For people who are unsatisfied with Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" trilogy, they might be on to something. The famed "Lord of the Rings" director has recently admitted that he had no clear direction while making the four films, and for the most part, he was simply "winging it."
During a candid behind-the-scenes video for the "Battle of Five Armies" DVD, the Oscar-winning director said that he had a much different preparation for J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy as opposed to "The Hobbit," which he described as a more casual approach to work since he was "making it up as I went along."
According to The Guardian, Jackson took over directorial duties from Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro back in 2010.
Because of this, he had almost no time at all to prepare his vision before shooting began, and he found himself working for 21 hours straight in a day.
"Because Guillermo Del Toro had to leave and I jumped in and took over, we didn't wind the clock back a year and a half and give me a year and a half prep to design the movie, which was different to what he was doing," he explained. "It was impossible, and as a result of it being impossible I just started shooting the movie with most of it not prepped at all.
"You're going on to a set and you're winging it, you've got these massively complicated scenes, no storyboards and you're making it up there and then on the spot," he further said. "I spent most of 'The Hobbit' feeling like I was not on top of it... even from a script point of view Fran (Walsh), Philippa (Boyens) and I hadn't got the entire scripts written to our satisfaction so that was a very high pressure situation."
This is also probably the reason why the release of "The Battle of Five Armies" was delayed for five months back in 2013, supposed to be released on July 2014 but was pushed back to December 2014.
"We had allowed two months of shooting for that in 2012, and at some point when we were approaching that I went to our producers and the studio and said: 'Because I don't know what the hell I'm doing now, because I haven't got storyboards and prep, why don't we just finish earlier?'" he shared. "And so what that delay gives you is time for the director to clear his head and have some quiet time for inspiration to come about the battle, and start to really put something together."
