The Battle of Five Armies - Notes from the Commentary

Ephraim Belnap 

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies Extended Edition Notes

Commentary with Director/Writer/Producer Peter Jackson and Writer/Co-Producer Philippa Boyyens 

Peter says it's a relief to finally complete the six movie series and finally set the stage for LOTR. 

Pete notes that the film starts mid-event, but hey, they figure either you’ve seen it or someone you know has seen it and will tell you the particulars before starting 

Orlando Bloom’s mother has a cameo, alongside Michelle Scullion, who composed Pete’s first film, Bad Taste. They’re two ladies with bag-like hats on their heads looking on nervously as the Master of Laketown is trying to escape

On a personal note, this is the only film in the six-film series that doesn’t start with a solid sense of safety after the prologue, AND the only one that's predominantly in one location, which may be why it feels so tedious compared to its peers. We keep waiting for things to change, and they never do, and we start out kind of on edge and never get to relax.

A bit of Bard running on the rooftops from the dragon was the first thing his actor Luke Evans shot on his very first day, so that’s fun 

They decided very, very early on they weren’t going to do the talking bird bit where a bird tells Bard where the dragon’s weak spot is. “Sorry to all the talking bird fans.” It just didn’t work with what they were doing. 

When Smaug stops to talk to Bard, they say, maybe he recognizes in Bard “the look of the men of Dale”, because in their version his ancestor was from Dale and tried to bring Smaug down. They recorded lines where Smaug even says this, but they ended up being too clunky and wordy and decided to cut it 

“There and Back Again” was the original title, but once they made it the battle movie it felt natural to change it 

The lake they shoot the Laketown refugee scene at is close to where they shot Faramir’s doomed ride 

The water was very cold; everyone you see coming out of the water in that scene were stuntmen except Ryan Gage, who plays Alfrid. He had a wetsuit on under his clothes, but it was still pretty cold  

Of the Kili/Tauriel love story, Pete and Philippa like to quip that she’s short for an elf, and he’s tall for a dwarf. 

There’s a cameo from actress Sarah Peirse, who was in Pete’s 90’s film Heavenly Creatures 

Pete notes that there should be drops of gold in the hall from the molten gold statue, but they forgot to put them in. But maybe the dwarves cleaned them up. Don’t worry about it  

First thing Bilbo says in the film is that they should leave. Pete says it’s like a character in a movie sayings they should call the police first thing. Nice to know someone in the movie is thinking clearly, even if it can’t happen

Fili, Kili, Bofur and Ori come in and are seeing the inside of the mountain for the first time

They liked writing the Alfrid scenes just because he’s so comic and comical. It seems they feel that he's kind of the Gollum character who’s loathsome but so cartoonish he theoretically brings a kind of comic relief 

They joke that they have Legolas need to go somewhere else ‘cause “you can’t have two great archer characters in Laketown at the same time” 

They were gonna have a teenage Gothmog - the orange general orc from Return of the King - in the film. They even had a design in place for him, but amidst the other ten million things to do, they missed it. Gothmog is apparently mentioned as a descendant of Azog by Tolkien somewhere, so that would’ve been interesting.

Andy Serkis, who was directing the second unit, had to leave before shooting was finished to go work on a Planet of the Apes movie, so Christian Rivers, who directed the “splinter unit” (I guess, like a special second unit) had to fill in. Christian Rivers, if you watched the LOTR commentary, was the one who said he cringed every time he saw Legolas surf down the stairs in Two Towers, but I guess he’s had to accept the reality of things like that now. 

Conan Stevens, a 7-foot Australian body-builder, plays the keeper of Gandalf’s dungeon. He was originally cast as Azog, then as Bolg, then finally got kicked down to dungeon keeper. He also dies in like two minutes, so whoops lol. 

In the extended edition, they reveal and talk about Gandalf’s ring! The dungeon keeper comes in, puts his hand on a slab, and is about to cut his finger off to get his ring (I guess just pulling it off is too easy) and is talking about that ring specifically, but then Galadriel shows up and quite literally blasts him to pieces. Also ties back into that theme of “Ring-collecting” from that last film 

Sauron was originally playing the dungeon keeper’s role and was just forced back by Galadriel, but they thought that made him look unthreatening, even though Galadriel takes like five steps and gets attacked by the ghosts of the Ring-Wraiths. Just standing around looking at her for five seconds while she walks away was too much. But I think they were right to do so, good instinct. 

Apparently, Christopher Lee was actually doing most of the fighting in this scene, even if it was just swinging the staff at non-existent ghosts and juking a little bit. He was around 90 at the time, so a tribute to his fitness in old age 

We’ve never seen the Nine unrobed except for the Witch King until this scene where we see their ghosts

As was done in Unexpected Journey, Christopher shot his scenes in London and had them comped into everyone else’s footage later

If Pete and Philippa can be believed, Christopher can remember every line he’s had in his 200-something movies. Just has tremendous recall 

The Morgul blade concludes its journey here. First, Radagast took it from the Witch-King’s tomb in Journey. Then he gave it to Gandalf in Desolation. Then Gandalf was taken prisoner and frisked, which means that as he leaves in Armies, the blade has been recovered, where it can play out its history and eventually stab Frodo. 

Radagast gives Gandalf his staff after they rescue him. Pete reveals, this is actually the staff Gandalf wields in the main trilogy. The pointy, “twiggy” bits on top of the staff are going to get broken off in the final battle, which will give it the appearance of the staff we’ve seen in the main trilogy 

Scene with Bilbo sitting alone in Erebor that was featured in the film's trailer was the very last scene Martin shot 

A close-up of Martin’s hand holding an acorn was the very, very last shot Martin did. Pete has the acorn on his desk now. Got it off Martin after he finished the scene. Thought it was a nice memento

Pete says the 3D cameras they used are very heavy, that it’s easy to fall into “TV shots” pattern with them, but he tried to keep it creative. He thinks the “shot in 2D, converted to 3-D in post” movies never quite work 

Katie Jackson, Pete’s teenage daughter, has a very brief cameo washing the dishes in the background of a Bard scene. Katie doesn’t love it since she’s not really recognizable, and also has to be washing dishes, which Peter did for a bit of a laugh 

When Thranduil enters through an archway on his elk, they were gonna have its massive elk horns scraping the walls and creating sparks as it went through, but it looked just a bit too comical 

The elves give the humans supplies, which we see looks like leeks and cabbages. Pete jokes that that must be the Welsh influence. Maybe Bard is Welsh, so they think he’ll like it 

Lee Pace, Thranduil's actor, is a Texan and grew up riding horses and is a brilliant rider

Bilbo’s the only one who can call Thorin out since he’s not a dwarf and thus doesn't feel he can't contradict his king.

We have a scene where Bilbo gets his mithril shirt. They note they never have a moment where Bilbo gets protected by the shirt, but that’s okay, and of course it pays off with Frodo later. They note that ironically, spoiler alert, if some of the dwarves had mithril shirts, they might not have been killed

Pete says, you don’t wanna start a battle without a real clear definition of the geography, who the characters are, what they think they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. 

There’s a scene where a horde of giant bats fly out block out the sun for an army of orcs. But “also maybe the orcs have gotten SPF-20 sunscreen or something”. They admit they’ve always struggled to get the “no orcs in sunlight” thing right 

Scottish comedian and actor Billy Connolly plays the dwarf Dain Ironfoot. Pete saw Billy in NZ when he was an apprentice engraver in the late ‘70’s, when Billy was doing a one-man show at the opera house in Wellington, and he’s been a fan ever since

In part came up with the giant worms digging tunnels for the orcs to justify more than one army managing to sneak up on everyone else. The dwarves come over the hill to ambush the elves, but we can’t have armies perpetually coming over the same hill and being a surprise every time, it starts to look stupid after a while. Philippa also mentions there’s a mention of “wereworms” in the book, so there’s basis 

Peter’s teenage son Billy Jackson and his flatmates at the time have a cameo running up behind an old guy when Bard runs into Dale. Billy is wearing a red woven hat that makes him stand out. He got the better cameo of the two children lol. 

“The orcs have taken Stone Street!” is a gag line, because Stone Street is the name of the studio they shoot a lot of stuff in. 

The giant troll beast with its limbs replaced with weapons is named Stumpy :(

They take the battle to its darkest hour before the hero (Thorin) arrives

Glen Boswell and Tim Wong were the choreographers 

Thranduil tells Tauriel off for wanting to stay when the elves are retreating, because according to Pete and Philippa, he can tell Tauriel has a crush on Kili, but because his wife died and he’s sad about it, he associates love with grief and is just kind of a bummer about it in general 

Lee Pace wanted to have a unique action scene and saw some footage of some Japanese dual-sword action, so that’s what Thranduil gets to do when he loses his elk and has a “surrounded by orcs” action scene 

There’s an extended scene with some of the dwarves where two of them - the really fat one and the one with an ax in his head - finally get lines. 

Had music on the set playing for when Kili dies to create an appropriate mood

The final duel between Thorin and Azog took two weeks to shoot, and was the last thing Richard Armitage, Thorin's actor, shot. His dying scene was in the last two or three days 

They were gonna do the book version, where by the time Bilbo finds him Thorin is off the battlefield dying, but found it felt “more immediate and powerful” to have it happen in the battlefield right there 

They digitally drained color from and removed eye flicker from Thorin’s face after he dies. Richard was doing his darnedest not to blink, but they had wind machines going offscreen to simulate the wind and storm and it’s real hard not to let them flicker just a little bit. They removed the color from Boromir’s face in the same way for HIS death scene in LOTR. 

Aragorn and Legolas met when Aragorn was finding Gollum. They found him, and then Gollum was kept in custody by the Greenwood elves for a while, as is recorded in the appendices. Peter jokes about a fake film 3.5 during which Legolas and Aragorn could meet and do that plot, but he’s not serious lol.  

They couldn’t come up with a way for Aragorn and Arwen to cameo in a way that didn’t leave you wanting more, so they don’t have that lol. “Every other character cameo ends up having an important function”, and they just couldn’t figure one out for them 

Scene of Bilbo and Gandalf sitting in silence and smoking was one of Ian’s last scenes. They shot it at 11 o’clock at night, and Ian was set to go home in the morning. They had some dialogue, but just threw it out and did it silent and just knocked it out in like ten minutes 

There’s an extended scene where we see Fili, Kili, and Thorin in funeral caskets. The actors fell asleep while playing their corpses. Took the better part of a day to film and just lying there with their eyes closed made it very easy, but disrupted shooting ‘cause they would snore lol

They shot the “leaving the Shire” scene and Bilbo and Gandalf’s goodbye scene at the same time waaaay back at the start of shooting since it’s the same location 

The last thing they shot at Hobbiton before they left at the start of shooting and it was turned into a tourist attraction was the “people selling Bilbo’s house” sequence 

CREDITS

The final song is sung by Billy Boyd, who played Pippin in LOTR, and famously sang a slow, mournful song in Return of the King. Fran Walsh, the co-producer/writer/wife of Peter Jackson, pushed for him specifically. Had a different song set up at first, but Fran thought it was wrong and recruited Billy and came up with something different 

They had three female singers for the LOTR movies, so they wanted to have three male singers for the Hobbit movies, both for symmetry and because all the dwarves and songs in this one make it feel a bit more natural. The singers are Neil Finn, Ed Sheeran, and Billy Boyd. 

The images in the credits are made up of some of the many sketches Alan Lee and John Howe did for the film. Just pored through them and found ones that fit and put them in. Alan and John did something like 10,000 sketches for the film