Director Peter Jackson Laments Franchise & VFX Driven Hollywood

Now that Peter Jackson is done with his overlong trilogy adaptation of The Hobbit, that means it's time for him to complain about how franchise driven Hollywood has become. That's right, the man who gave us not just one, but two trilogies based on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien recently had an interview with Moviefone where he was asked about his desire to return to smaller films, and he said, "I'm absolutely happy to make smaller films. It's what I want to do…So we want to go back and make some New Zealand stories." But it's what he said next that is going leave you raising an eyebrow or rolling your eyes. Read on!

Jackson continued his reasoning behind wanting to get back to smaller films:

"I don't really like the Hollywood blockbuster bandwagon that exists right now. The industry and the advent of all the technology, has kind of lost its way. It's become very franchise driven and superhero driven."

Are you kidding me? The man just delivered nearly eight hours of visual effects and fantasy battles over the last three years for an adaptation of the relatively short, lighthearted fantasy The Hobbit. He turned a single book into three films, even after he originally planned to only do two films for the project, and they don't even shake a stick at his original Lord of the Rings trilogy (though they can't stop winking and nodding to it) in terms of quality. If you look up hypocritical in the dictionary, you'll see this remark from Peter Jackson. Go ahead and make smaller films again, but don't act like you became a household name without franchises.

The most hilarious part to me though is just how much green screen and visual effects work was done on this film, especially compared to the Lord of the Rings trilogy ten years ago, and yet Jackson complains about the advent of technology. Did someone fail to remind him of his divisive choice to shoot The Hobbit in 48FPS, thus putting the focus on the technology used to make the film instead of the story itself? Plus, SlashFilm points out that the extent of green screen and visual effects to make the film resulted in Sir Ian McKellen breaking down and crying on set. That's heartbreaking. Wake up, Peter Jackson.

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