MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "The Return of the King" (1980)

Alright, so this film isn't so much a sequel to this film as it is a sequel to this film, but the marketing wizards at Warner Brothers definitely wanted everyone to think that they were in the home video and DVD release. It also probably doesn't hurt that The Return of the King picks up pretty much right where Ralph Bakshi's entry ends - namely in that nebulous area between The Two Towers and the plot of The Return of the King's start.

Yes, believe it or not, the book of The Two Towers ends on a cliffhanger with Frodo seemingly dead by Shelob and Sam at the gates of Mordor at Cirth Ungol. Never mind that, though, Peter Jackson thought it'd be better to end on an "optimistic" note, I suppose.

We'll be getting to his entries later on.

For now, though, let's take a look at how Rankin/Bass handled The Return of the King.


Rather than just throwing us into the main action, we are given a framing device of Bilbo's 129th birthday party. Orson Bean returns from his role in The Hobbit to play not only Bilbo, but also Frodo. John Huston returns for his last time reprising the role of Gandalf before showing up in The Black Cauldron as the Narrator and then sadly passing away in 1987. A few others from the R/B Hobbit also pop in here and there. Casey Kasem is in this film as Merry, for a bit of interesting reunion with his former Scooby-Doo co-star Don Messick.

Oh, and Roddy McDowall plays Samwise. He does pretty well.

As for the film itself, it has the animation much like The Hobbit did as well as some musical numbers here and there. The plot is very abridged from the novel - the characters of Legolas and Gimli are completely cut out. Eowyn is introduced right out of nowhere to kill the Witch-King. Aragorn's plot is significantly shortened (which is ironic, since he's the King who happens to be doing the Returning).

There's also a bit of use of stock footage from The Hobbit, I presume, to save on the budget. At the very least it's worked into the story with a bard (Glenn Yarborough - yes, that one) singing the "Ballad of Frodo of the Nine Fingers".

So, here's the real question: why does this film get such a bad reception? Wikipedia describes fan reaction to it being "lukewarm", and I've seen several people say they dislike it outright. To be honest, The Hobbit could have a few cuts done to it and the pacing wasn't too odd. With The Return of the King, Rankin/Bass really cut too much. Even Arthur Rankin, Jr. himself insisted that the finished product wasn't very good, saying that he decided to only make The Return of the King (and held that this was always the plan, even with the Bakshi film coming out) because he didn't think that anyone would sit still through three movies.

Given that he passed away in 2014, he lived to see that belief proven hilariously wrong.

And that will be my segue into (eventually) talking about the Peter Jackson trilogy, and the Peter Jackson prequel trilogy.

As for the Rankin/Bass Return of the King, it suffers from a bit of bad pacing and having too much cut out, but I really don't think it's that bad. It's not as good as The Hobbit, sure, but it's decent enough.

Next time, however, we'll not be going back to Middle-Earth, but to a far, far worse place...namely, Argentina.

Yep.

Yep, it's time to go back to the world of Deathstalker - for Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans.

Play me out, Robbie!

The Return of the King is brought to us by Rankin/Bass and Warner Brothers.

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