New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson, who just finished his 20-year, six-film Lord of the Rings odyssey with his final film in The Hobbit trilogy, loves Toronto specifically and Canada in general.

“Toronto,” Jackson told Sun Media on a Saturday visit, “is our people — and that is great!”

By “our people,” the 53-year-old Jackson was referring to fans of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and its prequel trilogy, the three Hobbit films. The subject came up because Jackson was in Toronto for his red carpet walk-in for the Canadian premiere of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and its special after-party at the Windsor Arms Hotel.

All of the previous five films, starting with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, have been extremely well received in Toronto and have been boxoffice hits in all of Canada. That is one reason he has visited Toronto repeatedly on promotion tours. For the 2001 premiere, he remembers arriving during a heavy snowfall. “It was fantastic. It was like intense blizzard conditions. It was the biggest snowstorm I’ve ever seen in my life. It was fun!”

There is a good reason for the deep connection between Canadians and his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, Jackson said. The heroic war records of Canada, Australia and his home country of New Zealand have common roots in World War I, where each country established its national identity. Meanwhile, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels were written by South African-born Englishman J.R.R. Tolkien, who served as a British Army officer in the Lancashire Fusilliers during WWI. Tolkien witnessed first-hand the horrors of war.

“The truth of it,” Jackson said, “is that a lot of the influences that are in The Lord of the Rings are things that Tolkien brought back from the First World War. I am acutely aware of that now because I am on a government committee in New Zealand to help commemorate the centenary of the first World War.

“And that is a time when Canada, Australia and New Zealand went to Britain’s aid — and God knows Canada made massive sacrifices for that war. America didn’t have that same experience of the First World War. So, I think when we read these books we really feel that story (as a parable about WWI). The hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, are heading out of their village into the outside world and going through a traumatic experience and then coming back home and never actually being the same again. Everyone else around you is the same again, but you have fundamentally changed because of this experience.

“Which is obviously the story of the First World War. It is something that Canadians share, as well as Australians and New Zealanders. But, in America, the First World War didn’t quite go that way for them since they didn’t actually notice it was happening until ‘17. Anyway, I do think that the Commonwealth countries can actually connect to the Tolkien world because it was at the heart of our societies.”

The Battle of the Five Armies, which opens across Canada on Dec. 17, is an epic film that culminates in a huge battle between the forces of good and evil, just like the two world wars of the 20th Century.

bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca