ANI-MOVIES, *The Return Of The King

Despite what a ton of misinformed fans might think, Rankin/Bass' adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return Of The King was not picking up where Ralph Bakshi's The Lord Of The Rings left off which wasn't allowed to continue due to low sales. Rankin/Bass had previously done an animated treatment of The Hobbit into, of all things, a single film and not a drawn-out trilogy. Coming out in 1980, just a year after Bakshi's theatrical release, this feature-length made-for-TV movie premiered on ABC marking a major turning point for Rankin/Bass where they shifted into producing 2D animation as opposed to their holiday-themed stop-motion specials such as Rudolph. Two years later, they would create the cult classic fantasy, The Last Unicorn, and this led to more animated TV series like Thundercats and Silverhawks. Most of the actual animation was handled by the now defunct anime studio Topcraft which some of their former staff helped set up Studio Ghibli. Even though it's based on the final book of the Rings trilogy, this special doesn't cover the entire novel as the first-third of it dusted over relying on the watcher to have to either read the books up until that point or at least seen the Bakshi movie to cover the space left from the previous two books. This is a major turn off as the viewer has to have an entire history lesson laid out to them before they can even start watching the real story.

Beginning at Bilbo Baggins' 129th Birthday, his nephew Frodo along with his Hobbit mates plus Gandalf at Elrond's pad in Rivendell. Apparently, Bilbo is going senile in his elongated old age as he forgets what Frodo did with his old ring as he notices the lad is missing his ring finger. Gandalf hired a bard to narrate the saga's finale, or at least the parts that the movie covers. The opening actually goes on for nearly 15 minutes as there are two different sets of credits, some of which flashes back to scenes from The Hobbit. The story-within-the-story unfolds sometime after Gollum had Frodo attacked by Shelob which completely removes one of the fiercest monsters in the whole trilogy from being animated. Frodo is held captive by the remaining Orcs in Mordor while Samwise finds the One Ring lying at the front door. The gardener first decides to carry the Ring on his own to Mount Doom and destroy it, but wastes an inordinate amount of time figuring out that he's not strong enough to bear the Ring's evil on his own, this includes a pointless dream sequence where he sees himself as a conqueror and then coming to his senses when he envisions getting married and having kids, so he doubles back to free Frodo. Thanks to a deus ex machina given to the Hobbits from Galadriel who never even shows up here, Sam is able to get through the fortress' invisible door and retrieves Frodo after learning all the guards killed themselves fighting over his missing mithril cloak which they left outside along with the Ring in the first place. Frodo and Sam disguise themselves as orcs to hide their precense only to get drummed into a marching band of whip-happy soldiers who get into a fight with some more of Mordor's forces which they break loose from. Meanwhile in Minas Tirith, Gandalf is leading the defenses against Sauron's forces. The Riders of Rohan arrive only to have their King Theoden keel over dead just because it started getting cloudy. The Nazgul leader appears but is quickly dispatched by Eowyn who disguised herself as a soldier and kills him just as Aragorn finally shows up with reinforcements, although Legolas and Ghimli are totally absent from the whole picture. Gandalf and his crew plan an assault on Mordor all while Gollum catches up with Frodo and Sam. Frodo enters Mount Doom on his own just as he gives into the Ring's evil, leaving Sam to spend the next few days looking for his now invisible master inside the volcano. Gollum bites Frodo's ring finger off and at long last gets his precious back, but trips into the lava destroying the Ring once and for all, thus killing Sauron and vanquishing all his forces. Frodo and Sam catch a break from the errupting volcano thanks to the damn eagles coming back from their saga-long coffee break. The story cuts forward back to Bilbo's birthday where the old Hobbit is retiring to the Middle Earth version of Heaven, and Frodo comes along with Gandalf leaving Sam to finish his biography.

The Return Of The King helped set the stage for 80s fantasy features even though it doesn't really stick the landing as a sequel to Rankin/Bass' The Hobbit or as a conclusion to the entire Tolkien trilogy. Considering it skips over the opening chapters of the book it's based on, there is an unreasonable amount of narration that Gandalf has to fill you in on, so they might as well just as made this a radio drama. Comparing this to Rankin/Bass' prior venture of The Hobbit is the that one covered the majority of its book in a mere 78 minutes, whereas here it added an extra 20 minutes of material most of which inconsequential ballads, despite how memorable the whips song might be. Topcraft's animation is above par for a TV movie, but its just not worth it as it carries on for way longer than even Tolkien fans would feel comfortable with. The voice acting is good with Orson Bean returning as Bilbo as well as Froto, John Huston coming back as Gandalf, and Brother Theodore reprising his role of Gollum, but the best is Roddy McDowell as Sam which makes the Bakshi version of the character look like a stuttering buffoon. It's easy enough to skip this film even if Bakshi's attempt left you wanting for more, so unless you're really itching to see some exceptional 80s animation it might not be worth your time.