Peter Jackson is directing the final installment of JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and according to Movie Pilot, it's going to "go out with a bang." Expected to reach new heights, Jackson's "The Battle of the Five Armies," is set to be bold and dramatic.
Jackson shared with Entertainment Weekly his plans for the big finale, which includes an entire 45-minute battle sequence from the different factions of Middle Earth.
He said, "There's a lot of logistics that have to be thought through. We have dwarves and men and elves and orcs, all with different cultures, with different weapons, and different shields and patterns and tactics."
The battle is to take place at the foot of the Lonely Mountain and the armies will be fighting it out for the reacquired treasure of Erebor. With such a large battle taking place, Jackson had to plan out the sequence properly. He explained, "Before we could loose the first arrow, we had to design the landscape itself and figure out, 'Okay, if we have 10,000 orcs, how much room are they going to take up?' 'Are they going to fill up the valley or look like a speck?' Then we could start drawing the arrows on the schematics."
Check out Jackson's game play, as shown on EW:
With such a long battle set to end the film, however, the producers of "Hobbit 3" do not want their audience to end up getting bored, with so many unknown extra characters, so according to Jackson, "We have a rule that we're not allowed to go more than two or three shots of anonymous people fighting without cutting back to our principal characters. Otherwise the audience just ends up with battle fatigue."
With the end of "The Hobbit" supposedly becoming the introduction to "The Lord of the Rings" it is expected that characters from the trilogy will be appearing as the film concludes. According to the official "The Lord of the Rings" fanpage, The One Ring, Warner Bros. has released the cast list for "Hobbit 3" which included Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, and Ian Holm. A notable exclusion, however, is Elijah Wood, which may mean that he won't be appearing in the film, but with Ian Holm in the list, it will be highly unlikely that Wood would miss the conclusion.
Are you excited for the final installment of the film franchise? "The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies" will be released on December 17.