Peter Jackson on Reaching the End of the Tolkien Road with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
After sixteen years spent adapting and producing J.J. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Hobbit for film, some of the most successful films ever, director Peter Jackson can think of just one thing. Doing nothing. He has reached the end of his sojourn with a flawless record of entertaining the fans in a phenomenally successful run. Jackson says when he’s completed the DVD cut, that is absolutely, positively it. Jackson and his longtime team including co-writer Phillipa Boyens have taken their places in cinematic history with a franchise that has earned upwards of $2.9 billion – even without The Hobbit: the Battle of the Five Armies which opens this week. Jackson pioneered new cinematic techniques and values and introduced stars whose lives and careers were changed by the series and he changed our lives by giving us a consistent, enduring and uniting shared experience. Strangely, Jackson started in the middle of Tolkien’s series and worked his way to the beginning, releasing The Hobbit after the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Turned out, it was the perfect formula. We spoke with Jackson, Boyens and actor Lee Pace who plays Elfin King Thranduil in Toronto, one of the stops on Jackson’s victory lap.
The Tolkien films are officially finished. What does it mean to you?
Peter Jackson – It has significance because it’s the moment in which six films in a series finally come into focus. The first of the Hobbit movies are the first, so this is the climax, it’s the missing piece to carry on into The Fellowship of the Ring and until this movie existed, there were these paths out there and now they’re together. We’re only a generation away from people who have no memory of knowledge of how the films were released and all they’ll have the boxed set. This may be the first time in more than 16 years you’ll wake up not obsessed with the films’ details. Yes. We’ve finished the story of Tolkien and it’s not like there’s a deadline. Even on vacation at Christmas when you have three weeks off it’s always been the looming thing. Now I get to wake up, done and finished with nothing to do. I wanted for once in my life after 30 years not to have anything to do. I won’t be bored....
...Read MUCH more with Jackson, Lee Pace and Co-writer Phillipa Boyens at Monsters and Critics
The Tolkien films are officially finished. What does it mean to you?
Peter Jackson – It has significance because it’s the moment in which six films in a series finally come into focus. The first of the Hobbit movies are the first, so this is the climax, it’s the missing piece to carry on into The Fellowship of the Ring and until this movie existed, there were these paths out there and now they’re together. We’re only a generation away from people who have no memory of knowledge of how the films were released and all they’ll have the boxed set. This may be the first time in more than 16 years you’ll wake up not obsessed with the films’ details. Yes. We’ve finished the story of Tolkien and it’s not like there’s a deadline. Even on vacation at Christmas when you have three weeks off it’s always been the looming thing. Now I get to wake up, done and finished with nothing to do. I wanted for once in my life after 30 years not to have anything to do. I won’t be bored....
...Read MUCH more with Jackson, Lee Pace and Co-writer Phillipa Boyens at Monsters and Critics
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