How did PJ go from making some of the best films of all time to THIS?

I agree that AUJ is not the same level of cinema as the LOTR films, but I thing AUJ is by far the best of the three Hobbit films. What it needed was a good editor to cut some of the toilet humor and overdone action sequences. It's notable that PJ had excellent editors whom he trusted completely for his LOTR films, but he edited the Hobbit films himself, with the help of an acolyte who never challenged him in any way. This alone accounts for much of the difference in quality IMO.

It is disappointing because the material for greatness was there, the cast was excellent and....it didn't turn out that way. I think though if we were comparing it to other here today gone tomorrow blockbusters it would hold its own. It was entertaining, but nothing more.

Guillermo Del Toro, who was supposed to direct these films, unexpectedly dropped out after over a year of preparation.

Peter Jackson stepped in to save the studios' butts, and to try to salvage the operation. But, he did not want to make Guillermo Del Toro's film, he wanted to make his own. So, they basically scrapped everything that had been done and started fresh.

In order to keep up with the production deadlines, they began to film, re-write, and create everything for the film, basically all at the same time. The schedule was incredibly grueling, and everything was rushed rushed rushed. They just had no choice but to rush everything.

In LOTR, there was 3 years of preparation before the cameras ever started rolling.

In The Hobbit, they would literally finish creating props and landscapes for the scenes on the same day that they were supposed to be filming.

The same thing happened to George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola and M. Night Shyamalan and countless other directors. The guy had a huge success and it went to his head. He went from being a guy that people would say "I don't think that's a good idea" to to being a guy that everyone says "Yes, sir" to. When you get arrogant and you're surrounded by sycophants, there's no one there to take your bad ideas and make them better. Another problem is is that he's one of those directors that's totally in love with his toys and cares more about special effects than story. When he made the original LOTR movies, he couldn't make all of the orcs and sets CGI so he had to do a mix of practical and digital and the movies were better for it. He's said, though, that he would've done more CGI in those movies if he could've. He'd rather sit in a green room and direct and have animators do most of the work than get out and film on set, again, like Lucas and also Robert Zemekis who makes CGI movies that should not be CGI like "The Polar Express".

Originally, the CGI orcs annoyed be but if you take that aside, the Hobbit trilogy still is as entertaining as LOTR but not quite as dark because the orcs and uruks look like action figures rather than real.

Sign of the times, isn't it? Lord of the Rings was made at a time when the world had only been subjected to the CGI overdose of one Star Wars prequel. Hollywood had not yet been totally overrun by the summer time CGI blockbuster, and Jackson was able to do a lot in a somewhat old fashioned sort of way.

Lord of the Rings was a trailblazer, The Hobbit is just one of the masses in the giant pack that followed. It's a shame he couldn't pull off the magical act again, but I guess with all of the delays they suffered, and the fact that he hadn't had a really major box office hit in so long he probably lost his chances to exercise complete creative control.

Writing wise I don't think the first two Hobbit films are BAD. When you consider they're essentially drawing narratively and thematially from less than half of a pretty slender text it's actually pretty impressive how well they manage to stand up in their own right. Of course that all then catches up with them for the third film.

I actually the biggest problem with those first two is how much they DO try and tie them together with Lord of the Rings. All that Necromancer stuff is not bad, but it really does feel horribly tacked on.

They've got cars big as bars, they've got rivers of gold

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Lovely Bones was pretty bad.

Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath is a Brony

It's not his Middle-Earth work that bothers me. Peter Jackson did just fine with the LOTR and Hobbit films, but everything else he's made has sucked so bad, I can't believe it's the same director. I mean, first there was "King Kong," then "District 9," then "The Lovely Bones," and a slew of other films that should have been thrown in the shredder before ever being made. The man puzzles me to no end over all that.