The Lord of the Ringsmade Peter Jackson. It’s equally safe to say thatThe Hobbitbroke him. One look at the director/producer sitting dejected on the empty set in the Blu-ray featurette tells more than we can. In less than 10 years, the overall vibe in discussions and media think-pieces had changed from praise to condemnation. His fantasy epics once celebrated as passion projects, were seen only as obligatory corporate products. How can a trilogy rake in $2.9 billion and still be labeled a disappointing mess? Turning a young-adult adventure novel into an R-rated action movie is certainly one way to split a fanbase.
Though his career is also tied to the fantasy novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, Jackson’s successor, Andy Serkis (the guy who played Gollum) has an intimidating task ahead. Slated to direct the next film,The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum(not to be confused with theshort film made by fans in 2009), he inherits the reins to the franchise just as interest in hobbits and orcs has potentially reached a low point. With the underwhelming return of Tolkien in Prime Video’sThe Rings of the Power, The Lord of the Ringsuniverse’s reputation is at an all-time low —The Hollywood Reporterreporting less than half of viewers actually finishing the first season, and likewise ignored by the Emmy folks.It’s hard not to look back at the harrowing production ofThe Hobbitas a warning of things to come.
On paper, filming the foundational text that laid the narrative groundwork forThe Lord of the Ringsseemed like it could not possibly go wrong. It’s easy to forget thatLotRwas only possible through a web of interconnected parties cooperating to bring a live-action adaption to life.The Hobbitwas sabotaged by this very same uneasy alliance of creative and corporate entities vying for a bigger slice.The magic evaporated before the cameras ever started rolling.AfterThe Hobbitfilms, the Tolkien-faithful never trusted Jackson or viewed him the same way again. Is it fair to blame him?
The Hobbit Should Have Been an Easy Slam Dunk
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The Lord of the Ringsfilms took years of painstaking plotting and attention to casting to adapt the literature of author J.R.R. Tolkien to theaters. Occurring six decades before the Jackson trilogy, Guillermo Del Toro’s planned two-partThe Hobbitwas a no-brainer for the producers and rights owners eager to seize the momentum of the Oscar-winning smash film franchise and continue the saga.The Hobbit, published in 1937, was awkwardly fractured into three movies instead, despite having far less source material to cover thanLord of the Rings, each one running a substantial running time of about two and a half hours.That piece of information probably was the first red flag that things were going off the rails.
10 Movies That Were Stuck in Production Hell for the Longest Time
You can’t rush art, and these movies that rose from production hell know it best.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journeyopened up the trilogy in the holiday season of 2012;The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaugdebuted the following year; andThe Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armieswrapped up the prequels in 2014, the onlyR-rated filmin the bunch. The film looked to be in great hands, Jackson back on board as the director, with able actors like Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage assuming the primary roles. Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, and Cate Blanchett reprised their roles from the prior trilogy, ensuring continuity. Guillermo Del Toro, who had signed on to put his own unique twist on the lighthearted tale of Frodo Baggins’s cousin Bilbo, was a no-show. That was the second big warning sign that things were not going well.
Momentum, or lack thereof, was the one thing that spoiled the project. It’s an exaggeration to decry thelengthy pre-productionand principal production as “hell,” but it sure felt like it to the ones stuck in limbo. In a bizarre quirk of the business, the film began pre-production while not officially legally authorized to do so. It was a foregone conclusion thatThe Hobbitwould be made, just not when. Some fans wish it never had been.
The HobbitStalls in Production Purgatory
Fate, greed, and incompetence might be a more apt word that conspired against the project before it could get underway, as MGM, New Line Cinema, the Tolkien estate, and Jackson battled over money and lawyered up. Here’s the abridged version to save time:Jackson held out for more money, thinking that New Line Cinema screwed him out of merchandising profits, while the Tolkien estate wanted a bigger cut from NLC too. The whole affair was dragging on for years beyond initial estimates because the film rights owner, MGM, was in disarray at the moment.Four years went down the drain with no movie and no director to show for it.
Why The Rings of Power Isn’t Connected to Peter Jackson’s LOTR Films
Prime Video’s The Rings of Power is a Tolkien adaptation set in an entirely different world than Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies.
As the lawyers suited up for battle,Del Toro crafted storyboards, wrote dialogue, and worked out logistics for the action scenes and ancillary shotswhile the crew sat and waited for the green light. The quagmire shoot sapped any spirit out of the crew. Snapping under the strain, Guillermo Del Toro, who had now been living in New Zealand for a year and a half, bowed out. Jackson took it gracefully, thanking him for the commitment shown. It seems the director simply got bored and didn’t appreciate the studios (and Jackson) wasting his valuable time; Jackson delicately explained toTheOneRing.Netin 2010:
“The bottom line is that Guillermo just didn’t feel he could commit six years to living in New Zealand, exclusively making these films, when his original commitment was for three years. … Guillermo’s strong vision is engrained into the scripts and designs of these two films, which are extremely fortunate to be blessed with his creative DNA.”
Jackson, against his wishes, was thrust back into the directing chair once more, toiling in21-hour shiftsto get it done on time and on budget, according toThe New Zealand Herald. Much of the preparatory labor had been performed, but Jackson had to make use of the props and sets Del Toro had selected. It was a terrible time for almost everyone involved. Bankrupted after one too many ambitious flops, New Line Cinema’s brief but brilliant run as one of the greatest independent studios ended in 2008,assimilated into Warner Bros., its days as a major mover and shaker in the industry were over. Jackson had delivered the studio its crowning glory, but nothing could save New Line Cinema. In the years after,Lord of the Ringsmedia would noticeably drift further and further from the classic trilogy and Jackson’s presence, with diminishing results.
How Lord of the Rings Lost Its Mojo
The first installment ofThe Hobbittrilogy cleaned up at the box office. Each subsequent chapter easily recouped its massive (for the time) collective budget of roughly 765 million USD for the three films. A funny thing about those ticket receipts:moviegoersexpecting Jackson to adhere closely to the book were taken aback at the numerous liberties he had taken with the cherished Middle-earth lore, ridiculing the movie for its overuse of CGI, bloated runtime, and excessive violence that didn’t fit with the relatively simple tale of an uncomplicated character.Critics weren’t any less harsh, with oneAtlanticcritic trashing the new movie as a “violent betrayal of Tolkien” for its portrayal and another writer on that same website taking Jackson to task for his inflated ego. The honeymoon was over, and there would be no red carpet love.
Jackson vented in interviews that he was deprived of “time to think.” Rather than delay the tight schedule and scrapping all the effort that had already been spent, he simply improvised everything on the spot instead of trying to revise the script and reshape the scenes to make them more coherent, editing around the footage later. Second-unit director Andy Serkis added that some of theBattle of Five Armiessequenceswere shot largely detached from any specific thematic focus or narrative guidance. Men in suits whacked each other in front of a green screen devoid of any motivation, scenes “banked” in a desperate quest to stay ahead of the stupefying workload, three epic-sized films coming out one year after another.
The mixed reception ofThe Hobbitmovies was the beginning of the end. The devotees of the books and early films remain, but the excitement is gone as corporations (and the estate itself) pick the bones of Tolkien’s creative output, including mining literal appendices for any salable material. That said, even those most zealous could not be converted, turning a cold shoulder to the bombastic 2010s Peter Jackson extravaganza. Cut to today, and the tentatively scheduled 2026Gollum-centric filmfaces an uphill battle. Let’s hope Serkis has learned from the blunders witnessed in the last outing.The Hobbitis streaming onMax.
