October 29, 1999

And now the crew of The Lord of the Rings enters familiar territory: that which was a made for tv movie in 1980 and has since been a little cash cow for Miramax.

But wait! Actually, The Return of the King, enjoying a resurgence now due to renewed interest in Tolkien's work on the screen, is NOT our Return of the King. Or at least not the one we know and love.

If you read reviews for the 1980 movie you'll see basically two lines of critiques.

Example one: By Gabby from Ocklawaha (don't ask)

"When I first saw this film, I watched it again and again and again. The characters facinated me and I hungered to know more each time I watched it. I give this movie credit for plunging me into the fantastic middle earth of Tolkin. Because of the efforts of it's animators, I was inspried to sit down and actually read! That was a feat at the time, because there was nothing I would rather not do.

"On its own, the movie stands quite well. Pick up "The Hobbit" and watch it first, that will help, too. The music will stick with you and you will find yourself singing the ballards. It is exciting, cast with wonderfully complex characters and chock full of battles and mysteries that you don't have to completely understand to follow the story."

Example Two: By James from Santa Clara

"This movie was a bit too lighthearted to truly reflect the books that it was based on. It also grossly alters some of the characters in a way that would offend anyone truly familiar with the books (Aragorn, in particular, is robbed of a fairly substantial portion of his dignity and majesty). This is decent entertainment if you don't take the series seriously, but if you are one of those people that knows every plot twist in the books, this movie suffers from the typical malaise of movies based on books with plots too complicated to really stuff into the amount of time a movie gives it"

As for me, I think it's a difficult movie to review. Is the purpose of a review to judge the efforts of the creators, or is it to judge the entertainment quality of the movie? If it is the former I'd say that it gets a thumbs down. If it is the latter I'd say it gets a thumbs up.

You see, the reason why there are these two lines of reviews is because (as I said) this movie is not "our" Return of the King! Some of the plots are the same (if simplified) but some of the characters, places, and chronology have been warped, and the rest have been changed all together. So you end up with only brief flashes of some of our friends in the movie, and most not appearing at all. It's as if you're seeing new characters brought in to Tolkien's world trying to "act" (and failing miserably) as our heros and villains. But the movie STILL works enough to entertain. And isn't that a testiment to Tolkien? By itself the movie entertains. However, if you read a review by one who has read Tolkien, of COURSE they are going to be offended. Take a look at the characters:

Gandalf: Since Rankin/Bass made this a direct sequel to the Hobbit they ran into a bit of trouble. Gandalf in the Hobbit does not equal Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings. They are two different characters. The Wizard of the child's story who "never minded explaining his cleverness more than once," who is "dreadfully afraid" of the wargs, who tricks Beorn into accepting thirteen unwanted dwarves into his house, and the like, needs nothing short of a total literary resurrection to become the messenger sent by the Valar to rally the West against Sauron. That Tolkien was able to accomplish such transmutation successfully bears witness to his possession of an almost incredible power of mind and art. And I think readers of Tolkien's complete Middle Earth works understand that The Hobbit is a rendering from Bilbo's journals and not an unbiased historical record.

In the meantime, Rankin/Bass is stuck with two different Gandalfs to deal with, and they make the change rather smoothly. The wizard tends to keep a serious tone in the movie while not looking like the pretentious, monotonous Prophet of Doom he appeared as in Bakshi's version. Nonetheless, his character seems to be greatly diminished in power and chooses to spend his freetime spectating battles on the Pelennor Fields from a safe area. You can't blame the Lord of the Nazgul for laughing at him when this particular wizard stands at the Gate of Minas Tirith and tells him to leave.

Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas: Not in the movie. Of course, since he WAS the title character, someone had to play Aragorn for a couple of brief scenes. So we saw some clueless man who looked like he spent not more than two days of his life in the wild playing the part by saying things like, "Why look so Glum, Wizard? Does the mere thought of Sauron's armies overwhelm your spirit?"

Pippin: I was looking for him, but all I saw was this hobbit with his name who never had any fear, and may have made a noble character, but not an interesting one.

Merry: Replaced by a guy obviously in need of a diet. (What has the King of Rohan been feeding this guy?) He has three lines in the movie where he tries to prove how heroic he is. And fails.

Frodo: Mostly we see an idealized version of a Hobbit hero. In fact, Frodo seems to be the same character as Bilbo in this movie. What happened to the reluctant hero in the books? This one seems to be less aware of Sauron's Eye and more aware instead of the camera- the latter prompting him to make speeches on his journey of the sort, "yes, Samwise, it may be hopeless. But STILL... we shall have to TRY. Because we are fighting evil. And Evil must never be allowed to win."

Samwise: In the novel Sam changes more than any other character in Lord of the Rings save Pippin. But even in the Return of the King Sam is still a clumsy, unsure of himself, ninnyhammer (as his Gaffer tells him). In this movie the guy playing him is SCARY. And mean. It's as if we're seeing Gollum's version of the story! This guy only shares one trait of the book's version: devotion to Mr. Frodo. In fact, when Frodo tells Sam that they will have to try to destroy evil, the ever-Christian (at least in this story) Samwise says, "Bless you, sir, for your bravery. I ask you Lord- give me the strength! Give me the strength to try once more! God help us!"

But wait- There's more! You thought just the characters were changed? Well we're not done yet. The places have changed, too!

Minas Tirith: I realize that a cartoon version of the city is never going to be that visual interesting. I also realize that no one seems to understand Tolkien's description of the city and even most paintings of the great fortress are inaccurate and less glorious than the "real" deal. But they REALLY screwed this one up. In fact, since they took Gandalf's lines straight from the book, he actually contradicts what you're seeing on screen in some of his descriptions. And we won't even talk about the White Tower and the non existing courtyard that supposedly surrounds it.

Cirith Ungol: Perhaps Tolkien should have just spelled it Kirith to accomodate lazy script writers. It's the first note in Appendix E, for God's sake. Didn't they research pronunciations at all? When you say Sirith it sounds like a god damn baby shower. But than this magnificently ingeniously designed structure hardly looks to be special at all anyway. I suppose I should be happy that they had it leaning up against the rock wall at least. But they could have made it appear bigger than my house. It would have been nice, too, had they come CLOSE to getting the path outside correct so that SOME of Frodo and Sam's lines after their escape would have made sense.

Towers of the Teeth: I didn't know they were barber poles. I must have missed that. I also didn't know that the Black Gate connected to each of them- and spans about 15 feet. It's like every structure in the movie: they've been simplified so much that they look like they're forts that I made when I was 10 or 11.

And like I said, amazingly enough it is still entertaining! (Even if I don't care for any of the characters in the movie. Whoever those guys are) It's just that I have to think of how much better it could have been had they understood any of the book.

And yes, there would still be limits on the story you could tell- I'm not saying that this animated version should have been vastly different in tone or scope. But I do think that some needless inaccuracy severely diminished that which could have been.

Creating a Successful Return of the King
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