Q: Is there a way to sum up what this means for you as a filmmaker?
Peter Jackson: It’s the last movie is the reason you do it, isn’t it? Any time you make a movie, it’s because you want people to see it and enjoy it… Every time you start a film there’s always a degree of excitement because you want to see it [in finished form]. That’s what you’re striving to do. The trilogy [is] all about the third film really. What’s the point of doing any of the others? The two films exist because you’re reaching that third chapter. That’s the one that defines the previous two, and puts them in context. Prior to now, they haven’t had a context. Fellowship was the beginning,Two Towers was the difficult middle chapter that everybody described it as and now you have the third film. Suddenly, everything has a context now. It’s the point of the whole exercise. It has closure too. It has a strong sense of closure. It’s tough for the actors as well because they’re feeling emotional seeing the movie because the movie’s emotional. The movie finishes it off and it sort of represents the ending of all of our journeys. We’ve all become friends on this project. It’s all finishing at the same time, both on screen and off screen. It’s everything I hoped it would be. I hoped it would be sad, that it would capture something of that sadness of the book, but sadness in a way that’s not a downer. It’s just sad but you’re happy that they achieved what they set out to do but there was a price to be paid. [x]
