I could have spent this entire shoot on location.
We saw so many incredible places.
I know I'm a Kiwi, but I have to say I cannot imagine making these films anywhere...
...but this country.
HADLOW: Amazing. Wherever we went, it was an extraordinary experience.
And here we were making a film.
A New Zealand film.
The Hobbit.
McKELLEN: It's been thrilling to go back...
...and go up and down both the main islands of New Zealand.
And we began in Hobbiton.
When we first discovered the location, Hobbiton, back in 1998...
...there were three geographical things that made us choose it as Hobbiton.
We needed a distinctive tree set in rolling hillside ideally with a little lake...
...and a hill behind the tree rising up to give us the position of Bag-end.
It looked like Hobbiton. It just looked like a place where people actually lived and worked.
The highlights have definitely been watching Hobbiton from the air...
...which is something that I don't think was done on Lord of the Rings.
Seeing it like this kind of living model village is just extraordinary.
The original Hobbiton set was built out of polystyrene.
And even though we had to take it away...
...which I thought was a shame, it actually wouldn't have survived.
Of course, doing The Hobbit now, it gave us the ability to rebuild Hobbiton...
...out of permanent materials.
It's been made to last of materials that aren't gonna deteriorate.
And we can carry on showing people what's involved in making a movie.
People who've seen the films can go and relive them by actually...
...knocking on Bilbo's door.
Well, you can just look and see there's no...
There's no having to finish the illusion.
It's just here.
THORIN: We'll camp here for the night.
Fili, Kili, look after the ponies.
Denize Bluffs, its volcanic activity has brought the rock out of the ground.
- There's huge shafts of rock. -It looked like Jurassic Park.
You can't get any helicopter shots coming over from the back because it's just ply.
-It's just scaffold. HOWE: But it'll come out in a couple weeks.
And then there's gonna be a permanent one put in in place--
- As a tourist attraction. - There are beautiful rock formations.
And then down, down, down into the most incredible bush.
[CHATTERING]
It seemed ancient. There were lots of moss on all the great rocks.
It seemed incredibly old.
It's a lot of native bush in that area. It's a stunning location.
JACKSON: In this area, which is the Twizel area, we managed to get a bunch of shots...
...up on a hill above Lake Pukaki.
O'GORMAN: it was a beautiful vista.
Like, there was long, wheaten-colored kind of grass. And we had to be running through it.
The landscape is interesting geographically. We're being chased by these terrible monsters.
Over there!
[GROWLS]
It's just everything you could hope for in an epic adventure.
I took a photo that I sent to some friends.
Dwarves on vacation.
And they refused to believe that this was an actual photograph.
That I hadn't Photoshopped it.
"That place doesn't exist."
And I was standing in it.
Here we are at base camp ready for the big push to Aorangi. Mount Cook.
Behind us here is Mount Cook, which is New Zealand's highest mountain.
It's where Sir Edmund Hillary trained to climb Mount Everest.
It's a little less than half the height of Everest...
...so he basically had to climb Mount Cook twice...
...and he sort of had practice for Everest basically.
NESBITT: Very, very beautiful, huge open spaces.
Lovely wildﬂowers I remember grow along all the roads.
Like just bold kind of colors.
SERKIS: And we hit it at this time of year where these incredible variety of shades...
...of purple lupines just, you know, springing up everywhere.
The crew has said it was like doing a recce for an amazing road trip they're gonna do.
They say don't leave home till you've seen the country. Now I've seen the country.
So Strath Taieri, central Otago, a pretty remote location.
We wanted to use this location primarily because it's a chase.
A chase through the rocks, Wargs after the Dwarves.
I loved the idea of doing a chase that was...
That's spread out over a huge landscape.
McCOY: This is-- What's glorious about this place is you can do 360 degrees...
...and there's not a satellite dish in sight.
NESBITT: When we all went to Queenstown, I had never been there and it was astonishing.
I mean, a beautiful jewel, really at kind of the bottom of the world.
Queenstown, a famous holiday place here, but we escaped the crowds...
...and go up the lake and into the mountains and that's perhaps my favorite spot.
Earnslaw Burn was probably one of my favorite locations.
A gorgeous alpine sort of valley surrounded by waterfalls.
The place was alive with these incredible cascades.
We were very lucky to go to some extraordinary locations.
A lot of the world's impression of New Zealand is that landscape.
You know, the rolling hills and the mountains and the fjords. It's got everything in it.
It's real. It's the real countryside.
But at first you think, “Wow, what a good job they made."
But it's not. It's the real thing.
This is the Middle-earth I had always pictured.
Meanwhile, the backdrop is so beautiful, people will think it's CGI.
It looks too perfect.
You can use that as an advert for New Zealand if you want.
I mean, succinct, snappy, all positive.
And cut. Brilliant. Trademarked.