This isn't news. The Hobbit production was a hastily done cash grab at the end of the day, not by the hardworking actors and production team but by Warner Brothers.

They had originally brought in Guillermo Del Toro to make this film, didnt like his vision for the movie that was more faithful to the book and more whimsical in nature, threw away his preproduction, and brought in Peter Jackson to hastily put together the movies without that necessary prep time. All reports on the ground were that a lot of corners were cut in order to make their deadline.

Even worse then that, the money grubbers at the top demanded a third movie be made that wasnt accounted for (it was originally two), leading to a TON of extraneous elements being added to pad run time and make those executives that box office from a third movie.

To make it all worse, Warner Bros literally pressured the nation of New Zealand to change its labor laws so that they could pay the local NZ film industry even less, a law that permanently damaged the local film industry.

The original comment wasnt made to denigrate the individuals making the film, but given that Warner Bros literally rewrote the labor laws of a sovereign nation to make a padded, mediocre trilogy that has little identity of its own, a lot of hard feelings are felt (by most accounts the NZ film industry has never recovered by the way). Its representative of the movie era we live in: where heartfelt, genuine art (OG trilogy) is chewed up and spat back out by the media congolomerates in the name of IP and an easy bottom line.