Tolkien Blog Party | So About Those Cartoons . . .

Well, I did it.  I watched the cartoon versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings made in the late 70's/early 80's, and . . . I have Questions™.  And Comments™.  So, I figure the simplest way of doing this post is to just share those questions/comments in bullet journal format.

Before I do that, however, let's have some backstory for the uninitiated:

As near as I can tell it after meticulously combing the very best of sources for information, it all went down like this.  In 1977, Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass released an animated adaptation of The Hobbit.  The next year, Ralph Bakshi and United Artists came out with The Lord of the Rings, which was based on The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers but not The Return of the King.  [Bakshi took over the project from John Boorman, who had originally intended to produce a single-film live-action version of the entire story, apparently with Tolkien's own approval.  United Artists scrapped the project due to various production concerns.  (I was bummed about this until I read, this very morning, that Boorman's version would have included a sexual liaison between Frodo and Galadriel.  Knowing, as I did, that Boorman was responsible for the absolute fever dream that is 1981's Excalibur, I should have expected some such deviancy.)]  Bakshi apparently planned to produce a sequel to the 1978 film, presumably to include the plot of The Return of the King, but that never happened for reasons I forget and don't care to go back and recover.  What did happen, however, was that Rankin and Bass delivered their version of The Return of the King in 1980, which they had evidently planned to do all along, irrespective of the United Artists film(s).

Whew.  Now that we have the production drama context out of the way, let's briefly touch on art styles.  Rankin and Bass used a predecessor of Studio Ghibli's to animate both of their films, and the results are actually quite fun.  The character design leaves something to be desired, but the scenic animation is beautiful:  so soothing and idyllic.

the vibes = immaculate

Bakshi, on the other hand, employed rotoscoping for his movie, and the results are . . . not great.  I don't understand the point of rotoscoping, frankly.  If you're going to use real people to act the entire movie out, why on earth would you go to the bother and expense of digitizing the actors?  Sure, it makes for a trippy, unique look, and I'll concede that the look is effectively psychedelic and "alternative."  So, in that sense, it's cool in small doses. 

But the key term there is small doses.  In the excesses present here, it's very confusing and jarring.  Especially because the digitization is neither very good nor very thorough in this instance, and we're essentially seeing a disjointed and disturbing morph between live action and animated figures fifty percent of the time.

See?  Weird.  Kind of cool, maybe, but weird.

ANYWAY.  Enough of all that.  Let's get to the fun part, shall we?  

I present you with my less professional and much snarkier thoughts, herewith.  (Oh, by the way:  I presume that you're all already familiar with what the Rankin and Bass films did to Gollum, so I won't mention it very often here.  But wowza, am I right?)

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The Hobbit (1977)

• Why is Bilbo's pipe basically a hookah?

I regret to inform you that yes, that is the design for the hairy feet throughout all the films.

• Why does Rivendell consist of exactly one (1) singular A-frame cabin?

• The goblins are, um . . . wow.

• Why is Elrond wearing what appears to be bedazzled orthodontic headgear?

I mean, I'm not going to say it's not a slay, but . . .

• The spiders are so . . . energetic?  And inexplicably tufted?

arachnis deathicis

• Why are the Mirkwood elves millennial greige?  Also, why do they essentially look like this version of Gollum but with slightly better bone structure?

• Why up the death count at the end?  What did Thorin's Company ever do to you?

• Why is Smaug FURRY?!?

AMERICA, EXPLAIN

The Lord of the Rings (1978)

• Why is Elrond wearing Shein's version of a Roman senator Halloween costume?

Um?

• Why is Sam . . . why is Sam?

it feels . . . aggressively and intentionally offensive at this point

• What is up with Bilbo's expressions?  Like, is he Quite Well?

• Boromir is Viking randomly?!

• Why'd they have to kill off Bill the pony when there was literally no reason to do so?

Bill has done nothing wrong, ever, in his life.  Look at him back there, just being the goodest boi.

• Why is Gimli basically the same height as Legolas?

• Why did Pippin's hair color change once the Fellowship got to Moria?

^ Pippin outside of Moria ^

^ Pippin (foreground) in Moria ^

• TREEBEARD oh my WORD?!

I —

• 'Fess up, Peter Jackson — just how many of these scenes did you copy shot for shot?  I know you've acknowledged some of the inspiration, and I know you and Bakshi were both working with the same source material, so there was going to be some overlap, but come on.  I'm seeing an awful lot of awfully similar frames.

The Return of the King (1980)

• Was that  — was that a glimpse of Faramir I spied by Eowyn's side during Aragorn's triumphal entry to the city?! 😍

• WHERE THERE'S A WHIP, THERE'S A WAY

this musical number ~changed me~

• I don't know where they got Sam's character inspo from but he's kind of cool, I guess

• "Leave Tomorrow 'Til It Comes" is actually quite lovely

• Why did the ending make me so emotional?!  I guess the Gray Havens just have that effect on me, in whatever form.

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In sum, then, I have mixed feelings.  The cartoon films are weird and silly and they make a lot of puzzling choices, but they're not as holistically bad as they may sometimes be made out to be.  All three films are actually pretty faithful to the source material in the script, if not in the structure or art design — a lot of lines are lifted verbatim from the books, which is neat.  And all three at least have some moments of genuinely lovely animation.  

But, then again, they also made Gollum a literal frog.  So.

Ours not to reason why, I suppose.