The Return Of The King
1980
Director: Jules Bass, Arthur Rankin Jr
Starring: Orson Bean, John Huston, Roddy McDowall, Casey Kasem, Theodore Bikel, William Conrad, Nellie Bellflower
Not Rated
Oh Sam, what have I said? What have I done?
~Frodo Baggins
Today my guest is Jennifer Gualdoni, or "Jen G" as I tend to refer to her. She's the biggest X-Men fan I know, so of course I bring her on here to do a piece on Lord Of The Rings, right? Anywho, enjoy! And be sure to check out her book reviews on her site www.goddessbnl.com !
Hello, Faithful
Naptown Nerd Readers!
My name is Jennifer Gualdoni, and I am happy to present to
you my thoughts on the cartoon adaptation of The Return of the King from 1980.
Just a quick background about me: I’m a life-long comic book reader and
Marvel girl. Ten years ago while in
college I worked at the local comic book and video rental store (remember
those?) I’ve seen all the movies
multiple times and even the extended cuts.
Literally, I’ve lost enough hours of my life watching these movies. The family joke is if you want to go to
sleep, go put in some LOTR: Fellowship of
the Ring on in the basement and be prepared to go to sleep. I am a bit ashamed to say I have never read
any of the books, but I was told in 7th grade that these books were
for “BOYS ONLY” and I shouldn’t waste my time.
(True story).
Ironically, my husband received The Hobbit cartoon movie for
his 34th birthday a few weeks ago, so I was very familiar with these
cartoons. My first realization was that The Return of the King/ROTK was done by
Rankin/Bass, which is the same company that created one of my favorite
childhood shows, Thundercats. In fact, the artists for Thundercats stole some of the creature art for the villains.
The gate has two gargoyles, but they look like Vulture Man
to me.
Also, Gollum and the Orcs look like Slythe.
I can see why kids would love this show back in the early
80’s because there are a ton of catchy (yet horrible) minstrel songs. Don’t expect to get them out of your head
anytime soon. My favorites had to be
“Frodo of the Nine Fingers….and the ring of DOOM” and “When there’s a whip….
There’s a way!” I can also see how this
movie could completely scare the hell out of you since you witness Gollum
biting off Frodo’s finger at the end.
For some reason, the movie starts off with the ending at the
beginning. That’s right, Gandalf reveals
the entire end of the movie that the ring has been destroyed and Frodo lost a
finger while celebrating Bilbo’s 129th birthday. Pretty weird to me, but I guess the 80’s
realized kids had short attention spans, so they needed to know the ending
within the first 5 minutes.
Of course, there is
the usual Hobbit happenings of homo-erotic shirtless Frodo cuddling with
Samwise while on their mission, Gandalf riding horses, and Orcs marching about
being silly. (No Gimli or Legolas
though) Then we get to the best part
(and most underutilized character in the movie) Eowyn. I think the Peter Jackson ROTK did a better
job of making it more movie magical by having her stab the Lord of the Nazgul
while saying “I AM NO MAN” but whatever.
You can definitely tell that things have changed (for the better I might
add) since cartoons now have way more strong female characters in them compared
to the token chick (which in this movie isn’t revealed until over an hour into
the movie). As I mentioned before, I was
told that Tolkein was pretty much for boys while growing up, and it isn’t very
girl friendly since Eowyn is the only girl, but at least she is a great and
important character. If I had seen this
as a kid, I know for a fact I would have wanted to dress up as Eowyn for
Halloween but I digress. I just wish she
had been in the movie a little bit longer.
Overall, I didn’t hate the movie, but I didn’t love it
either. The songs were catchy enough for
my liking. The art was dark and grim,
which is pretty accurate for Modor. When
Aragorn speaks, I swear, he sounds exactly like Viggo Mortensen. I’d say I’d give this 2.5 Stars out of 5.
Thanks for reading!
You can enjoy my book reviews on my website: www.goddessbnl.com
NEXT TIME: There and back at The Hobbit again! You'll see!
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