Why the Hobbit movies were such a mess

tl;dr: they had no prep time, made real-time changes to the story as they shot it, and props and scenes were thrown together as they needed them. Jackson says that his winging-it-"making it up there and then on the spot"-finally fell apart when they came to shooting the big battle scenes. [via]

"I didn't know what the hell I was doing" - Peter Jackson.

The proposed narrative is that they paused shooting, got their shit together, then figured out how to make a great film.