Entertainment
How The All-Time Greatest Trilogy Was Saved From Hollywood Destruction
By Joshua Tyler
| Published
In the early twenty-teens, Hollywood was flying high off a decade of cinematic successes. The future had never been brighter, and the plan was to just keep delivering more of the same.
The decade of huge wins had started with the massive masterpiece success of The Lord of the Rings, when the trilogy released its first movie in 2001. It made sense that the best way to kick off the next decade was to do a lot more of that.
So the greedy ghouls behind the scenes in Tinseltown began plotting a way to bring Lord of the Rings back. They went to the man who’d made it all happen, director Peter Jackson, and poured on the pressure. Eventually, Jackson relented and gave them what they wanted, but only by refusing to compromise the world he created. He gave them more, but he did it his way, under tremendous ever-mounting pressure.
When it was all done, everyone dismissed his work as a failure and sent him off to the Gray Havens. We were all so, so terribly wrong.
This is why The Hobbit Trilogy failed.
Peter Jackson Resists Hollywood’s Greed
When Hollywood began demanding more Lord of the Rings, he resisted. Jackson knew he’d created absolute perfection with the LOTR trilogy, and matching that would be nearly impossible. Probably, he was also just tired, having spent so much of his life already living in Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
Eventually, he relented and signed on to produce The Hobbit, but he still pushed back against doing all the day-to-day work, so he started lining up other directors to take over, hiring Guillermo del Toro to helm a two-movie version of The Hobbit. Unfortunately, repeated delays caused del Toro to exit.
Facing tight deadlines, the studio turned to Jackson, who finally relented and stepped in as director with little to no prep time at all before he had to start shooting one of the most important movies in the world. To make matters worse, the studio then pressured Jackson into making The Hobbit three movies, when most fans already thought two movies was far, far too excessive.
It was excessive because, in book form, as written by JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit is a more straightforward, shorter adventure story than The Lord of the Rings. It’s focused on a single group of characters as they go on a quest to slay a dragon. It’s easy to see how you could divide it into two movies, but there isn’t enough material there for three. There just isn’t.
For Jackson, being forced into three Hobbit films must have felt like the height of irony. With The Lord of the Rings he had to fight desperately to get Hollywood to let him plan it as three movies instead of one or two. Now, spoiled by his success with making three, they pressured him into making more movies than he wanted.
Unlike The Lord of the Rings, which was created out of Peter Jackson’s total passion for Tolkien’s stories, The Hobbit was a project driven by Hollywood greed. It almost felt as if the only reason Jackson stepped up to direct at all was to save Tolkien’s world from the disaster Hollywood was trying to make out of it.
The Hobbit Trilogy Should Have Been A Disaster
Given the realities under which The Hobbit went into production, it had no business NOT being a total disaster. That’s what it should have been; that’s what always happens when Hollywood forces a prequel that has no business existing.
And yet…
With the fate of Middle Earth hanging in the balance, a weary Peter Jackson moved forward, determined to save the world he’d created from Hollywood’s greed. He pulled in ancillary material from other Tolkien sources, expanded scenes only hinted at in The Hobbit, and came up with enough script for three movies.
As it begins, the first movie in The Hobbit trilogy sticks closely to the book’s format, with a Hobbit living in a cozy Hobbit hole that’s invaded by a grumpy wizard and a bunch of hungry dwarves demanding dinner. It’s glorious, it feels perfect.
Every inch of the Hobbit hole, Bag End, is lovingly crafted. The dwarves are both hilarious and sad. Gandalf is looming and omnipresent. Martin Freeman is perfect as a young Bilbo, put upon, confused, and unwilling to admit that he’s intrigued by the possibility of an adventure.
As they often did in JRR Tolkien’s books, the dwarves begin singing a brave and mournful song about the place they’re going, their former home, Erebor, the Lonely Mountain. The haunting melody of their song becomes the musical theme of the entire series, and it’s maybe even better than the amazing score of The Lord of the Rings movies, as it carries thirteen dwarves, a hobbit, and a mysterious gray wizard out of Bag End, across middle Earth on an adventure to free the Dwarven leader Thorin’s kingdom from a murderous dragon.
The Artistry And Beauty Of The Lord Of The Rings Is Present In The Hobbit
All the artistry and beauty of the original Lord of the Rings movies is here and only added to. No role was recast, Ian McKellan returns as Gandalf, and we arguably get more of him than even in The Lord of the Rings. Orlando Bloom and others return, too, but not gratuitously, only when it makes sense for the plot and adds to the story.
The first movie ends with Bilbo reading riddles in the dark, and the scene is a masterclass in conveying darkness while still letting the audience see what’s going on. It’s a skill that modern Hollywood seems to have totally forgotten. Bilbo’s riddles in the dark with Gollum is a good endpoint for the film, with our heroes narrowly escaping the clutches of goblins and going on the run.
The escape from goblin kingdom is one of the weakest points in The Hobbit movies. It relies too much on CGI, it’s too chaotic and difficult to follow, and it’s not the finale for the first chapter that many might have wanted.
Given the constraints Jackson was working with, especially the pressure he was under to get this first movie out, you have to wonder if that sequence was really what he wanted to do himself. Because that chaotic goblin scene never becomes a pattern. There’s never another confusing, distractingly CGI moment in the rest of the series, or at least not anywhere that matters.
Sure, The Hobbit movies use more green screen and CGI than Lord of the Rings, but not nearly as much as pretty much every other Hollywood movie does. Jackson still built sets, and you feel the weight of real things being interacted with in every frame of the film.
The second Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, might be the best. The dragon is reached, battled, and sent screaming from the depths of Erebor. Martin Freeman shines as Bilbo, engaged in another battle of wits with a malevolent force, this time one that breathes fire. Thorin’s complexity only grows.
Don’t come at me about the barrel riding scene. It’s not errible. It’s fun, really fun, and it’s something the series sets up by showing us the dexterity and skill of the dwarves in the first film’s opening moments.
The third movie, The Battle of the Five Armies, is the biggest departure. The book itself is almost two books. The first half of it is the quest of some Dwarves and a Hobbit to get to the mountain and slay the dragon. The second half is a gigantic battle between kings and orcs for supremacy in this part of Middle-earth.
The third movie covers that second half, which means largely sidelining most of the characters we’ve gotten to know over the first movie. Still, it brings it back to them in the end, and feels like a completed story. A real adventure. One that sticks with you, long after the credits roll.
The Hobbit Is Filmmaking At A Level Hollywood Is No Longer Capable Of
The level of quality and care established by the first film continues over all three, and matched against modern filmmaking, The Hobbit trilogy is like rediscovering Atlantis, a forgotten world of high-level storytelling that it doesn’t seem like anyone knows how to do anymore.
At the time it was released, we were spoiled. We didn’t understand what we were experiencing. Sure, there are minor missteps and the nature of the story is different than The Lord of the Rings. Our heroes are less clearly heroic; Thorin Oakenshield, in particular, is a complex leader who makes many big mistakes, and Dwarves in general are hard to like, by design.
Those minor quibbles aside, The Hobbit trilogy is nearly as big, grand, and beautiful as its cinematic predecessor.
Instead of celebrating the film’s incredible achievement against all odds, people nitpicked over a few dodgy green screen moments and compared it to The Lord of the Rings, which may be the greatest movie trilogy ever made, and up against which literally any movie would be found inadequate and wanting.
Looked at now through the wreckage of the unending mediocrity of modern movies, it must be said that: Holy hell, The Hobbit movies are actually really, really good.
The Hobbit Trilogy Was A Box Office Mega-Hit
The Hobbit trilogy made a lot of money. An Unexpected Journey (2012) opened strong and rode holiday legs to about $1.02 billion worldwide. The Desolation of Smaug (2013) dipped slightly to roughly $959 million, still massive, still a global event. The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) closed things out at around $956 million, proving fatigue hadn’t killed demand. Combined, the trilogy pulled in just under $3 billion worldwide. Less than The Lord of the Rings, but way more than anything in theaters in the last few years.
Critics liked the first one, but reviews began to sour as the trilogy went on. And audiences began to lose patience, too, as The Hobbit trilogy began being labeled a desperate cash-in, a movie series squandering the goodwill created by the absolute goddamn triumph of The Lord of the Rings movies.
Why The Hobbit Failed
Despite its success, The Hobbit movies are now talked about as if they’re hated. Like critics, audiences grew increasingly lukewarm toward the movies as they watched them. Now it’s viewed as a failure, despite its financial success.
We were wrong. We were all wrong. We were all lost in the midst of a never-ending cinematic summer and had no idea that the creative winter we’re in now would soon come.
Peter Jackson basically stopped making movies after The Hobbit trilogy. His long-time collaborator, a cinematographer, Andrew Lesnie, died shortly after they finished releasing The Hobbit movies, and Peter has admitted that his heart just wasn’t in it anymore after that.
Jackson says, “I realize that I’ve avoided doing drama films because I’d have to work with someone else who isn’t Andrew, and I think his death changed my creative path.”
We Owe Peter Jackson A Debt
When you read other things Jackson has said about the making of The Hobbit, I think it’s more than that sadness over the death of his friend. I think he simply gave all he had to give, and he had nothing left.
Peter Jackson gave it all to salvage The Hobbit from the wreckage Hollywood was creating out of it, in an era where the movie industry was already beginning to embrace anti-merit inclusivity practices and shifting its focus toward identity over quality storytelling.
If you look at photos of Peter Jackson making The Lord of the Rings, he looks like a hobbit himself. A husky, smiling man with tousled hair and tousled clothes, he looked like he’d be right at home dancing with Rosie in the Shire.
By the time The Hobbit trilogy was over, Peter Jackson had become a drained, lifeless husk of his former self. As if he’d had all the energy sucked out of his body by the forces of Mordor. As if he’d been carrying The One Ring up Mount Doom, all by himself.
Everything Jackson had left after already nearly destroying himself to make The Lord of the Rings went into The Hobbit. He did it at a time when he should have been resting, enjoying the fruit of his rewards. Taking it easy. Living it up in New Zealand, making weird independent projects for fun.
He did none of that; instead, he gave it all to us. He gave it all to The Hobbit. He gave it because he knew that by doing so, he was also preserving the legacy of his masterwork, THE masterwork, The Lord of the Rings.
Despite the prevailing view that The Hobbit trilogy was a failure, it isn’t. Peter Jackson succeeded. Sure, The Hobbit isn’t as good as The Lord of the Rings, but it’s still really, really good. More importantly, it continues the legacy of Jackson’s first three movies, carrying the torch of Tolkien’s Middle Earth without ever tarnishing it. How many other franchises can say that about their prequels?
So the next time you’re watching Amazon’s terrible Rings of Power spinoff or Star Wars’s latest awful prequel, take a moment to say thank you to Peter Jackson. Thank you, Peter, thank you for preserving a beautiful legacy. Thank you for giving it all you had, against impossible odds, year after year after year, when you could have just quit.
Enjoy your retirement, Mr. Jackson. You’ve earned it.
Entertainment
The Saviors review: Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler delve into suburban paranoia in a sharply funny thriller
We all tend to imagine ourselves as the hero of our stories. The trouble with that is it requires someone to be the villain. That way of thinking can get dangerous when tumbled into our personal wells of prejudice, paranoia, and need for validation. From this well of mind-bending emotions springs The Saviors, a clever genre thriller with a lot to say beneath its slippery surface.
Following in the footsteps of eavesdropping-centric thrillers like Rear Window and The ‘Burbs, The Saviors begins with a middle-aged white man with too much time on his hands. In an average suburban American town, Sean Harrison (a smartly cast Adam Scott) is unemployed and on the verge of divorce from his wife, Kim (Till‘s Danielle Deadwyler). He’s hungry for a purpose when he meets Muslim siblings Amir (Theo Rossi) and Jahan (Nazanin Boniadi), who are renting the Harrisons’ guest house for a few days. So, when Sean notices some strange things around his home after their arrival, his suspicious eye travels to the guest house’s door.
What follows is a provocative tale with a sharp sense of humor and an ending that’ll make you want to watch it again — immediately.
The Saviors blends sci-fi spookiness with comic paranoia.
Co-written by Travis Betz and Kevin Hamedani, and directed by the latter, The Saviors begins with a trippy dream sequence. Sean and Kim awake in a crisp, white bedroom, whispering sweet nothings to each other as if this were the final act of a Nancy Meyers rom-com. Then a strange sound draws them away from the bliss of their bed.
In the blink of an eye, the tone shifts from serene to panicked. Sean is bleeding. The future is uncertain and threatening, and then he wakes up for real. This time he’s on the couch. He’s rumpled, real, and really annoying his wife, who’s readied herself to welcome their Airbnb guests to the house out back.
Dressed primly, Amir and Jahan are polite and warm, expressing appreciation for two strangers giving them space in their home. Through sign language, Jahan praises Sean’s cooking, the smell of his chili lighting up her face with a broad smile. But as they share a meal, Sean finds some of their comments strange, like their unfamiliarity with the sound of crickets. Soon, a hummed melody (“Seven Nation Army”) spurs him to suspect Jahan isn’t deaf as her brother claims. Then there are the tremors that shake their house, and the inexplicable green lights that suddenly pierce their windows. Things are getting undeniably strange, in a Twilight Zone way.
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Still, Sean’s uneasy about broaching the topic with a wife who already finds him ridiculous. But neither does he want to confide in his parents (Colleen Camp and Ron Perlman), who’ve fallen down a right-wing conspiracy rabbit hole. His construction worker sister, Cleo (Kate Berlant) isn’t much better, and eagerly fans the flames of Sean’s paranoia. After all, isn’t the president coming to their cozy town for a visit? And isn’t he visiting a landmark near Sean and Kim’s home?
While Kim initially dismisses Sean’s suspicions, demanding he think outside his “white bubble,” TV news hums about increased security and fear of terrorist threats. Before long, she too grows nervous about their guests. From there, the couple plays amateur spies, and the adventure of it all has reignited their connection — and their sex lives. But at what cost?
The Saviors delivers a surprising parable without getting preachy.
Hamedani doesn’t shy away from modern American politics through ambiguity. Though he avoids dropping the names of real politicians, his characters speak frankly about neo-Nazis, Islamophobia, and white privilege — particularly when it comes to life in suburbia. Yet, the film never veers into feeling like a lecture, because of the propulsive thrust of its central mystery: What are these guests up to?
Some clues are strange, but potentially innocuous. However, a second act sequence that reveals a peek into what even Sean and Kim can’t see dares the audience to buy into Sean’s suspicions. After all, the film is bound to his perspective, setting him up as the hero of The Saviors. But this movie would be boring if things weren’t what they seem. Still, even if you’d guessed that, I doubt you’ll predict where Hamedani and Betz’s sci-fi story winds up. I was not just surprised, but elated to be surprised. Watching the clues stack up, I was confident — cocky, even — that I’d unlocked the mystery that The Saviors ticks down to in its climax. I was wrong, and so I wanted to see The Saviors again to see where I, like Sean and Kim, went wrong.
The first time through The Saviors works as a solid genre thriller. The deceptively simple story is about a couple torn apart by ennui, but reunited through an adventure built on voyeurism and paranoia. But the sci-fi flourishes of unworldly glows, bizarre devices, and mysterious visitors heighten the stakes beyond divorce to life and death. Our imaginations are tantalized, enticing us to seek out exotic elements, and thereby ignoring more domestic red flags.
Like a great whodunnit, The Saviors opens up on reflection, blooming with the clues we overlooked the first time. The story shifts as our understanding of Amir and Jahan has. So, in a sense, you get two movies in one, just by watching The Saviors a second time. Better yet, the performances work both ways. All four leads — Scott, Deadwyler, Rossi, and Boniadi — are tasked with playing performances that work in two contexts. Some scenes that were once funny, flip to become menacing, and vice versa. It’s all about perspective.
A true find out of SXSW, The Saviors is a marvel. Hamedani and company have carefully constructed a film that’s part dark comedy, part sci-fi thriller, part cautionary tale. And yet for all this, it never feels muddled or messy. Keenly helmed and sharply performed, The Saviors is a must-see.
The Saviors was reviewed out of its world premiere at SXSW.
Entertainment
NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for March 14, 2026
Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is easy for people who like golf.
As we’ve shared in previous hints stories, this is a version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.
Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the “common threads between words.” And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier — so we’ve served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.
If you just want to be told today’s puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for the latest Connections solution. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
What is Connections: Sports Edition?
The NYT‘s latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication’s sports coverage. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.
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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there’s only one correct answer.
If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake — players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.
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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.
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Here’s a hint for today’s Connections: Sports Edition categories
Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:
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Yellow: Baseball no-no’s
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Green: Teams in the Peach State
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Blue: Winners on the green
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Purple: Famous college matchups
Here are today’s Connections: Sports Edition categories
Need a little extra help? Today’s connections fall into the following categories:
Looking for Wordle today? Here’s the answer to today’s Wordle.
Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today’s puzzle before we reveal the solutions.
Drumroll, please!
The solution to today’s Connections: Sports Edition #537 is…
What is the answer to Connections: Sports Edition today?
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Banned in Baseball – BETTING, CORKED BAT, SPITBALL, STEROIDS
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A Georgia Athlete – BRAVE, FALCON, HAWK, YELLOW JACKET
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Golf Awards – CLARET JUG, GREEN JACKET, SOLHEIM CUP, WANAMAKER TROPHY
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College Football Rivalries – BACKYARD BRAWL, BEDLAM, EGG BOWL, THE GAME
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be new sports Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.
Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to today’s Connections.
Entertainment
NYT Pips hints, answers for March 14, 2026
Welcome to your guide to Pips, the latest game in the New York Times catalogue.
Released in August 2025, the Pips puts a unique spin on dominoes, creating a fun single-player experience that could become your next daily gaming habit.
Currently, if you’re stuck, the game only offers to reveal the entire puzzle, forcing you to move onto the next difficulty level and start over. However, we have you covered! Below are piecemeal answers that will serve as hints so that you can find your way through each difficulty level.
How to play Pips
If you’ve ever played dominoes, you’ll have a passing familiarity for how Pips is played. As we’ve shared in our previous hints stories for Pips, the tiles, like dominoes, are placed vertically or horizontally and connect with each other. The main difference between a traditional game of dominoes and Pips is the color-coded conditions you have to address. The touching tiles don’t necessarily have to match.
The conditions you have to meet are specific to the color-coded spaces. For example, if it provides a single number, every side of a tile in that space must add up to the number provided. It is possible – and common – for only half a tile to be within a color-coded space.
Here are common examples you’ll run into across the difficulty levels:
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Number: All the pips in this space must add up to the number.
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Equal: Every domino half in this space must be the same number of pips.
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Not Equal: Every domino half in this space must have a completely different number of pips.
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Less than: Every domino half in this space must add up to less than the number.
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Greater than: Every domino half in this space must add up to more than the number.
If an area does not have any color coding, it means there are no conditions on the portions of dominoes within those spaces.
Easy difficulty hints, answers for March 14 Pips
Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 6-5, placed horizontally.
Equal (5): Everything in this space must be equal to 5. The answer is 6-5, placed horizontally; 5-1, placed vertically.
Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 5-1, placed vertically; 4-1, placed horizontally.
Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 2-3, placed vertically.
Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-0, placed vertically.
Number (8): Everything in this space must add up to 8. The answer is 4-4, placed vertically.
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Medium difficulty hints, answers for March 14 Pips
Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-4, placed horizontally.
Equal (4): Everything in this space must be equal to 4. The answer is 3-4, placed horizontally; 4-4, placed horizontally.
Number (14): Everything in this space must add up to 14. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally; 5-5, placed horizontally.
Number (15): Everything in this space must add up to 15. The answer is 6-6, placed vertically; 3-3, placed vertically.
Number (9): Everything in this space must add up to 9. The answer is 4-5, placed vertically; 0-3, placed vertically.
Greater Than (2): Everything in this space must be greater than 2. The answer is 0-3, placed vertically.
Hard difficulty hints, answers for March 14 Pips
Number (15): Everything in this space must add up to 15. The answer is 5-5, placed horizontally; 5-6, placed vertically.
Number (9): Everything in this space must add up to 9. The answer is 5-6, placed vertically; 2-1, placed horizontally.
Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 2-3, placed vertically.
Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 2-3, placed vertically; 0-3, placed horizontally.
Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-3, placed vertically.
Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 5-3, placed vertically.
Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-4, placed vertically.
Number (8): Everything in this space must add up to 8. The answer is 2-6, placed vertically.
Number (9): Everything in this space must add up to 9. The answer is 6-3, placed horizontally.
Number (7): Everything in this space must add up to 7. The answer is 0-1, placed vertically; 2-4, placed vertically.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
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