The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ Peter Jackson Talks Title Changes, Tonal Changes, And Completing His Six-Part Saga

In December of this year, director Peter Jackson will complete his second film trilogy adaptation of the Middle-earth stories of seminal fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. Jackson’s first trilogy was the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings, and his trilogy, and adaptatin of the The Lord of Rings’ prequel The Hobbit, will conclude with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

The third Hobbit film was originally subtitled There and Back Again, a title that struck a note with fans of the source material, since it’s the the title that Bilbo Baggins – the titular hobbit – gives his own story when he returns home and writes it all down in a book.

At a press conference at Comic-Con International: San Diego, Jackson discussed why the film’s title was changed.

“The title change came about when we did an assembly of the third movie, last year, as we were cutting the second movie, to get finished with The Desolation of Smaug,” Jack We were putting a version of the third movie together just so we could watch it, just a rough thing that we could see, and I watched it last year. Seeing the movie, it just has to be The Battle of the Five Armies. It’s just the right title for it. When we were at a junket in Berlin, I pulled the Warner Bros. people up to the side and said, ‘Listen, we don’t have to discuss it now, but when you see the movie, just be aware that we’re looking to change the name to The Battle of the Five Armies. They saw the movie and agreed. The There and Back Again title worked when there were two movies.

Jackson also spoke to the tonal progression of The Hobbit series, which he sees as the first half of a larger, six-part saga that continues into Lord of the Rings.

“It starts at a certain point of innocence and naiveté,” Jackson says. “I guess you could say almost childishness, but then things just start to get darker, and darker, and the stakes go up, and the screws get tighter. [The Battle of the Five Armies] is the most emotional and most tense of the three, and I think it’s my favorite of the three, to be honest. It’s got a nice thriller pace to it. And when you get to the end of it, I think it will be the right time to hand it over. I always wanted to do a six-film set. I was always very much aware of it being a six-film series. There was always a sense that one day, long after all this is all over, all that’s going to exist in this world is these movies as a six-film set, and future generations are going to think of them as a beginning and end, beginning with An Unexpected Journey and ending with Return of the King.”

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies opens December 17.