It’s not long now until The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies hits theaters, the final film in a trilogy that marks the end of director Peter Jackson's time in Middle Earth. Last year, IGN joined a group of journalists to catch up with Jackson on his Hobbit set in Wellington to talk the end of a very unexpected journey, which began as an idea back in the mid ‘90s.

“I will be very, very proud of these movies and very happy to have done them,” said Jackson. “But it's like it is-- I felt exactly like this at the end of Lord of the Rings. When you go into a project for-- That was seven years, this is probably going to be five years by the end of next year I imagine. Maybe even longer, maybe six years. You are ready to move on for sure, yeah.”

Like most endings, this one is bittersweet. After all, Jackson is saying goodbye to collaborators who were there from day one of The Fellowship of the Ring.

"We're arriving today, and it's like I suddenly realize that this is a reality. It's Ian McKellen's last day. He's doing a little bit with us at the end of the day. We won't get to him till the very end of the day today. Couple of shots that we need for finishing off the thing we're doing here. And then he's done. It's him walking out of Gandalf, hanging up his hat and putting his beard on the shelf and walking away from Gandalf forever I would imagine. So that's going to be a bit hard tonight. I'm not really looking forward to that because Ian's a joy to work with. So those hit you a bit hard. It's Orlando (Bloom)'s last day tomorrow. We're doing a bit with him tomorrow, and then he's finished. Yeah, those are the things that are emotional simply because of their friends really, and you love working with these guys and suddenly they are-- You realize, 'We're never going to be doing this again.'"

Filming The Hobbit has been an enormously positive experience for Jackson, one that could only have come from years of honing his craft. He has, as he describes in typical downplayed manner, “got the hang of it a bit better now”.

“There's always learning curves in just filmmaking, which is nothing-- It's not particularly-- Every script is different, and this script certainly had a whole lot of challenges different to The Lord of the Rings in all sorts of ways. Every script does. It's like you're starting afresh with a different story and different characters and trying to build your narrative and your structure and the shape of the story. But every single movie, I just find I learn so much about filmmaking. I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying feeling like as I progress, I can feel what what performances have to do, I feel the pacing. There's things in moviemaking now that I can recognize that I was stumbling through ten years ago, that I have a bit more of an understanding now of what has to happen at any given point. Yeah, it's just a general-- I'm enjoying it. . It's not just the content and the people I'm working with, it's partly the fact that I feel like I'm getting the hang of it a bit better now. It's fun. You're always challenging yourself.”

The Battle of Five armies scene Jackson is wrangling together in front of us today, is, fittingly, a battle. Thorin and Bilbo stand-ins fight green-suited extras on a beautifully constructed set representing the watchtower at Ravenhill Fortress, swinging swords in a carefully choreographed sequence, over and over and over. This is small scale stuff, a tight shot, and we’re intrigued to see how it fits into the enormous battle that will ultimately come to define the third film. After six film’s worth of large-scale fights, how does Jackson keep them fresh?

“Well, the thing that I've come to do with battles, it was largely a process of discovery back in the Lord of the Rings days, was that, in itself, no matter how-- People are jaded now with digital shots. Entire cities get destroyed and you can do anything else, and ultimately, it's lost its fascination really, the CG, massive, big battle shots. Obviously, we're having some of those. But the thing you realize is that-- And we discovered a rule, basically, on Two Towers on Helm's Deep, where the battle kind of lost its-- You kind of lost interest in it if you went more than three, four shots at the maximum without picking up on where one of your principal characters was in the battle. You're literally seeing extras fighting, seeing digital wide shots. It's all part of it, obviously. It's all part of the texture of battle, but you have too much of that and you're literally just, ‘Oh, okay, fine. I get it.’”

“So one of the things we did with the Battle of the Five Armies in particular, and in designing the script and the narrative, is that we made sure that the story that we're telling in this third movie, that the story is continuing through the battle. So in other words, you don't get the story to a point where everyone's suddenly, "Oh, stop, we're going to launch into a huge battle now," and then the battle's over and you do a denouement in the end. We actually have a lot of conflict happening between characters, we have people in different places that are needing to get to each other. We mapped out a very-- And some of it's not all battle related, some of it is personal stuff that's there. And so we kind of pushed the story where the battle kind of interrupts the story, it gets in the way of the story, but the story kind of punches its way through the battle, and that's what we've deliberately tried to do with this. So you're literally seeing it through the eyes of multiple characters as they are still doing what they need to do to fulfill their journey on the movie.”

Before Jackson is called back on set, someone asks if he’s proud to have “stuck through all six" films set in J.R.R. Tolkien's universe. After all, that's a hell of a long time to spend in Middle Earth.

“Ultimately, it's been a joy. I'm very, very proud of these films. I'm very, very proud of these films. I'm very excited about the second and third films, just the stuff we've been shooting in the last few weeks, having done a cut of the second movie, and we've edited a lot of the third movie. So I've got a feeling of those. And then coming back in and doing what we've been doing, I'm excited. I think they're going to be really cool. This is ultimately what you do it for, is because you feel like you're making a movie that you really want to see finished and you want other people to see it. And I'm glad that I've done it. The Guillermo version of these movies would have been his films, and that would have been interesting, too. But ultimately, when that didn't happen, it was like, "Do we really want to bring in somebody else? Or should I do it?" And I'm pleased that I've done it now. It's been a joy, actually. I've had a lot more fun on these movies than I did on Rings, just in terms of waking up in the morning and having a good time on set. Yeah.”

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies hits theaters in North America December 17, December 26 in Australia, and December 12 in the UK.

Lucy O'Brien is Entertainment Editor at IGN AU. Follow her ramblings on Twitter.