During this time of the year, there are traditions a lot of us return to. Drinking way too much nog is a big one. Spending time with family, of course, but if you’re like us, there’s a good chance you mainline all three extended editions of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings in one day and fall into a Hobbit-fueled fugue state. You know the feeling. You’re watching Saruman get stabbed by Wormtongue and it’s somehow three in the morning. And just in time for the long winter nights, a new Tolkien animated Lord of the Rings film is on the horizon. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim hits theaters this weekend, from producer Peter Jackson and director Kenji Kamiyama.
The animated feature tells the story of Helm Hammerhand, the ninth king of Rohan, and his daughter Hera, as they defend their people and homeland against the violent forces of the Wildmen of Dunland. They’re those big beardy guys Saruman recruits. We here at Nerdist really liked it, read our review here! But that is by no means the first film to adapt the world and works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Between 1977 and 1980, three different animated productions adapted—roughly—the entirety of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. But a proper trilogy it isn’t.
The Hobbit (1977)
Produced for NBC, the 78 minute film of The Hobbit was directed by Arthur Rankin Jr and Jules Bass, who were the studio that made all of those Christmas specials—your Rudolphs, your Frosties, your Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkeys. As far as adaptations go, this one is pretty by the book. Pun obviously intended. We meet Bilbo as he’s about to smoke out of his steampunk bong, when suddenly Gandalf shows up faster than the Flash to join the smoke session. He goes about his standard introduction schtick and before Bilbo knows it, he’s been recruited as burglar number one, and strikes out with the dwarves, who all got a big glow up in the Jackson films.
And did we mention the music? It is a Rankin/Bass film, it’s gotta have music, after all. The soundtrack contains ten songs written by Tolkien himself, and several of them performed by Thurl Ravenscroft. Who, despite his name, isn’t a warlock but he was the original voice of Tony the Tiger.
Even if you’re not a musical fan, “Down Down to Goblin Town” is a jam.
The whole film has such a fantastic aesthetic and design that it feels like watching storybook pages in motion, partially helped by the influence of English illustrator Arthur Rackam, according to Rankin.
Let’s talk about the crazy good voice cast, too. It’s a who’s who of ‘70s people. Orson Bean, who you may remember from Being John Malkovich, plays Bilbo. Hans Conreid, who’d previously voiced Captain Hook in Disney’s Peter Pan, voices Thorin Oakenshield. Acclaimed director Otto Preminger, most famous to me for playing the second Mr. Freeze plays the Elvenking.
Late Night with David Letterman regular and co-star of The Burbs, Brother Theodore, a very weird little German performer known for stand-up tragedies, played the most terrifying Gollum in the whole wide world. And Gandalf was another acclaimed film director, John Huston.
Another big factor is the actual animation was done by the Japanese studio, Topcraft, who would later morph into Studio Ghibli under Hayao Miyazaki. It’s just so much fun. The creature designs are all great. The goblins, the spiders, the trolls, Smaug, the wood elves look like creepy little ghouls. Fantastic stuff all around.
The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Where the Rankin-Bass Hobbit feels like a warm cup of tea, the next film is more of a warm cup of tea with low grade LSD in it.
The 1978 animated film The Lord of the Rings, by Ralph Bakshi is what we like to call a beautiful mess. There’s a lot of gorgeous animation and painting and illustration throughout the film, but the film’s biggest flaw might be that it’s too faithful an adaptation to the source material. There’s a lot of running in The Lord of the Rings, and they really, really stick to that in the film.
The script for a Lord of the Rings film was commissioned in 1969 by United Artists, who hired John Boorman to write a draft. A year later, Boorman’s script was deemed “too expensive”. If you know John Boorman’s work, you can imagine what he’d do with Lord of the Rings. Just look at Zardoz.
Bakshi learned that Boorman’s script was abandoned by the studio. Most likely scrapped because Boorman wanted to produce all three stories into a single film. A plan that Bakshi called “madness”.
In 1975, Bakshi convinced United Artists to produce The Lord of the Rings as two or three animated films. They also accepted Bakshi’s pitch to quote: “do the books as close as we can, using Tolkien’s exact dialogue and scenes.”
Ralph Bakshi – Rotoscope Pioneer
To better understand the 1978 film and its animation style, we need to talk about Ralph Bakshi.
Ralph Bakshi is a Palestinian-American animator and director who got his start directing short cartoons like James Hound, Deputy Dog, and Rocket Robinhood. But Bakshi is more commonly known as a vanguard of adult animation, with his films like Fritz the Cat, Cool World, Heavy Traffic, Coonskin, Fire & Ice, Wizards, and American Pop.
A lot of Bakshi’s films, Lord of the Rings included, used a style of animation called rotoscoping. Animated films have used actors as reference for years. There’s vaults worth of Disney footage of people acting out scenes for Snow White or Alice in Wonderland.
Not to simplify the art form too much, rotoscoping takes said reference footage, and animates on top of it. Even if you didn’t know what it was called, you’ve definitely seen it before. Old He-Man cartoons; A Scanner Darkly; Heavy Metal; Waltz with Bashir. Disney even rotoscoped over their own previous films sometimes, .
The Lord of the Rings has all the trademark scenes you’d expect in an adaptation. And all of our favorite Fellowship characters are here. Legolas, Gimli, Merry, Pippin, Frodo, Elrond, Théoden, Boromir with a fun Viking look happening. And I know what you’re asking. Is his death scene just as bad as in the Jackson movies? It’s worse.
And of course there’s Aragorn, sporting some high cut skirt or tiny shorts or something. Not the worst of the character designs. Gollum looks like Batboy, and Sam is done real dirty in this. He looks like a WWII propaganda cartoon against chimney sweeps. It’s REAL derog. And he gets bullied by Gandalf too. Insult to injury.
Very Ambitious, Very Weird
Rude Gandalfs aside, the one thing we can say is that Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings is ambitious, but with a budget of only four million dollars, there’s only so much ambition can do. While a lot of the rotoscoping of the orcs looks cool and creepy, towards the end the seams start to show. Just so many chimp masks on guys out in a field on horseback.
The cast of Bakshi’s film also doesn’t have quite the name recognition as the earlier Hobbit film, however we do get a pre-Alien John Hurt as Aragorn and a barely-just-after Star Wars Anthony Daniels as Legolas.
One of the movie’s biggest problems is that the ring never gets destroyed. Due to time constraints and a lengthy post-production, the film had to be cut short, ending abruptly after the Riders of Rohan and Gandalf show up to save Helm’s Deep.
Originally the film was planned to be distributed as The Lord of the Rings Part I by United Artists, with a trilogy in the works, but that got changed into only two films because, again, four million dollar budgets.
According to Bakshi, when he finally finished the movie, the executives told him they were planning to release the film without directly saying that there’d be a sequel. The executives did this because they felt that audiences would not pay to see half of a film. Unrelated, Wicked part one has currently made over $460 million worldwide.
The film did pretty well, raking in just under 33 million dollars, which was enough to warrant a part two, but after scathing audience reactions, rough critic reviews, and a falling out with producers, Bakshi walked away from directing a sequel.
But don’t fret, all of your people not at all fretting! We did get an ending to the trilogy just two years later. Technically speaking.
The Return of the King (1980)
The Rankin-Bass produced Hobbit won a Peabody, and while it received good to tepid response, a sequel was already in discussion before Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings even premiered. And the most logical sequel to a Hobbit film is of course the third act of The Return of the King.
The 1980 animated film titled The Return of the King, is…basically just a long music video. The film picks up after Sam and Frodo have already returned home to the Shire and are celebrating Bilbo’s 129th birthday.
Bilbo learns that his precious ring has gone missing, along with Frodo’s finger, and Sam and Frodo retell their experience of tossing the ring into Mount Doom, mostly from Sam’s perspective, who is voiced by Roddy McDowell. And when Roddy isn’t talking, the movie gets some help from the the Minstrel of Gondor.
When I say it’s a long music video, it’s because the majority of the film’s information is relayed through voice over, over the animation on screen, which feels like a way to cut production costs. And when there’s no exposition being dumped through internal monologue, the Minstrel of Gondor fills the silence with music. A lot of music.
In addition to McDowell, the film does share some continuity with the previous Hobbit movie with Huston back as Gandalf, Brother Theodore back as Gollum, and Orson Bean back, this time voicing both Bilbo and Frodo. Casey Kasem, Shaggy himself and purveyor of goddamn dog dedications, voices Merry which is just kinda weird.
Basically, what if Return of the King was one big final battle. I guess the Jackson one is too, but with way less singing, and hundred percent more Legolas and Gimli. The best friends are totally absent from this movie, but there’s a tomatoless Denethor, and we get to see The Mouth of Sauron, as well as a deviously jolly version of the Witch King.
Compared to its 1977 predecessor, which got flack for adapting Tolkien into a kid’s cartoon, the 1980 Return of the King does let some violence slip through. Gollum’s lava death, Frodo’s finger getting chomped, Eowyn killing the Witch King. A way different vibe from The Hobbit.
It of course ends with Frodo, Gandalf, Elrond, and Bilbo sailing away to the Grey Havens on a Bros Only Cruise while Sam, Merry, and Pippin watch from the shore. And yes, music plays over this whole thing too.
The Return of the King got overall lukewarm reactions. One of the biggest complaints is that it tried too hard to be both a children’s animated film and properly tell the story of the third book of a trilogy, despite not making the first two. Oh, and the music. Nobody really liked the music.
At the end of the day, even with all their faults, the animated features of the Lord of the Rings universe are important and endearing pieces of art. Are some of them overly long and poorly made in some parts? Sure! But how many movies do you know with a song as good as “Goblin Town?”
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
