'The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,' the final installment of Hobbit trilogy, wraps up the tale of Bilbo Baggins
Tough for director Peter Jackson and actors to say goodbye


Orlando Bloom knew his adventure had come to an end when familiar music suddenly blared as he was about to plunge his dagger into a green ball — that looks a lot more fearsome after the CG programmers’ wizardry in the finished “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.”

For the actor’s last take as the fan favorite Legolas, director Peter Jackson bestowed a fitting sendoff for his elven prince.

“It was a very emotional day,” says the 38-year-old Brit, who was first cast in the franchise at the age of 19. “Just as I lifted up my white knife and it was like, ‘dum dum duh duh’ — the theme music from ‘Lord of the Rings’ started to play across the studio.

“It was a really poignant moment, I felt overwhelmed with feeling of gratitude that I had been a part of this massively epic journey.”

That massively epic journey that started for moviegoers with the 2001 release of “The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring,” is coming to an end this Friday with the final installment of prequel “Hobbit” trilogy.

Even before “The Battle of Five Armies” wages in theaters, Jackson and the team have a dragon’s horde worth of gold to show for their work; the first five films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels grossed $4.8 billion worldwide at the box office.

“I remember getting off the plane in New Zealand,” says Bloom of his fiery first day on the franchise. “I was taken to a warehouse where I saw literally 3,000 (orc) costumes lined up on rails and I think it was in that moment that I was blown away by how big this thing was going to be.

“If they had 3,000 costumes then they needed 3,000 extras to fill them.”


The final “Hobbit” film wraps up the tale of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), the titular adventurer who reluctantly joins a band of dwarves out to slay a dragon and fend off an orc army, with the help of allies like the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen).

As long as they were going to hang up their swords and leave Middle Earth, Jackson wanted to go out with a bang.

So he wrote an extra fight scene into the new film that finds (spoiler alert!) original trilogy veterans Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Saruman (Christopher Lee) coming to Gandalf’s rescue and vanquishing evil spirits in the process. It’s a sequence most definitely not in the pages of Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” but that’s the benefit of turning a thin children’s book into three epic-sized movies.

“You start as fans,” Jackson told the Daily News. “(Co-screenwriters Philippa Boyens and Fran Wash and I) are just fans.”

“You think, ‘Well, what would we really like to see? Well I’d love to see Saruman just go nuts, cause that would be cool,’ ” Jackson said.

“Look, we are the luckiest fans in the world because we get to decide what to do and what we want to see. And that’s the stuff we want to see.”

But the nerdgasms didn’t make the end of an era any less bittersweet.

Every time another cast member wrapped, it brought fresh tears.

“For Richard Armitage’s last shot in the film, I remember going up to him and he was lying there,” Boyens said of the actor playing the leader of the dwarfs. “God, you really put him through his paces, Pete. And he was beyond exhausted.”

“Because Richard’s last day was basically his big battle with (the orc leader) Azog and if he looks exhausted on the film, that’s not acting,” added Jackson. “He was literally not able to stand up anymore.”


Back in 2000, Andy Serkis thought he booked a short gig as a voice actor for a CG-animated Gollum. He started off standing at the side of the set tossing out lines to Elijah Wood and Sean Astin.

Over the next 11 years, however, he helped revolutionize performance-capture technology as the character — and directed the second unit on the “Hobbit” movies.

“It’s been extraordinary now doing the premieres and saying goodbye to everyone for the last time,” Serkis said by phone from the set of “The Jungle Book,” where he’s now directing performance-capture actors.

“Because there was always the knowledge that we’d see each other either making the next film or for the next premiere, and there was always going to be a next time. It’s only right now, not the last day of shooting, that I’m really feeling the impact.”

Special effects supervisor Joe Letteri just finished up his job two weeks ago.

“We popped a few bottles of champagne, but at that point there were very few people left in the building,” says Letteri. “As people started finishing their work, they start dropping off and going on holiday. So by the time you’re down to that last 10 shots that we did on the last day there weren’t more than 30 people around.

“It was a small celebration.”

The movie isn’t in theaters yet, but Bloom is already daydreaming about the day in a few years when he can start showing his now 3-year-old son Flynn all six movies.

“I’m building a little cinema in my house for him especially for that moment,” Bloom says.

Flynn will only be able to see six movies by then, even though Tolkien left more tales to tell. Fans are already clamoring for a movie adaptation of “The Silmarillion,” a collection of the author’s unfinished works published posthumously by his son. Jackson, though, says there will be no storybook ending for that story, since the Tolkien estate has stated quite clearly that they will not part with the movie rights.

And that’s fine by Jackson.

“You don’t want to shoot 11 ‘Silmarillion’ films?” Boyens asks Jackson during their interview with The News.

“Well, can I have a week off first?” Jackson says laughing.

So geht es uns zumindest nicht verloren.