The story of the production on that one is a little insane.
If I remember correctly it was originally meant as a single film, then 2. With one as the Hobbit proper, and one using material from the Appendices and LOTR to bridge the two series.
It got delayed by Jackson and the Estate’s disputes with WB/New Line over profits from LOTR. There were some rights expirations in play as well, and MGM got involved to co-produce.
So short time line to begin with, starting from a bit of a mess.
It was originally supposed to be directed by Guillermo del Toro. And he left over repeated delays.
Which saw Jackson pressed into taking over, MGM was kinda broke. So they forced it into 3 films.
By the time Jackson actually started filming, there wasn’t a script. Pre-production wasn’t really finished, since they’d mostly started from scratch after del Toro left. Toss in a labor dispute where WB fucked New Zealand.
In the end Jackson had like three or four months to prepare, and they were reportedly figuring it out as they went. Like writing scenes just before or as they shot them. Jackson complicated things by insisting on shooting 60fps and in 3d.
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“We didn’t have enough money to make one short movie so we made three interminably long ones instead.”
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“10 years of tent poles have failed, and Warner Brothers is footing most of the bill. So if you don’t turn one movie into 4 we’ll kill your dog”
MGM has actually been so hard up that it’s been rumored for years that Apple and Amazon are fighting over buying them. It was actually reported that Amazon had in an attempt to consolidate the LOTR rights, but that seems to have been an April fools thing gone wide. I think the deal is MGM has like the TV rights, and part of the Hobbit.
More recently it’s rumored Netflix has an interest.
What I don’t understand is why there was so little from The Hobbit interspersed in those three long movies.
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So much awfulness in the Hobbit trilogy. The dwarf/elf/Legolas love triangle. The reduction of the awesome character Radagast to a comic relief tweaker. I couldn’t even make myself watch the last movie yet.
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You’re not missing much. My favorite part of the entire trilogy was the song they played at the end credits, but I’m sure it’s on Youtube or something.
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I felt personally insulted by the situation with Radegast there.
But I wouldn’t describe Radegast as “an awesome Character”. He exists in like 3 lines of LOTR. Tolkien just didn’t write much of anything about the other wizards.
What little he did write, doesn’t really indicate they like poops in their beards and have googly eyes.
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Potentially awesome? He was always awesome in my imagination at least. Radagast as a Gandalf but hanging out with animals instead of hobbits should be awesome, not what was put on screen.
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It’s wizards.
Awesomeness is the baseline.
As far as I’m concerned the primary reason to include Radagast in the movies was to canonically establish that all the Wizards of Middle Earth were into drugs.
Saruman chided Gandalf for smoking so much weed and noted that Radagast had fried his brain doing psychedelic mushrooms, but you don’t get a nickname like “Saruman the White” unless you’re doing a lot of cocaine.
As for the unseen “Blue Wizards,” I’m picturing something akin to Walt and Jesse working away in a meth lab somewhere.
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It seems strange to me, because in the books Radagast is basically an excuse for the eagles to show up…and they put him in the movie, needed the eagles, and yet had Gandalf use a moth again. Which really takes away most of the magic in that. 
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That stupid scene.
The first time Gandalf did the moth thing in Lord of the Rings it seemed like a clever improvisation—he was trapped atop a tower with no contact with the outside world and managed to bewitch a small flying creature in the hopes that it might carry his plight far enough to get help from the only ones in Middle Earth who could rescue him. I never got the impression that “send a moth!” was the default way to contact the eagles.
Also, it took time for the eagles to get the message after Gandalf released the moth from the tower; he seemed to be stranded up there for days or possibly weeks after sending out the SOS. Which makes sense, because a moth isn’t going to traverse dozens or hundreds of miles quickly (if it survives the trek at all).
When Gandalf first summoned the eagles from atop a burning tree in The Hobbit it seemed like they showed up within minutes. What the hell kind of moth travels that fast? And if they were so close to the eagles why didn’t any of the eagles spot a bunch of dwarves and a wizard in a burning tree?
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Cram, cram, cram, cram, lovely cram. wonderful cram!
Well, at least they were much, much closer geographically to the Great Eagles’ Eyrie in that scene than Gandalf was at Isengard, which is at the far southern end of the Misty Mountains. Still, that’s a valid point that moths aren’t known for their air speed records.
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The thing that ticks me off so much is that they didn’t need the moth at all. They could have just been spotted by the eagles like in the book. Spotting things from the air across great distances is what eagles do.
I guess one could argue it would be lazy storytelling for the eagles to spot Gandalf and the dwarves at just the right moment to rescue them, but it still wouldn’t be any more of a coincidence than Gandalf coming across exactly the right species of enchantable moth at just the right time to send out his SOS.
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They’re emperor gum moths, although since those mostly eat eucalyptus I suppose they’re a stand-in for some other emperor. In any case if it’s not just some cunning trick but actually a spell component for summoning eagles, Gandalf really should have been looking into how easy it would be to breed them and carry some with him.
I honestly would forgive it a little more if they had been hawkmoths, just for the name.
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