While the video goes a long way to explain how The Hobbit films ended up a pile of refuse, I don't feel bad for Jackson.
As the video
Faramir Jones posted, Jackson himself says it was him and Boyens' decision to bloat The Hobbit into 3 films, not the studio's. He said people think it was a cash grab by the studio, but clearly states going from 2 films to 3 was his decision, because he didn't want to make a movie based on The Hobbit, he wanted a "prequel" to Lord of the Rings, 6 movies that all connected together.
So, no I don't feel bad for him, and I'm not one who's going to blame the studio for Jackson's choices. Maybe if he didn't unnecessarily pad the movies with stuff in an effort to make it a prequel trilogy to Lord of the Rings, he wouldn't have been in such a go-go-go time crunch. I remember reading the Viggo Mortensen article reflecting on the LOTR movies and The Hobbit. His comment about choices after LOTR, and Jackson's choices were astute, and I think accurate:
Quote:
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"I guess Peter became like Ridley Scott – this one-man industry now, with all these people depending on him,” Mortensen adds. “But you can make a choice, I think. I asked Ridley when I worked with him (on 1997’s GI Jane), 'Why don’t you do another film like The Duellists [Scott’s 1977 debut, from a Joseph Conrad short story]?’ And Peter, I was sure he would do another intimately scaled film like Heavenly Creatures, maybe with this project about New Zealanders in the First World War he wanted to make. But then he did King Kong. And then he did The Lovely Bones – and I thought that would be his smaller movie. But the problem is, he did it on a $90 million budget. That should have been a $15 million movie. The special effects thing, the genie, was out of the bottle, and it has him. And he’s happy, I think…”
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No more of this "woe is me" "the studio made me do this" "the studio put us under such a time crunch to get these movies out" "I didn't have time to plan like the Lord of the Rings". The Hobbit were 3 crappy films to try to copy the success of LOTR. They failed. He made his bed. If he's happy with his choices, good for him.