Return of the King - Cartoon Version
 

Not too long ago I borrowed The Hobbit cartoon from my nephew and watched it because it had been many years since I'd seen it. Before it started, there was a preview of the Return of the King cartoon that I didn't even know existed. For anyone that has seen it, how closely does it follow Tolkien's 3rd book? Is it as good as The Hobbit cartoon? Worth seeing?

Thanks :)

Hail Logerine!

It is definitely not worth seeing. Words can't describe how bad it is even if I spoke in the tongue of Mordor. It is thoroughly unwatchable. It is also a musical. It does not follow the story very well at all and the songs they sing are not even Tolkienesque. The Hobbit is the best of the lot and then they get worse by leaps and bound with each additional movie. I would rather pull my eyeballs out than watch Return of The King again. Even my 3-year-old daughter thought that it sucked. She might even pull her eyes out if I told her we had to see it again. Avoid this like the blackest of plagues. If you see a friend holding a copy, knock it out of their hands. We should never speak of this again.
-GH

I have the cartoon editions of LOTR and The Hobbit on DVD, and can almost fully aggree with everything Giant Hamburger said, especially about Return of the King.

I liked for what it was worth back then, however I was in my early teens,
easily impressed...I still remember the hokey songs from it.
Remember is was done by Rankin/Bass...the same people who do the Xmas cartoons.

Hell...I got to think it's decent...I got grounded from TV on the night it first came on. ;)

Thank you so much
 

It seems that you've spared me a great deal of torture. Certainly I had no idea how terrible it is. The Hobbit was pretty good I thought. Althought the cartoon left out the "Queer Lodgings" chapter and an important character -- Beorn. I've read the book, seen the cartoon, and even saw a stage play this past October based on The Hobbit.

On a side note: You know, I can't remember seeing the word Shire once in The Hobbit book. When I saw the play, it drove me nuts when they kept calling Bilbo's home "The Shire" when in the book it's called Hobbiton. I am correct on this am I not? The Shire is only mentioned in LOTR books.

Wait- Ralph Bakshi Did the lotr Cartoon- It was not a musical and did not suck- in fact Jackson used it for reference- It so scared the pussies that made the ani-hobbit that they threw him out and went back to the original guys to make ROTK- I like the Bakshi version and say that it deserves at least one watching by any serious fan ( but do burn the animated ROTK)

yeah.. agreed. you'd have to speak in the language of the Smiths of Eregion to even begin to describe how bad ROTK cartoon vers. was.. The Hobbit cartoon - decent if you want some laughs. that's the only one, though. watching the rest make me more depressed than Pink Floyd's The Wall.

I just don't like the animation style, everything's weird and puffy and icky or something, you know? That's fine for the "bad" characters but when everyone looks that way it's just not fun to watch.

ha, . Bakshi totally slaughtered that bit. Fire, while ROTK wasn't a musical, "the hobbit" was...of sorts. they just took all of Tolkien's ..ahem...horrid poetry and put it to music. i think the hobbit was good, in the sense that if you wanted to introduce a child to the series, that might be a nice stepping stone. beyond that...meh.

Did any of you see the animated Fellowship Of The Ring? It was Czech, I think, and was animated by using live action as reference. They only made the first one, had plans on making the others, but couldn't because of funding.
It wasn't cartoony at all, but really really cool.

The Ralph Bakshi version of LOTR certainly has its moments. I actually liked the rotoscoping they used (this is the process of filming real people and then inking over the photos frame by frame to create what looks like a cross between animation and live action). I watched it a couple of years ago when Fellowship came out. I thought it was no more or less true to the books than Peter Jackson's versions.

Unfortunately they ran out of cash and had to end it after Helm's Deep.

As for the drek that is Return of the King... I agree it is best left forgotten...

If its the one I'm thinking of, where the orcs are blue, and poorly animated. Then I would avoid it at all costs, it was terrible.

Damn it! Now I have that song 'Frodo of the nine fingers' stuck in my head.

That alright...try the chanting of the orcs
"Where there's a whip...there's a way"

arrrgh:rolleyes:

So...you DIDN'T like it, GH?

stay away it is so very very bad

You know, having seen it again, I have to agree, it isn't up to snuff...

But I remember being 6 years old when I first saw it and being absolutely mesmorized by it. It had so much depth to it, in my youthful eyes and really drove me to want to read the books (which I didn't do until I was about 12). Still, for it's time and for a kid, it isn't a bad introduction to the books...

And the music is laughably bad... even for the time...

The Bakshi version is the best of the bunch. You ought to watch iut just because....but only once. Thats all it deserves.

All the copies of the Rankin/Bass version should be rounded up and burned. All records of it in the history books should be deleted. We should totally deny its existence and hope to spare our children the pain and emotional scarring from watching it.