Only a die-hard fan Lord of the Rings fan could think that the way to make these movies less boring is “LONGER BATTLE SEQUENCES!” but I guess that’s why Peter Jackson is their king. Peter Jackson, who films like Sting f*cks, is giving Hobbit fans just what they want (I assume?) in The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, with a final battle that reportedly runs 45 minutes.
…designing and creating the 45-minute fight at the climax of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is much like preparing for an actual full-scale assault. “There’s a lot of logistics that have to be thought through,” says Jackson. “We have dwarves and men and elves and orcs, all with different cultures, with different weapons, and different shields and patterns and tactics.”
The mega-melee takes place at the foot of the Lonely Mountain as various armies vie for the newly reacquired dwarven treasure of Erebor. Like so much in Jackson’s Middle-earth, it represents filmmaking on the largest possible scale. “Before we could loose the first arrow, we had to design the landscape itself and figure out, ‘Okay, if we have 10,000 orcs, how much room are they going to take up?’ ” Jackson says. “ ‘Are they going to fill up the valley or look like a speck?’ Then we could start drawing the arrows on the schematics.”
Entertainment Weekly even has a picture of the giant diagram Peter Jackson and co used to try to determine where the different armies would go on the battlefield. Something I imagine he spent way more time on than the story.
After making the Lord of the Rings trilogy and two previous Hobbit films, Jackson has learned that epic warfare can be surprisingly boring, especially if you’re not watching people you care about. “We have a rule that we’re not allowed to go more than two or three shots of anonymous people fighting without cutting back to our principal characters,” he says. “Otherwise the audience just ends up with battle fatigue.” [EntertainmentWeekly]
Yep. And someone from New Zealand calling something boring is like an Australian calling someone drunk.