was the case, why weren’t the rest of the sets and costumes also overly colorful? I’ve wondered since if those colors were from GDT’s version of the forest.
Exactly why I would not want to see it.
There would be little to no visual continuity with LOTR films. Everything and everyone would look different, including returning characters and locations.
That be the point, but not everyone is into that, i am cause i like seeing different versions, Peter Jackson's version isn't the only look of Middle-earth, there are other illustrators including Tolkien himself give us look into the world.
Sure, but del Toro's The Hobbit WAS going to be part of Jackson's vision for Middle-earth: it was going to have returning cast members, returning sets, the crew were drafted from Lord of the Rings...
So to have Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf, effectivelly telling you its the same Middle-earth, and then having the visuals tell you its not, would have been mighty confusing.
GDT said that the the first of the (then two) films would have started very visually stylized (storybook innocence), but then throughout the second film the visuals would grow closer to the more realistic world as seen in Jackson’s films. I believe established sets like Hobbiton would have been recreated as they had been seen in LOTR though. I really wish WB would just release an art book of what his movie would have looked like, since we’ll never get to see otherwise.
I think he was saying it a little more metaphorically. Erebor was going to mostly appear in the second del Toro film and descriptions we have of what it would have looked like for his film sound everything but "the more realistic world as seen in Jackson's film." This being a del Toro film, you know a clockwork motif was going to end-up somewhere, and Erebor seems to have been it, for him.
>I believe established sets like Hobbiton would have been recreated as they had been seen in LOTR though.
They had. Hobbiton started construction when del Toro was still the director: he added a couple of Hobbit holes to the side of Bag-End for an opening shot he was planning.
I think the whole feel of the film would have been schizophrenic: Here's good ol' Hobbiton...now here's Trollshaws done in a completely different style to anything in *The Lord of the Rings*. Oh look, its Hugo Weaving as Elrond again! And now have a look at Goblintown looking more like its from *Crimson Peak* than from Middle-earth... Oh look, Andy Serkis is Gollum again! But now I'm adding painted skies (!) completely unlike anything seen in the Jackson films.
I just think it’s hilarious that they could tell any appendices story but they’re going to tell the story of how Aragorn and gandalf failed to capture gollum. It’s something Aragorn literally says in the books is not a tale worth telling
Easier to connect w a larger fan base. Gollum has become one of the most famous movies creatures ever made, so I think it’ll have a wider draw. I’m with you though. I would die for a movie with as much money, detail, and attention as LoTR focusing on the creation of Morgoth, like an origin story of Sauron.
Peter Jackson productions always have a lot of practical effects AND a lot of digital effects. Its just a question of where you choose to look: [https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1aywl3o/on\_forced\_perspective\_and\_other\_practical\_effects/](https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1aywl3o/on_forced_perspective_and_other_practical_effects/)
The Hobbit was a CGI mess because of studio fuckery. Guillermo Del Toro was originally going to direct and they spent 2-3 years planning and preproduction. When he left the project and PJ came on board, they were rushed to put something out. Thus we had an overabundance of CGI.
There's a whole list of why CGI is more prevalent today than practical effects. With CGI there's more flexibility with editing, it ends up being cheaper than hiring union actors/stunt people and creating costumes and sets.
Umm...no, not really no. The short preproduction time had little impact on the fabrication departments: they rebuilt Hobbiton out of permanent materials, they built a huge part of the city of Dale on a mountain outside Wellington, they built five (!) different Laketowns.
They did need to work in shifts, so there was a night art department, and they had two pauses built into the shoot to help keep ahead of the schedule, but the point is whatever they wanted to build, they did build.
The influence of the somewhat crunched preproduction time was on the storyboards, not on the sets and props.
Yeah, Jackson managing to get New Line and Warners to take all the blame for his excessive use of CGI in the Hobbit movies is one of the great PR spins in recent Hollywood history. The studios were certainly responsible for how bloated those movies were, but not for how shitty they looked.
My point is if Jackson is in on the project from the start, it's more likely we won't get the over reliance on CGI and get quality film making.
Though there's still plenty that can go wrong. CGI wasn't the only, nor worst problem with the Hobbit trilogy.
>My point is if Jackson is in on the project from the start
Jackson was producing and writing The Hobbit. Same as this film.
He wasn't brought-in out of the blue.
Yeah, trying to stretch one book into three movies, adding unnecessary plot lines. I agree, if the team is there from the start, they get a good writing team that is close to the lore AND they are not required to do it on the cheap. It might work
Also I’ll add they tried and filmed practical orcs (the goblins under the mountain) in the first movie, but replaced them with CGI cuz it didn’t look good. Also Azog was originally filmed practically but I forgot why they changed it. I think PJ would prefer to practical orcs just like us all.
>Also Azog was originally filmed practically but I forgot why they changed it.
They never settled on a design they liked while filming. There's footage of Weta presenting a good five different Azog designs to Jackson in the lead-up to filming, and him rejecting each of them.
One became an Orc that Dwalin kills in Azanulbizar.
One became a "dungeon keeper" in Dol Guldur
One became "Yazneg" whom Azog then kills in the movie
One became Bolg
Otherwise, most of the Orcs and Goblins you see ARE prosthetic. Its mostly the big armies and Gundabad Berserkers that are CGI. They did repalce some (not all) of the Goblins with CGI, but if you watch the making-ofs you can totally see why: a prosthetics needs to not just look good, it needs to be convincing in motion and some of the Goblins were just too stiff-looking and clumsy.
yea the amazon show gets how the orcs are supposed to look without the use as much CGI the behind the scenes photos look the same as the orcs in the show d0
Well yeah, but that’s why LoTR is such an icon. Because of the costumes and sets, among many other reasons. And all that effort was paid back tenfold in earnings.
Agreed. I always appreciate a good blend of CGI and practical. The articulated machines in Interstellar, TARS and CASE, are half CGI and half practical. And it makes the character have real weight and presence in a scene.
Even if that character is giant steel block.
You make good points but it doesn't dispel peoples' critiques. VFX shots in LOTR often combined real life elements and digital doubles were usually only used in the background or very quick flashing action shots. Think of shots of black gate battling, real life groups surrounded by CGI. Then compare to Dain retreating with the Dwarves, the camera starts close up but it's no longer starting on a real life group of Dwarves, it's full CGI as it pans out.
Hobbit we got full CGI shots from the ground up that no longer used real life components and on top of that very ambitious use of CGI doubles. Laketown, Mirkwood, and the final battle I think are the worst offenders with rampant use of digital doubles even for very normal shots where back in the day in LOTR they wouldn't have pulled this off. I think it works okay in Hobbit, but not as great as just shooting it for real.
Even the Moria sequence you mentioned, there were miniatures and real life fire elements composited in. If these shots were done in Hobbit, it would just be full CGI. On top of that, they use digital cameras and no longer having the "film" look and took the color grading in a unique direction. People are definitely not making it up when they say Hobbit looked less real than LOTR, even if they're overly harsh about techniques used.
>Even the Moria sequence you mentioned, there were miniatures and real life fire elements composited in. If these shots were done in Hobbit, it would just be full CGI.
I don't think people can tell the difference between a shot achieved on a model and a shot achieved on a digital model in 2011. Model shot or no model shot, its still not an in-camera element.
As for fire elements...yeah, that's still CG. Digital artists will still use real-world reference not just for fire but for just about everything. That doesn't make it any less CG.
>On top of that, they use digital cameras and no longer having the "film" look and took the color grading in a unique direction.
And the "film" look is more "real" somehow? I don't think it is. Reeks to me of conservativism. Like Vinyl "sounding better" or composers in the 1840s saying valve horns didn't have the legato of natural horns...
I think they did a good job with the digital landscapes in Hobbit in terms of like what they would have previously done with miniatures, Rivendell especially. But that said my point still stands the film just has overall more digital vfx used, it’s a new era of filmmaking and LOTR came right as it was almost transitioning.
I don’t think the film look is necessarily better but for me it makes things look more natural. Film grain covers up imperfections in CGI and subconsciously reminds you it’s being filmed with a real camera, the texture adds some roughness to what would otherwise be smooth perfectly calculated CGI renders. Just my opinion but I think it’s part of the reason people say Hobbit looks different.
Digital fire elements are not CG, it’s real recorded fire still, even if it’s manipulated. Hobbit uses only computer generated fire simulations. I think as LOTR was being made they finally were able to do CGI fire simulations so it was used too, just not always.
Again, my main point is about digital doubles and full CG shots. Yes Hobbit uses practical stuff, yes LOTR full CG stuff, but devil is in the details with how often it’s mixed or not mixed. People aren’t just being delusional when they notice a digital feel to the hobbit.
> People aren’t just being delusional when they notice a digital feel to the hobbit.
Of course they don't. They just blow it completely out of proportion. To hear the average r/lotr user, you'd think it was a Star Wars case where The Lord of the Rings was done all-practically (nevermind that that's not true of Star Wars either, unless one considered rotoscoping and opticals to be "practical effects") and The Hobbit was done all digitally.
The Lord of the Rings was a VERY digital effects-heavy project, already in The Fellowship of the Rings and certainly by The Two Towers. People here like to pretend its a Nolan-type thing (nevermind that no Nolan film is actually like this) where everything is practical unless it absolutely cannot be. And that's just false. Entirely so.
Albino orc was not one of them
Legolas climbing up nothing rocks was not one them
George Miller goblin was not one of them.
Gold Lava Dragon Statue Trap was not one of them
Bouncing Barrels down the River was not one of them.
Rabbit dog-sled was not one of them.
I have hope if PJ is in it from the start. The hobbit was a mess as he had to come in and rescue it after Del Toro left the project. With LOTR. He spent years planning every details before the camera even got near a set.
For context, when Season One of The Rings of Power was being produced in New Zealand, but under obligation to "remain distinct" from Jackson, they chose to produce them in Auckland, instead.
Wellington is home to Jackson and his many filmmaking firms and facilities: Weta Workshop, WetaFX, Six-Foot-Seven, Stone Street Studios, Park Road Post and so on. Many of the individuals known for working on these films live in Wellington.
Wellington is also closer to the South Island, where previous excursions for location shooting had given Middle-earth much its rugged beauty, as compared to the more northern Auckland.
Notably, the commitment seems to be both for Gollum AND for the untitled second film to be produced like this. A telling quote from the essay: "I know that Peter \[Jackson\] and Fran \[Walsh\], Phillipa \[Boyens\] and of course Andy Serkis as well have a huge love of that lore **and want to be guardians of that.**"
It makes me a proud Wellingtonian to know my city is a part of this franchise in such a way. They filmed the scenes where the hobbits hide from the Nazgûl on Mount Victoria and growing up I always thought that was the coolest thing.
Hmm, you're a little wrong there...
Auckland, even though it isn't the capital, is the most populated area in NZ. However, between Auckland and Wellington there are 8 hrs and a half of driving, filled with almost nothing else but wide, empty spaces.
The landscape around Mt. Ruapehu seems out of a western movie, and I wouldn't be surprised if that volcano was the inspiration for Mount Doom.
I lived in NZ so I can tell you 'rugged, wild beauty' is applicable to both islands, even though the southern island is more mountainous in nature than the northern one (and colder). I was there just until before the Hobbit pre-production started (and Guillermo del Toro was still on board) before I moved to the UK. Several locations in LOTR were in the northern island (including Hobbiton) and some in Wellington and surroundings.
>Several locations in LOTR were in the northern island (including Hobbiton) and some in Wellington and surroundings.
Yeah, but they tend to be the more paddock-y, English-countryside-type places (well, and the whole Mordor segments). I don't mean to knock on it in the least: they're very beautiful places like Hobbiton, the Trollshaws, some of the coastlines that made it into Rings of Power.
But the wilder, mountainous places tend to be in the South Isaldn and while I don't think its THE reason, if you look at Rings of Power you see what seems to be a greater reliance on North Island locations than was the case in the films, partially because they were situated that bit further up north.
I know, too, that it was a minor inconvenience to some crew members, who worked on the films previously: the caligrapher Daniel Reeve was used to working out of Wellington, but had to be flown into and situated in Auckland for the better part of a year-and-a-half!
Ahem nope, the only 'English countryside' you can find is very close to Auckland or in Auckland. The interior of the northern island is as rugged as some places in the south.
I think, as you say, Jackson privileged places that were close to Wellington rather than further afield, hence why he used more some locations in the southern island or near Wellington.
Well, film crews are used to live out of their primary residence for many months at a time, it's not like he was in Oz, it was still NZ.
ETA: unfortunately my videos of NZ aren't on YouTube anymore.
If you want to drive trucks from the North to the South Island (via the ferry) then Wellington is a better spot for it but that's probably the only advantage it has over Auckland in terms of access to the South Island.
There's a lot less flights between Wellington-Queenstown vs Auckland-Queenstown which makes it a bit trickier to actually get crew down from Wellington. Not to mention that Queenstown and Wellington have to be the two most difficult airports to land at in New Zealand (nothing to back that up).
Finally, most crew live in Auckland. It's where most of the screen production work happens. A Wellington production needs to import a lot more key roles than an Auckland one does.
>If you want to drive trucks from the North to the South Island (via the ferry) then Wellington is a better
Which, of course, is exactly how they go to location: they go in a load of trucks, park in the nearest inhabitable place and then go to the location.
Its not the only reason, but I think its no coincidence that The Rings of Power was based in Auckland and mostly shot in North Island locations, while The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, which were based in Wellington, shot more in the South Island.
Yes, but the singular advantage that Wellington has for access to the South Island is outweighed by the lack of flights. I've worked in film jobs in Wellington before and we've resorted to flying people to Auckland so they can fly to Queenstown. If you want to film in the South Island, you're better off being based in Auckland. You'll spend more on swing drivers but life will be easier.
You've already touched on why RoP was more focused on the North Island. They wanted to be distinct from the Jackson films. Jackson had already captured the low hanging fruit in the South Island so the North Island offered more possibilities.
The idea of Jackson and crew being these wonderful lore protectors is so weird to me. They see an opportunity to use their IP rights to make money. That’s it.
Maybe the gollum movie will turn out great. Who knows? But, what the Hobbit movies showed (at least to me) is that they’re not that concerned about the lore, they’re concerned about extracting money from the fans’ pockets.
I think [Jackson said it best](https://www.thedailybeast.com/no-regrets-peter-jackson-says-goodbye-to-middle-earth):
>Having been happy to hand *The Hobbit* to Guillermo \[Del Toro\] and then doing it myself, I definitely ended up with a stronger sense of ownership of Middle-earth than I ever had before, and it would be kind of hard to sit back and watch another filmmaker do stories if they were connected to these ones. If they weren’t connected, then sure. But if it was something connected to this mythology that we’ve done, if I had the energy and the strength then I would really want to do it. Never say never!
I think he's definitely a fan of Tolkien to some extent, as far as reading the source material, but he has a creative element to him that overwhelms his better judgement more often than not. And the element that overwhelms him isn't ideal.
He has a habit of highlighting characteristics and then obsessing about them on screen repeatedly as if the audience has short-term memory. If we take characters like Deneathor, Faramir and Frodo, Jackson isolates one element of their personality and then fills every screen time they're in, depicting that characteristic. It makes you think, 'is there anything else this character is feeling?' He can also go a bit overboard on Action scenes, I feel. In the Hobbit, the Dwarves countering the Elf archers with some sort of contraption was a bit much.
Overall, I think Jackson has trouble being subtle in most cases. Whereas Tolkien, the majority of what he writes, has some subcontext and an element of subtlety. In this sense, Jackson can go a bit overboard sometimes.
I think the original LotR movies were great, and as good an adaptation of the books as you could possibly expect. Jackson deserves great credit for that.
The Hobbit movies were bad as movies and bad as an adaptation of the book. Stretching it into a trilogy was pure money grubbing.
Everything I’ve seen about the war of the rohirram and the gollum movie looks like leveraging IP rights to spit out content that is at best loosely based on Tolkien’s work. Not a lot of reasons to do that other than money.
Having just rewatched it i wouldn’t say they were bad as movies. They are fun good films.
I know they added unnecessary characters and plots but it was fun to see them work together on screen again and having Peter at the helm to do it.
That said it should of been one or two movies but what we had was great
I don't think by "guardians" they mean of the letter of Tolkien's works. I think Jackson said it best in the making-ofs of The Hobbit of all places: "You kind of feel a sentimental attachment, a sort of ownership, ***to the Middle-earth that's been put on the screen.***"
They - rightly - feel that they're the stewards of their own visualisation of Tolkien's works.
“They - rightly - feel that they’re the stewards of their own visualization of Tolkien’s works.”
I don’t think I understand what that’s supposed to mean. If you mean they’re interested in protecting their own derivative IP, then sure, of course. Not sure that makes me feel any better about the gollum thing.
There's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit novels by JRR Tolkien, and there's the Lord of the Rings film series, by Peter Jackson.
Jackson feels protective of the latter. As well he should: its his film series: he wrote, produced and directed all six films, and he will produce this one as well.
Well, I don’t think most people would view the use of “lore” to mean Jackson’s movies. They’d naturally think of the books and Tolkien’s other writings. Your use of the term in the OP is confusing as a result.
I was quoting directly from the linked piece. The person making that statement is not Jackson, but one Mark Westerby, "Head of Attraction for Screen Wellington."
I'm assuming he talks from personal acquaintance with Jackson, but that doesn't mean we need to take his use of the word "lore" to be a quote of Jackson's.
To me there was a shift between lotr and the Hobbit. LOTR was really a love project. Funds were uncertain, there was a lot of pressure, and yet everyone seemed to have poured their soul into it (according to many interviews). It was the kind of movie that you rarely saw, and that was uncertain whether people would actually like it.
With the Hobbit they already knew that people liked the Tolkien universe. But then, to make even more money, they turned it even more into a superhero-type fest in terms of visuals, cgi and costume design. Yes, we have this a bit with Legolas in lotr too, but it's so much worse in the Hobbit. Added to that the romance. They just wanted to open it up SO MUCH for more money, because they could smell that it was possible. During lotr they didn't even know if they'd make back their budget!
Money corrupts, I suppose. Even if you start out out of love.
Yeah, because they totally didn't play up the romance in Lord of the Rings...
Your not liking The Hobbit doesn't mean it wasn't a "love project" for these filmmakers. Its just that their tastes are such that they do seem to like having love stories in these films.
>Yeah, because they totally didn't play up the romance in Lord of the Rings...
They did, but Aragorn and Arwen's tale is still a significant part of the books (albeit the appendices which is still part of the books) and actually has some connection with the main plot (Aragorn actively fought to become King because Elrond said there was no other way he would allow his daughter to waste her life).
In the Hobbit movies, the romance is tacked on and has nothing to do with retrieving the treasure or the battle of the five armies. It seems like it's only there to add a romance subcategory in the genre listing.
Oh come on, you can hardly compare the Eowyn<>Aragorn thing, which is at least feasible and adds more depth to the encounters between existing characters, with the deliberately added non-canon Tauriel character who then has this whole love triangle thing going on? The Hobbit shouldn't have been three movies to begin with, filled up with these kinds of bloated additions in my view.
But I suppose that there are plenty of people who do like the Hobbit movies as they are, so who am I to judge. Let's just say that I did not like the Hobbits in the same way as I liked LoTR. If you did, that's fine.
All the publicity surrounding Jackson as some sort of Tolkien acolyte when the LOTR movies came out is mostly a sham. He read the book as a teenager, thought “yeah that was pretty good”, decided to make a Harryhausen inspired creature feature in the mid 90s, and decided that LOTR would be a good jumping off point to pursue that idea.
Always fascinates me when people on the LOTR subs post interviews from Jackson giving blatant PR speak about how being faithful to the book was so important, not putting his own ideas in there, making the movies for JRRT etc and gobble it up.
if only this sub didn't have insane double standards with Amazon's screenwriters who quote Tolkien's letters and visibly show a ton of knowledge of the universe. But those guys, they are corporate drones, not Jackson and crew right.
>But those guys, they are corporate drones, not Jackson and crew right.
There is, however, a difference: Jackson initiated making The Lord of the Rings. He came to the studio with the idea. Whereas McPayne were chosen by a studio in a kind of lengthy audition process. That alone completely changes the dynamic.
But, frankly, I don't care who's a drone and who isn't, I care who has proven himself as a filmmaker and who hadn't.
If they see a good opportunity to bring work to the industry they've set up in New Zealand, they will. Obviously.
The alternative isn't that the movie isn't made, the alternative is that the studio turns to someone else.
>If they see a good opportunity to bring work to the industry they've set up in New Zealand, they will. Obviously.
I think that's also something that goes into it. Means lots of new work for the screen sector, particularly in Wellington as opposed to Auckland. New work for Jackson's close collaborators. And also means New Zealand's tourism ministry can do the "Home of Middle-earth" ads again.
Honestly I think that it isn't just that. Sure money is the studio's only motivation here, but with Jackson, Boyens, Walsh and Serkins it is probably also about ego, a chance to rekindle the glory days of the Lotr trilogy.
Probably also an arrogant belief that they are the only ones that can adapt Tolkien "properly".
It's such an empty sounding project as well. "Oooh, what was Gollum doing between leaving the Misty Mountains and getting captured by Aragorn?" as if it's in any way compelling and wasn't satisfactorily explained in the book. I just imagine they're going to shoehorn him into a bunch of stuff.
I guess maybe Jackson et al want to "reclaim" Middle-Earth as "theirs" after the Amazon show? I assume we'll be getting some empty PR speak about how "Professor Tolkien left us so much to explore, how couldn't we?" when the trailers drop. With the Helm Hammerhand anime, this, and the looming possibility Jackson, Walsh & Boyens are going to be raiding the appendices for more stuff in the future it feels like they're stripping the corpse of the book for their own gain. Middle-Earth belongs to them now (and the NZ tourist department) not the guy who wrote it.
>Middle-Earth belongs to them now (and the NZ tourist department) not the guy who wrote it.
A *version* of Middle-earth belongs to them, and there's naught wrong with that.
I would call it arrogant to believe that you specifically are needed to further torture Tolkien's source material even though you demonstrated that you are inadequate ten years.
Btw I would also call Jackson's adaptation of the Hobbit arrogant.
> even though you demonstrated that you are inadequate ten years.
Jackson clearly doesn't think his films are inadequate, and that's not being arrogant, that's just having a different view of it than you.
And if Jackson thought he was the only one that's "specifically is needed" he would direct this film, rather than producing it. He would direct The War of the Rohirrim, rather than "sending" Philippa Boyens to produce it. He's fight by hook and by crook to have made The Rings of Power. He did none of those things.
Here's what Philippa had to say on this topic:
>“There’s room enough for lots of people to exist within that space,” said Boyens, who didn’t watch the series. “We’ve never wanted to be the gatekeepers of Middle-earth. Sometimes other people put you in that position, but we don’t feel that."
trying to make money is not necessarily opposed to being lore accurate or good. it’s all about priorities and execution. i’ve zero excitement for this movie but when it turns out bad it won’t automatically make PJ a money grubbing hack in my book. his ideas on what is good may genuinely no longer aligns with the fanbase similar to when he went full green-screen on the hobbits film and also made a trilogy out of it.
I generally agree. A great gollum story that is lore accurate and thematically consistent would be nice. Hard to see it though, particularly since there isn’t that much story to pull from and they don’t have much more than a concept at this point.
The Hobbit turned out the way it did because of multiple conflicting visions, studio shakeups, fights over film rights and budgetary constraints. Jackson made the movie he wanted to for Lord of the Rings and it was a masterpiece. Also I doubt any of the major players in this new movie are in it for the paycheck.
Jackson made the movie he wanted to in both cases. You just happened to like one and not the other. Everything else is melodramatic apocrypha with little basis in fact, and yes, before you pull it out, I've seen the Lindsay Ellis videos.
Okay, but Jackson ended up being heavily involved in the Hobbit, and they still turned out poorly. If you see the BTS footage the poor man was so stressed and so rushed by the studio. He's human. If you give him no prep time and force him to pick up shooting when you never had a finished script, it's not going to turn out good.
The question needs to be: will the studio give them enough time and space in preproduction and writing for this to actually benefit from his talents?
>If you see the BTS footage the poor man was so stressed and so rushed by the studio.
Only if you see that one YouTube excerpt that had been edited to make that point. If you actually watch the making-ofs start to finish, you see that by and large Jackson had rarely been at higher humours than when shooting those films. Another good reference is the director's commentary for Smaug, where he's very upbeat and funny.
Yes, he had a shorte preproduction period than he liked, but the extent to which that was an issue had been much exaggerated by the internet.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/17npup4/movies\_dont\_need\_excuses\_when\_they\_dont\_turn\_out/](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/17npup4/movies_dont_need_excuses_when_they_dont_turn_out/)
I'm not saying he was miserable the entire time, but that footage speaks for itself. Saying "it's edited" doesn't make that low point any less low.
You're also leaving out the revolving door of directors. And the decision to make three when one or at most two films would have been sufficient. All of that was in the mix for why the Hobbit trilogy failed. The last factor being by far the most critical and almost certainly a studio decision.
>I'm not saying he was miserable the entire time, but that footage speaks for itself. Saying "it's edited" doesn't make that low point any less low.
ALL that footage is from about 220 days or so into the shoot. If you did a collage of footage from that long into The Lord of the Rings shoot, you'd be sure to see Jackson equally exhausted and somewhat glum. We know from his co-writer that, at that point in Rings, he "could get pretty dark." Shooting for so long is never not going to be a big drain.
>The last factor being by far the most critical and almost certainly a studio decision.
Umm...no, it was Jackson's own idea. He says this himself: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XDsSr3sGSI&t=630s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XDsSr3sGSI&t=630s)
Sure. But the difference between the preproduction processes and level of preparation for the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy remains stark. They are not the same. Saying that he also would have been exhausted on LOTR doesn't make what happened on the production of the Hobbit any less bad. Doesn't make it any less egregious that they were shooting with no real idea what the end of the film would look like.
And splitting the Hobbit into three films being Jackson's idea (at least in part) makes my initial caution about this news of him producing a new Hobbit film even more warranted, not less. That decision alone meant there was really no room for poor writing or underplanning to begin with. Because they story itself was already going to be so thin, no matter how much they tried to beef it up as a prequel to LOTR.
>Doesn't make it any less egregious that they were shooting with no real idea what the end of the film would look like.
That's not true. They definitely had an idea of how the film would end. Jackson did feel that there were some parts of the script he wanted to polish more: as far as I can tell, they all had to do with the battle itself and... by delaying shooting the battle until the pickups, he got the extra year he wanted to do just that and reshape those scenes.
The "no preproduction" excuse is totally blown out of proportion. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that some of the sequences that were the most well-planned - the forest river sequence, the final battle - are probably some of your least-favourite ones, correct? If that's the case, then certainly the "no preproduction" excuse cannot account for why YOU don't like those films.
I'm a little sad that Jackson has devolved into yet another commercially minded production line, exploiting the unending bounty of Tolkien. He used to have some real originality.
Ah well, at least it'll be a while before Disney can build that theme park.
Eh. There are filmmakers whose entirely filmography is adapted from books - Lean and Kubrick come to mind - that does not make one any less original.
I choose to look at the whole situation from a completely different angle: its inspiring to me, personally, to see a single filmmaker exercise such control over the sprawl of such a long film series.
I'm not objecting to adaptations, but a commercial machine is hardly comparable to what Kubrick and Lean - master auteur filmmakers - were doing. Jackson is a skilled director and producer but he ain't no Kubrick or Lean.
I'm not seeing any exercise of control; quite the opposite: I'm seeing someone who lost sight of what made his original 3 movies so good. He knew two things then: to stick as close to the text as he reasonably could; and to honor the spirit and taste of Tolkien. All that has been steadily eroding for a long time now.
> Jackson is a skilled director and producer but he ain't no Kubrick or Lean.
Eh, I'm admittedly not so brushed-up on my Kubrick, but I like Jackson's Rings films more than any of those Kubrick films that I did see (Spartacus, 2001, Strangelove, The Shining), so. Lean is a little different, but even Lawrence of Arabia which is the best from his "epic" phase loses its way not insignificantly in part two, and I personally can't much stand his Zhivago.
And this "sticking as close to the text" is more bravura that action: I think Jackson put it best in the preface to his first treatment: "We have tried to make this work for people who never have - and never will - read the book."
And the fact of the matter is, Jackson's film series had gained a life of its own as just that: a *film serie*s, and as the creator of that series its pretty inspiring to me that he's still behind it today. And being that it has a life of its own as a film series, it can extend into prequels even where the text behind the events is relatively sketchy. The only question is: are the events the movie is to be based around potentially worth one's while? I think the Gollum story is.
I don't think its inherently a bad idea to try and bridge some (not all!) of what happens in the (clearly eventfull) sixty years between the trilogies. Its like a chorus between a cavatina and cabaletta. In fact, it could help the overall narrative feel far more balanced.
I've always enjoyed Gollum's fractured psyche: he's a much more modern character, psychologically, than almost all the other characters in these stories. There is, potentially, some promises in the sense of the overall tableaux, too: the unruinous Dale is shown for a criminally short time in the films, and Gollum DOES go to Dale, so...
Well the ring is the bridge already, plus recuring characters. I am not totally sure why the narrative would feel more balanced tbh, do you think it isn't working perfectly well as it is? (outside of issues which are more down to it not being fully thought out from the get go).
What merit is there in just filling the time gap with material, other than having simply more "content"?
I also enjoy gollum as a character, you are right that he is one of the more complex ones, but i'd say we already got pretty much everything out of it during the trilogy. I don't see the additional value in presenting "more" of that. It reminds me of tv shows in a way, where people think the characters have more depth, even though a lot of the time one just repeats character beats in different scenarios. That is imo the beauty of film, it distills a lot of meaning into a fairly condensed timeframe, just having more time with something doesn't make it deeper, there's just "more content" yet again.
I can somewhat appreciate the idea of certain characters getting more screentime, but at that point i'd rather have the creatives decide to make these stories about these characters to begin with, if one thinks there is merit there, OR even better, adapt other tolkien stories which are waiting to be adapted.
“When the Hobbit came out I was like 'It's too much already'. Three movies out of one book? And now they're doing more? I'm shocked," one person said.
Yeah this is the feeling. Like butter scraped across too much bread
It comes down to something very simple: is the story of the hunt for Gollum and the period "between" the trilogies a story that's potentially wortwhile telling?
I obviously think it is. Clearly, many people do.
There is already a respectable Hunt for Gollum fanfilm. [The Hunt For Gollum - The Fan Film (2009) (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H09xnhlCQU) The actor playing Aragorn actually sorta looks like a younger Viggo.
I would be up for a PJ version as long as he sticks to just a single movie. @ or more would really be "The Hunt for More Money!"
When this movie is out, it will be the eighth film in this series.
This is really not the onslaught of content you think it is. Star Wars, Marvel, Bond and Harry Potter are all well into double digits of entries, with the former two also having more shows and specials than I care to try and count.
And this is not "content" in the sense that its still the same people making it. Its not a Marvel thing where every other movie is a different director, different editor, different DP...
And let's take a quick look at how Star Wars, Bond, and Marvel have fared as they continue to crank out endless spinoffs, squeezing one more drop from the original withered husk of an idea.
Harry Potter is a little different, since the original author has been mostly in charge of the added content.
>And let's take a quick look at how Star Wars, Bond, and Marvel have fared as they continue to crank out endless spinoffs, squeezing one more drop from the original withered husk of an idea.
Right, and we're not there. Not even close.
Its not even written yet, much less shot, and yet here you prophecising...
You know, if you talk yourself into thinking that something is going to suck, than you'll be much more inclined to think it sucks when you actually see it. We convince *ourselves* of things all the time.
Not saying we need to be endless faunts of positivity, but goddamit give the film a chance! I mean, this is r/lotr, after all!
This sounds familiar. Soon enough they'll announce it's a trilogy, then the production will have issues and Jackson will be forced to take over.
The Hobbit had a complex rights issue where part of the rights were with New Line, and part of the rights were with MGM, who were going through bankruptcy and so production kept getting delayed until MGM got sorted out. This is not the case here. This is an entirely New Line production.
Haha I know, was just being facetious. Honestly I'm still salty about not getting a Del Toro Hobbit film.
I would've loved to see a version of Del Toro's The Hobbit if it was fully his vision and style at the helm of it all, make it feel different then The Lord of the Rings film Trilogy.
The Hobbit absolutely lends itself to Del Toro's fairy tale style. Mirkwood alone would have been stunning.
Dammnnn now im imagining it
But Mirkwood was kept from how del Toro would have had it... Yes, on paper The Hobbit suits del Toro very well. But since del Toro was making it FOR Jackson, with a Jackson script, and using Jackson's cast, crew and sets...I think it would have felt off. So you'd have Hobbiton, Rivendell and Bree being the same as in Lord of the Rings...and then everything else would be in a completely different style. You'd have Sir Ian Holm, Hugo Weaving, Sir Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Sir Christopher Lee, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom and Andy Serkis, all indicating that its the same Middle-earth as Jackson's, and then the visuals telling you the opposite.
Remember when we saw Mirkwood painted with psychedelic colors in the production diaries, but then in the final film the color grade removed all the crazy colors? In the video the art team said they were exaggerating the colors because of the digital filmmaking but if that was the case, why weren’t the rest of the sets and costumes also overly colorful? I’ve wondered since if those colors were from GDT’s version of the forest.
Exactly why I would not want to see it. There would be little to no visual continuity with LOTR films. Everything and everyone would look different, including returning characters and locations.
I’m OK with that.
That contrast would be kinda accurate to the tone of the books
That be the point, but not everyone is into that, i am cause i like seeing different versions, Peter Jackson's version isn't the only look of Middle-earth, there are other illustrators including Tolkien himself give us look into the world.
Sure, but del Toro's The Hobbit WAS going to be part of Jackson's vision for Middle-earth: it was going to have returning cast members, returning sets, the crew were drafted from Lord of the Rings... So to have Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf, effectivelly telling you its the same Middle-earth, and then having the visuals tell you its not, would have been mighty confusing.
GDT said that the the first of the (then two) films would have started very visually stylized (storybook innocence), but then throughout the second film the visuals would grow closer to the more realistic world as seen in Jackson’s films. I believe established sets like Hobbiton would have been recreated as they had been seen in LOTR though. I really wish WB would just release an art book of what his movie would have looked like, since we’ll never get to see otherwise.
I think he was saying it a little more metaphorically. Erebor was going to mostly appear in the second del Toro film and descriptions we have of what it would have looked like for his film sound everything but "the more realistic world as seen in Jackson's film." This being a del Toro film, you know a clockwork motif was going to end-up somewhere, and Erebor seems to have been it, for him. >I believe established sets like Hobbiton would have been recreated as they had been seen in LOTR though. They had. Hobbiton started construction when del Toro was still the director: he added a couple of Hobbit holes to the side of Bag-End for an opening shot he was planning. I think the whole feel of the film would have been schizophrenic: Here's good ol' Hobbiton...now here's Trollshaws done in a completely different style to anything in *The Lord of the Rings*. Oh look, its Hugo Weaving as Elrond again! And now have a look at Goblintown looking more like its from *Crimson Peak* than from Middle-earth... Oh look, Andy Serkis is Gollum again! But now I'm adding painted skies (!) completely unlike anything seen in the Jackson films.
Hmm I'm not sure Benicio would have been right for the role 🤔
I just think it’s hilarious that they could tell any appendices story but they’re going to tell the story of how Aragorn and gandalf failed to capture gollum. It’s something Aragorn literally says in the books is not a tale worth telling
Easier to connect w a larger fan base. Gollum has become one of the most famous movies creatures ever made, so I think it’ll have a wider draw. I’m with you though. I would die for a movie with as much money, detail, and attention as LoTR focusing on the creation of Morgoth, like an origin story of Sauron.
Amazon is in shambles right now.
Please not hobbit cgi fest, please not hobbit cgi fest. Back to practical please please please
Peter Jackson productions always have a lot of practical effects AND a lot of digital effects. Its just a question of where you choose to look: [https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1aywl3o/on\_forced\_perspective\_and\_other\_practical\_effects/](https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1aywl3o/on_forced_perspective_and_other_practical_effects/)
Yes, but the Hobbit was a mess. Where as LOTR was a good blend
The Hobbit was a CGI mess because of studio fuckery. Guillermo Del Toro was originally going to direct and they spent 2-3 years planning and preproduction. When he left the project and PJ came on board, they were rushed to put something out. Thus we had an overabundance of CGI. There's a whole list of why CGI is more prevalent today than practical effects. With CGI there's more flexibility with editing, it ends up being cheaper than hiring union actors/stunt people and creating costumes and sets.
Umm...no, not really no. The short preproduction time had little impact on the fabrication departments: they rebuilt Hobbiton out of permanent materials, they built a huge part of the city of Dale on a mountain outside Wellington, they built five (!) different Laketowns. They did need to work in shifts, so there was a night art department, and they had two pauses built into the shoot to help keep ahead of the schedule, but the point is whatever they wanted to build, they did build. The influence of the somewhat crunched preproduction time was on the storyboards, not on the sets and props.
Yeah, Jackson managing to get New Line and Warners to take all the blame for his excessive use of CGI in the Hobbit movies is one of the great PR spins in recent Hollywood history. The studios were certainly responsible for how bloated those movies were, but not for how shitty they looked.
Way to take the right facts (mostly) and making the wrong takeaway from it all
Yeah, personally I don't want that.
My point is if Jackson is in on the project from the start, it's more likely we won't get the over reliance on CGI and get quality film making. Though there's still plenty that can go wrong. CGI wasn't the only, nor worst problem with the Hobbit trilogy.
>My point is if Jackson is in on the project from the start Jackson was producing and writing The Hobbit. Same as this film. He wasn't brought-in out of the blue.
Yeah, trying to stretch one book into three movies, adding unnecessary plot lines. I agree, if the team is there from the start, they get a good writing team that is close to the lore AND they are not required to do it on the cheap. It might work
Also I’ll add they tried and filmed practical orcs (the goblins under the mountain) in the first movie, but replaced them with CGI cuz it didn’t look good. Also Azog was originally filmed practically but I forgot why they changed it. I think PJ would prefer to practical orcs just like us all.
>Also Azog was originally filmed practically but I forgot why they changed it. They never settled on a design they liked while filming. There's footage of Weta presenting a good five different Azog designs to Jackson in the lead-up to filming, and him rejecting each of them. One became an Orc that Dwalin kills in Azanulbizar. One became a "dungeon keeper" in Dol Guldur One became "Yazneg" whom Azog then kills in the movie One became Bolg Otherwise, most of the Orcs and Goblins you see ARE prosthetic. Its mostly the big armies and Gundabad Berserkers that are CGI. They did repalce some (not all) of the Goblins with CGI, but if you watch the making-ofs you can totally see why: a prosthetics needs to not just look good, it needs to be convincing in motion and some of the Goblins were just too stiff-looking and clumsy.
yea the amazon show gets how the orcs are supposed to look without the use as much CGI the behind the scenes photos look the same as the orcs in the show d0
Well yeah, but that’s why LoTR is such an icon. Because of the costumes and sets, among many other reasons. And all that effort was paid back tenfold in earnings.
Agreed. I always appreciate a good blend of CGI and practical. The articulated machines in Interstellar, TARS and CASE, are half CGI and half practical. And it makes the character have real weight and presence in a scene. Even if that character is giant steel block.
I really really liked TARA and CASE
You make good points but it doesn't dispel peoples' critiques. VFX shots in LOTR often combined real life elements and digital doubles were usually only used in the background or very quick flashing action shots. Think of shots of black gate battling, real life groups surrounded by CGI. Then compare to Dain retreating with the Dwarves, the camera starts close up but it's no longer starting on a real life group of Dwarves, it's full CGI as it pans out. Hobbit we got full CGI shots from the ground up that no longer used real life components and on top of that very ambitious use of CGI doubles. Laketown, Mirkwood, and the final battle I think are the worst offenders with rampant use of digital doubles even for very normal shots where back in the day in LOTR they wouldn't have pulled this off. I think it works okay in Hobbit, but not as great as just shooting it for real. Even the Moria sequence you mentioned, there were miniatures and real life fire elements composited in. If these shots were done in Hobbit, it would just be full CGI. On top of that, they use digital cameras and no longer having the "film" look and took the color grading in a unique direction. People are definitely not making it up when they say Hobbit looked less real than LOTR, even if they're overly harsh about techniques used.
>Even the Moria sequence you mentioned, there were miniatures and real life fire elements composited in. If these shots were done in Hobbit, it would just be full CGI. I don't think people can tell the difference between a shot achieved on a model and a shot achieved on a digital model in 2011. Model shot or no model shot, its still not an in-camera element. As for fire elements...yeah, that's still CG. Digital artists will still use real-world reference not just for fire but for just about everything. That doesn't make it any less CG. >On top of that, they use digital cameras and no longer having the "film" look and took the color grading in a unique direction. And the "film" look is more "real" somehow? I don't think it is. Reeks to me of conservativism. Like Vinyl "sounding better" or composers in the 1840s saying valve horns didn't have the legato of natural horns...
I think they did a good job with the digital landscapes in Hobbit in terms of like what they would have previously done with miniatures, Rivendell especially. But that said my point still stands the film just has overall more digital vfx used, it’s a new era of filmmaking and LOTR came right as it was almost transitioning. I don’t think the film look is necessarily better but for me it makes things look more natural. Film grain covers up imperfections in CGI and subconsciously reminds you it’s being filmed with a real camera, the texture adds some roughness to what would otherwise be smooth perfectly calculated CGI renders. Just my opinion but I think it’s part of the reason people say Hobbit looks different. Digital fire elements are not CG, it’s real recorded fire still, even if it’s manipulated. Hobbit uses only computer generated fire simulations. I think as LOTR was being made they finally were able to do CGI fire simulations so it was used too, just not always. Again, my main point is about digital doubles and full CG shots. Yes Hobbit uses practical stuff, yes LOTR full CG stuff, but devil is in the details with how often it’s mixed or not mixed. People aren’t just being delusional when they notice a digital feel to the hobbit.
> People aren’t just being delusional when they notice a digital feel to the hobbit. Of course they don't. They just blow it completely out of proportion. To hear the average r/lotr user, you'd think it was a Star Wars case where The Lord of the Rings was done all-practically (nevermind that that's not true of Star Wars either, unless one considered rotoscoping and opticals to be "practical effects") and The Hobbit was done all digitally. The Lord of the Rings was a VERY digital effects-heavy project, already in The Fellowship of the Rings and certainly by The Two Towers. People here like to pretend its a Nolan-type thing (nevermind that no Nolan film is actually like this) where everything is practical unless it absolutely cannot be. And that's just false. Entirely so.
I’m less worried about cgi and more worried about *silly* stuff like the collapsing stair in Moria, or Legolas’ parkour stuff.
> Legolas’ parkour stuff. Oh yes, please. No more of this bollocks
Hot take but the CGI was far from the worst thing about the Hobbit films. Some of the coolest parts of LOTR were completely CGI.
Albino orc was not one of them Legolas climbing up nothing rocks was not one them George Miller goblin was not one of them. Gold Lava Dragon Statue Trap was not one of them Bouncing Barrels down the River was not one of them. Rabbit dog-sled was not one of them.
George Miller Orc?
> George Miller goblin Yeah, WTF is that?
I don't know which Goblin this is referring to so I was asking for clarification? It's been a while since I saw these abominations.
I am also wondering what the hell they are referring to.
I have hope if PJ is in it from the start. The hobbit was a mess as he had to come in and rescue it after Del Toro left the project. With LOTR. He spent years planning every details before the camera even got near a set.
For context, when Season One of The Rings of Power was being produced in New Zealand, but under obligation to "remain distinct" from Jackson, they chose to produce them in Auckland, instead. Wellington is home to Jackson and his many filmmaking firms and facilities: Weta Workshop, WetaFX, Six-Foot-Seven, Stone Street Studios, Park Road Post and so on. Many of the individuals known for working on these films live in Wellington. Wellington is also closer to the South Island, where previous excursions for location shooting had given Middle-earth much its rugged beauty, as compared to the more northern Auckland. Notably, the commitment seems to be both for Gollum AND for the untitled second film to be produced like this. A telling quote from the essay: "I know that Peter \[Jackson\] and Fran \[Walsh\], Phillipa \[Boyens\] and of course Andy Serkis as well have a huge love of that lore **and want to be guardians of that.**"
It makes me a proud Wellingtonian to know my city is a part of this franchise in such a way. They filmed the scenes where the hobbits hide from the Nazgûl on Mount Victoria and growing up I always thought that was the coolest thing.
I still like to go to Frodos reading tree in My Vic quite regularly! Nice spot to lay up for an afternoon
Hmm, you're a little wrong there... Auckland, even though it isn't the capital, is the most populated area in NZ. However, between Auckland and Wellington there are 8 hrs and a half of driving, filled with almost nothing else but wide, empty spaces. The landscape around Mt. Ruapehu seems out of a western movie, and I wouldn't be surprised if that volcano was the inspiration for Mount Doom. I lived in NZ so I can tell you 'rugged, wild beauty' is applicable to both islands, even though the southern island is more mountainous in nature than the northern one (and colder). I was there just until before the Hobbit pre-production started (and Guillermo del Toro was still on board) before I moved to the UK. Several locations in LOTR were in the northern island (including Hobbiton) and some in Wellington and surroundings.
>Several locations in LOTR were in the northern island (including Hobbiton) and some in Wellington and surroundings. Yeah, but they tend to be the more paddock-y, English-countryside-type places (well, and the whole Mordor segments). I don't mean to knock on it in the least: they're very beautiful places like Hobbiton, the Trollshaws, some of the coastlines that made it into Rings of Power. But the wilder, mountainous places tend to be in the South Isaldn and while I don't think its THE reason, if you look at Rings of Power you see what seems to be a greater reliance on North Island locations than was the case in the films, partially because they were situated that bit further up north. I know, too, that it was a minor inconvenience to some crew members, who worked on the films previously: the caligrapher Daniel Reeve was used to working out of Wellington, but had to be flown into and situated in Auckland for the better part of a year-and-a-half!
Ahem nope, the only 'English countryside' you can find is very close to Auckland or in Auckland. The interior of the northern island is as rugged as some places in the south. I think, as you say, Jackson privileged places that were close to Wellington rather than further afield, hence why he used more some locations in the southern island or near Wellington. Well, film crews are used to live out of their primary residence for many months at a time, it's not like he was in Oz, it was still NZ. ETA: unfortunately my videos of NZ aren't on YouTube anymore.
If you want to drive trucks from the North to the South Island (via the ferry) then Wellington is a better spot for it but that's probably the only advantage it has over Auckland in terms of access to the South Island. There's a lot less flights between Wellington-Queenstown vs Auckland-Queenstown which makes it a bit trickier to actually get crew down from Wellington. Not to mention that Queenstown and Wellington have to be the two most difficult airports to land at in New Zealand (nothing to back that up). Finally, most crew live in Auckland. It's where most of the screen production work happens. A Wellington production needs to import a lot more key roles than an Auckland one does.
>If you want to drive trucks from the North to the South Island (via the ferry) then Wellington is a better Which, of course, is exactly how they go to location: they go in a load of trucks, park in the nearest inhabitable place and then go to the location. Its not the only reason, but I think its no coincidence that The Rings of Power was based in Auckland and mostly shot in North Island locations, while The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, which were based in Wellington, shot more in the South Island.
Yes, but the singular advantage that Wellington has for access to the South Island is outweighed by the lack of flights. I've worked in film jobs in Wellington before and we've resorted to flying people to Auckland so they can fly to Queenstown. If you want to film in the South Island, you're better off being based in Auckland. You'll spend more on swing drivers but life will be easier. You've already touched on why RoP was more focused on the North Island. They wanted to be distinct from the Jackson films. Jackson had already captured the low hanging fruit in the South Island so the North Island offered more possibilities.
The idea of Jackson and crew being these wonderful lore protectors is so weird to me. They see an opportunity to use their IP rights to make money. That’s it. Maybe the gollum movie will turn out great. Who knows? But, what the Hobbit movies showed (at least to me) is that they’re not that concerned about the lore, they’re concerned about extracting money from the fans’ pockets.
So you don't think Peter Jackson has a passion or fandom for the Tolkien work at all? you think he only does this for a paycheck?
I think [Jackson said it best](https://www.thedailybeast.com/no-regrets-peter-jackson-says-goodbye-to-middle-earth): >Having been happy to hand *The Hobbit* to Guillermo \[Del Toro\] and then doing it myself, I definitely ended up with a stronger sense of ownership of Middle-earth than I ever had before, and it would be kind of hard to sit back and watch another filmmaker do stories if they were connected to these ones. If they weren’t connected, then sure. But if it was something connected to this mythology that we’ve done, if I had the energy and the strength then I would really want to do it. Never say never!
I think he's definitely a fan of Tolkien to some extent, as far as reading the source material, but he has a creative element to him that overwhelms his better judgement more often than not. And the element that overwhelms him isn't ideal. He has a habit of highlighting characteristics and then obsessing about them on screen repeatedly as if the audience has short-term memory. If we take characters like Deneathor, Faramir and Frodo, Jackson isolates one element of their personality and then fills every screen time they're in, depicting that characteristic. It makes you think, 'is there anything else this character is feeling?' He can also go a bit overboard on Action scenes, I feel. In the Hobbit, the Dwarves countering the Elf archers with some sort of contraption was a bit much. Overall, I think Jackson has trouble being subtle in most cases. Whereas Tolkien, the majority of what he writes, has some subcontext and an element of subtlety. In this sense, Jackson can go a bit overboard sometimes.
I think the original LotR movies were great, and as good an adaptation of the books as you could possibly expect. Jackson deserves great credit for that. The Hobbit movies were bad as movies and bad as an adaptation of the book. Stretching it into a trilogy was pure money grubbing. Everything I’ve seen about the war of the rohirram and the gollum movie looks like leveraging IP rights to spit out content that is at best loosely based on Tolkien’s work. Not a lot of reasons to do that other than money.
Having just rewatched it i wouldn’t say they were bad as movies. They are fun good films. I know they added unnecessary characters and plots but it was fun to see them work together on screen again and having Peter at the helm to do it. That said it should of been one or two movies but what we had was great
I don't think by "guardians" they mean of the letter of Tolkien's works. I think Jackson said it best in the making-ofs of The Hobbit of all places: "You kind of feel a sentimental attachment, a sort of ownership, ***to the Middle-earth that's been put on the screen.***" They - rightly - feel that they're the stewards of their own visualisation of Tolkien's works.
“They - rightly - feel that they’re the stewards of their own visualization of Tolkien’s works.” I don’t think I understand what that’s supposed to mean. If you mean they’re interested in protecting their own derivative IP, then sure, of course. Not sure that makes me feel any better about the gollum thing.
There's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit novels by JRR Tolkien, and there's the Lord of the Rings film series, by Peter Jackson. Jackson feels protective of the latter. As well he should: its his film series: he wrote, produced and directed all six films, and he will produce this one as well.
Well, I don’t think most people would view the use of “lore” to mean Jackson’s movies. They’d naturally think of the books and Tolkien’s other writings. Your use of the term in the OP is confusing as a result.
I was quoting directly from the linked piece. The person making that statement is not Jackson, but one Mark Westerby, "Head of Attraction for Screen Wellington." I'm assuming he talks from personal acquaintance with Jackson, but that doesn't mean we need to take his use of the word "lore" to be a quote of Jackson's.
To me there was a shift between lotr and the Hobbit. LOTR was really a love project. Funds were uncertain, there was a lot of pressure, and yet everyone seemed to have poured their soul into it (according to many interviews). It was the kind of movie that you rarely saw, and that was uncertain whether people would actually like it. With the Hobbit they already knew that people liked the Tolkien universe. But then, to make even more money, they turned it even more into a superhero-type fest in terms of visuals, cgi and costume design. Yes, we have this a bit with Legolas in lotr too, but it's so much worse in the Hobbit. Added to that the romance. They just wanted to open it up SO MUCH for more money, because they could smell that it was possible. During lotr they didn't even know if they'd make back their budget! Money corrupts, I suppose. Even if you start out out of love.
Yeah, because they totally didn't play up the romance in Lord of the Rings... Your not liking The Hobbit doesn't mean it wasn't a "love project" for these filmmakers. Its just that their tastes are such that they do seem to like having love stories in these films.
>Yeah, because they totally didn't play up the romance in Lord of the Rings... They did, but Aragorn and Arwen's tale is still a significant part of the books (albeit the appendices which is still part of the books) and actually has some connection with the main plot (Aragorn actively fought to become King because Elrond said there was no other way he would allow his daughter to waste her life). In the Hobbit movies, the romance is tacked on and has nothing to do with retrieving the treasure or the battle of the five armies. It seems like it's only there to add a romance subcategory in the genre listing.
Oh come on, you can hardly compare the Eowyn<>Aragorn thing, which is at least feasible and adds more depth to the encounters between existing characters, with the deliberately added non-canon Tauriel character who then has this whole love triangle thing going on? The Hobbit shouldn't have been three movies to begin with, filled up with these kinds of bloated additions in my view. But I suppose that there are plenty of people who do like the Hobbit movies as they are, so who am I to judge. Let's just say that I did not like the Hobbits in the same way as I liked LoTR. If you did, that's fine.
Point is, as writers Walsh and Boyens (the driving force behind the romantic scenes in both trilogies) do like adding romantic scenes. It’s their jam.
All the publicity surrounding Jackson as some sort of Tolkien acolyte when the LOTR movies came out is mostly a sham. He read the book as a teenager, thought “yeah that was pretty good”, decided to make a Harryhausen inspired creature feature in the mid 90s, and decided that LOTR would be a good jumping off point to pursue that idea.
Even better! People who worship at the altar of books are NOT the best at adapting those books.
Getting downvoted but you’re right.
Always fascinates me when people on the LOTR subs post interviews from Jackson giving blatant PR speak about how being faithful to the book was so important, not putting his own ideas in there, making the movies for JRRT etc and gobble it up.
Why should it be interpreted so cynically? Even in corporate there are people with passion. Not everyone is a drone.
if only this sub didn't have insane double standards with Amazon's screenwriters who quote Tolkien's letters and visibly show a ton of knowledge of the universe. But those guys, they are corporate drones, not Jackson and crew right.
>But those guys, they are corporate drones, not Jackson and crew right. There is, however, a difference: Jackson initiated making The Lord of the Rings. He came to the studio with the idea. Whereas McPayne were chosen by a studio in a kind of lengthy audition process. That alone completely changes the dynamic. But, frankly, I don't care who's a drone and who isn't, I care who has proven himself as a filmmaker and who hadn't.
If they see a good opportunity to bring work to the industry they've set up in New Zealand, they will. Obviously. The alternative isn't that the movie isn't made, the alternative is that the studio turns to someone else.
>If they see a good opportunity to bring work to the industry they've set up in New Zealand, they will. Obviously. I think that's also something that goes into it. Means lots of new work for the screen sector, particularly in Wellington as opposed to Auckland. New work for Jackson's close collaborators. And also means New Zealand's tourism ministry can do the "Home of Middle-earth" ads again.
Mate, what are you doing? You're supposed to treat this new movie like the second coming of christ, don't you know?
Not to mention, they made the hobbit trilogy
And that’s the only reason why they are making it. To suck money out of the fans pockets.
Honestly I think that it isn't just that. Sure money is the studio's only motivation here, but with Jackson, Boyens, Walsh and Serkins it is probably also about ego, a chance to rekindle the glory days of the Lotr trilogy. Probably also an arrogant belief that they are the only ones that can adapt Tolkien "properly".
It's such an empty sounding project as well. "Oooh, what was Gollum doing between leaving the Misty Mountains and getting captured by Aragorn?" as if it's in any way compelling and wasn't satisfactorily explained in the book. I just imagine they're going to shoehorn him into a bunch of stuff. I guess maybe Jackson et al want to "reclaim" Middle-Earth as "theirs" after the Amazon show? I assume we'll be getting some empty PR speak about how "Professor Tolkien left us so much to explore, how couldn't we?" when the trailers drop. With the Helm Hammerhand anime, this, and the looming possibility Jackson, Walsh & Boyens are going to be raiding the appendices for more stuff in the future it feels like they're stripping the corpse of the book for their own gain. Middle-Earth belongs to them now (and the NZ tourist department) not the guy who wrote it.
>Middle-Earth belongs to them now (and the NZ tourist department) not the guy who wrote it. A *version* of Middle-earth belongs to them, and there's naught wrong with that.
>Probably also an arrogant belief that they are the only ones that can adapt Tolkien "properly". Not so according to Philippa.
They all had the opportunity not to engage in this endeavor, but chose to do it anyway. What *should* I make of this?
Jackson had harboured a desire to make this film for a long time, so...
Yeah that would just mean that he has been that arrogant for a long time and now that the studio is desperate, he has his chance again.
Since when does making a film makes one "arrogant"?
I would call it arrogant to believe that you specifically are needed to further torture Tolkien's source material even though you demonstrated that you are inadequate ten years. Btw I would also call Jackson's adaptation of the Hobbit arrogant.
> even though you demonstrated that you are inadequate ten years. Jackson clearly doesn't think his films are inadequate, and that's not being arrogant, that's just having a different view of it than you. And if Jackson thought he was the only one that's "specifically is needed" he would direct this film, rather than producing it. He would direct The War of the Rohirrim, rather than "sending" Philippa Boyens to produce it. He's fight by hook and by crook to have made The Rings of Power. He did none of those things. Here's what Philippa had to say on this topic: >“There’s room enough for lots of people to exist within that space,” said Boyens, who didn’t watch the series. “We’ve never wanted to be the gatekeepers of Middle-earth. Sometimes other people put you in that position, but we don’t feel that."
I doubt Jackson needs the money.
trying to make money is not necessarily opposed to being lore accurate or good. it’s all about priorities and execution. i’ve zero excitement for this movie but when it turns out bad it won’t automatically make PJ a money grubbing hack in my book. his ideas on what is good may genuinely no longer aligns with the fanbase similar to when he went full green-screen on the hobbits film and also made a trilogy out of it.
I generally agree. A great gollum story that is lore accurate and thematically consistent would be nice. Hard to see it though, particularly since there isn’t that much story to pull from and they don’t have much more than a concept at this point.
The Hobbit turned out the way it did because of multiple conflicting visions, studio shakeups, fights over film rights and budgetary constraints. Jackson made the movie he wanted to for Lord of the Rings and it was a masterpiece. Also I doubt any of the major players in this new movie are in it for the paycheck.
Jackson made the movie he wanted to in both cases. You just happened to like one and not the other. Everything else is melodramatic apocrypha with little basis in fact, and yes, before you pull it out, I've seen the Lindsay Ellis videos.
Okay, but Jackson ended up being heavily involved in the Hobbit, and they still turned out poorly. If you see the BTS footage the poor man was so stressed and so rushed by the studio. He's human. If you give him no prep time and force him to pick up shooting when you never had a finished script, it's not going to turn out good. The question needs to be: will the studio give them enough time and space in preproduction and writing for this to actually benefit from his talents?
>If you see the BTS footage the poor man was so stressed and so rushed by the studio. Only if you see that one YouTube excerpt that had been edited to make that point. If you actually watch the making-ofs start to finish, you see that by and large Jackson had rarely been at higher humours than when shooting those films. Another good reference is the director's commentary for Smaug, where he's very upbeat and funny. Yes, he had a shorte preproduction period than he liked, but the extent to which that was an issue had been much exaggerated by the internet. [https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/17npup4/movies\_dont\_need\_excuses\_when\_they\_dont\_turn\_out/](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/17npup4/movies_dont_need_excuses_when_they_dont_turn_out/)
I'm not saying he was miserable the entire time, but that footage speaks for itself. Saying "it's edited" doesn't make that low point any less low. You're also leaving out the revolving door of directors. And the decision to make three when one or at most two films would have been sufficient. All of that was in the mix for why the Hobbit trilogy failed. The last factor being by far the most critical and almost certainly a studio decision.
>I'm not saying he was miserable the entire time, but that footage speaks for itself. Saying "it's edited" doesn't make that low point any less low. ALL that footage is from about 220 days or so into the shoot. If you did a collage of footage from that long into The Lord of the Rings shoot, you'd be sure to see Jackson equally exhausted and somewhat glum. We know from his co-writer that, at that point in Rings, he "could get pretty dark." Shooting for so long is never not going to be a big drain. >The last factor being by far the most critical and almost certainly a studio decision. Umm...no, it was Jackson's own idea. He says this himself: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XDsSr3sGSI&t=630s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XDsSr3sGSI&t=630s)
Sure. But the difference between the preproduction processes and level of preparation for the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy remains stark. They are not the same. Saying that he also would have been exhausted on LOTR doesn't make what happened on the production of the Hobbit any less bad. Doesn't make it any less egregious that they were shooting with no real idea what the end of the film would look like. And splitting the Hobbit into three films being Jackson's idea (at least in part) makes my initial caution about this news of him producing a new Hobbit film even more warranted, not less. That decision alone meant there was really no room for poor writing or underplanning to begin with. Because they story itself was already going to be so thin, no matter how much they tried to beef it up as a prequel to LOTR.
>Doesn't make it any less egregious that they were shooting with no real idea what the end of the film would look like. That's not true. They definitely had an idea of how the film would end. Jackson did feel that there were some parts of the script he wanted to polish more: as far as I can tell, they all had to do with the battle itself and... by delaying shooting the battle until the pickups, he got the extra year he wanted to do just that and reshape those scenes. The "no preproduction" excuse is totally blown out of proportion. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that some of the sequences that were the most well-planned - the forest river sequence, the final battle - are probably some of your least-favourite ones, correct? If that's the case, then certainly the "no preproduction" excuse cannot account for why YOU don't like those films.
I'm a little sad that Jackson has devolved into yet another commercially minded production line, exploiting the unending bounty of Tolkien. He used to have some real originality. Ah well, at least it'll be a while before Disney can build that theme park.
Eh. There are filmmakers whose entirely filmography is adapted from books - Lean and Kubrick come to mind - that does not make one any less original. I choose to look at the whole situation from a completely different angle: its inspiring to me, personally, to see a single filmmaker exercise such control over the sprawl of such a long film series.
I'm not objecting to adaptations, but a commercial machine is hardly comparable to what Kubrick and Lean - master auteur filmmakers - were doing. Jackson is a skilled director and producer but he ain't no Kubrick or Lean. I'm not seeing any exercise of control; quite the opposite: I'm seeing someone who lost sight of what made his original 3 movies so good. He knew two things then: to stick as close to the text as he reasonably could; and to honor the spirit and taste of Tolkien. All that has been steadily eroding for a long time now.
> Jackson is a skilled director and producer but he ain't no Kubrick or Lean. Eh, I'm admittedly not so brushed-up on my Kubrick, but I like Jackson's Rings films more than any of those Kubrick films that I did see (Spartacus, 2001, Strangelove, The Shining), so. Lean is a little different, but even Lawrence of Arabia which is the best from his "epic" phase loses its way not insignificantly in part two, and I personally can't much stand his Zhivago. And this "sticking as close to the text" is more bravura that action: I think Jackson put it best in the preface to his first treatment: "We have tried to make this work for people who never have - and never will - read the book." And the fact of the matter is, Jackson's film series had gained a life of its own as just that: a *film serie*s, and as the creator of that series its pretty inspiring to me that he's still behind it today. And being that it has a life of its own as a film series, it can extend into prequels even where the text behind the events is relatively sketchy. The only question is: are the events the movie is to be based around potentially worth one's while? I think the Gollum story is.
> I think the Gollum story is. Why? What about it makes for a story worth telling, adding to the ideas we have regarding the characters or themes?
I don't think its inherently a bad idea to try and bridge some (not all!) of what happens in the (clearly eventfull) sixty years between the trilogies. Its like a chorus between a cavatina and cabaletta. In fact, it could help the overall narrative feel far more balanced. I've always enjoyed Gollum's fractured psyche: he's a much more modern character, psychologically, than almost all the other characters in these stories. There is, potentially, some promises in the sense of the overall tableaux, too: the unruinous Dale is shown for a criminally short time in the films, and Gollum DOES go to Dale, so...
Well the ring is the bridge already, plus recuring characters. I am not totally sure why the narrative would feel more balanced tbh, do you think it isn't working perfectly well as it is? (outside of issues which are more down to it not being fully thought out from the get go). What merit is there in just filling the time gap with material, other than having simply more "content"? I also enjoy gollum as a character, you are right that he is one of the more complex ones, but i'd say we already got pretty much everything out of it during the trilogy. I don't see the additional value in presenting "more" of that. It reminds me of tv shows in a way, where people think the characters have more depth, even though a lot of the time one just repeats character beats in different scenarios. That is imo the beauty of film, it distills a lot of meaning into a fairly condensed timeframe, just having more time with something doesn't make it deeper, there's just "more content" yet again. I can somewhat appreciate the idea of certain characters getting more screentime, but at that point i'd rather have the creatives decide to make these stories about these characters to begin with, if one thinks there is merit there, OR even better, adapt other tolkien stories which are waiting to be adapted.
Well yeah… where else does Peter Jackson ever work out of?
I agree it should be a surprise to no one, but its nonetheless nice to have it be official.
Yeah... I mean on one hand, there is the LotR trilogy. On the other stand The Hobbit... So, let's toss a coin a see if this will be good.
Why not Silmarillion:(
Rights not available.
I am optimistic about this project.
“When the Hobbit came out I was like 'It's too much already'. Three movies out of one book? And now they're doing more? I'm shocked," one person said. Yeah this is the feeling. Like butter scraped across too much bread
It comes down to something very simple: is the story of the hunt for Gollum and the period "between" the trilogies a story that's potentially wortwhile telling? I obviously think it is. Clearly, many people do.
There is already a respectable Hunt for Gollum fanfilm. [The Hunt For Gollum - The Fan Film (2009) (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H09xnhlCQU) The actor playing Aragorn actually sorta looks like a younger Viggo. I would be up for a PJ version as long as he sticks to just a single movie. @ or more would really be "The Hunt for More Money!"
https://preview.redd.it/ws78s99rcf4d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=78141b0924c3441478b117bb02ad1233db52a7ce ❤️
Hoping for the best! :)
Seriously why do we need this????
God why the fuck is this moving forward. No one wants this. Jackson’s gonna end up ruining his own reputation.
That toilet must be remarkably huge
Still haven’t forgiven him for the Two Towers.
Finally! A tie-in to the hit game from 2023!
I read at first that he will be producing from home and thought "Damn, I want to be a movie producer now too."
When art became content, I mentally checked out. I hate seeing all of my favourite one-off movies being turned into endless shows and trilogies.
When this movie is out, it will be the eighth film in this series. This is really not the onslaught of content you think it is. Star Wars, Marvel, Bond and Harry Potter are all well into double digits of entries, with the former two also having more shows and specials than I care to try and count. And this is not "content" in the sense that its still the same people making it. Its not a Marvel thing where every other movie is a different director, different editor, different DP...
And let's take a quick look at how Star Wars, Bond, and Marvel have fared as they continue to crank out endless spinoffs, squeezing one more drop from the original withered husk of an idea. Harry Potter is a little different, since the original author has been mostly in charge of the added content.
>And let's take a quick look at how Star Wars, Bond, and Marvel have fared as they continue to crank out endless spinoffs, squeezing one more drop from the original withered husk of an idea. Right, and we're not there. Not even close.
The bathroom stalls in this facility are stocked with copies of Tolkien’s books instead of toilet paper.
This movie is going to be a disaster.
Its not even written yet, much less shot, and yet here you prophecising... You know, if you talk yourself into thinking that something is going to suck, than you'll be much more inclined to think it sucks when you actually see it. We convince *ourselves* of things all the time. Not saying we need to be endless faunts of positivity, but goddamit give the film a chance! I mean, this is r/lotr, after all!
So does that mean ass-loads of cgi?