Movie: The Return of the King
May. 19th, 2008 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amediaThis is the animated TV-movie by Rankin-Bass (no relation to the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings). This one is by the same animators who did The Hobbit, in much the same style and with many of the same voices. They managed to give Glenn Yarborough, that glorious Irish tenor from the Limeliters, three or four songs to sing in snatches periodically, as opposed to The Hobbit in which he simply sang "The Greatest Adventure..." over and over and over and over until I wanted to strangle him. Even so, the Orcs definitely get the best songs. I'd heard good things about "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way," and I can only say, yes, it's a great song!
The story is told in an interesting flashback style, with Frodo, Sam, and Gandalf explaining to Bilbo about the quest to destroy the Ring. As TODS pointed out, this would make it easier for younger children to watch, who might be attracted by the animated style but frightened by the story if they didn't know everything would turn out all right. I thought that was a cool way to handle it.
I understand that movies often need to make changes and can't replicate books down to the last detail, but many of the changes in this movie didn't make sense. I had heard that Legolas and Gimli are not in the movie, but I didn't realize that even Aragorn has little more than a cameo, arriving all by himself on the Black Ships since they left out the whole Paths of the Dead subplot. Eowyn gets her wonderful line verbatim: "Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!" but that's the first time we see her - Merry fills Pippin in on several chapters of the book in about two sentences - and she looks as if she wandered in from the anime studio next door. The Palantir is an infallible crystal ball instead of a video phone. Denethor has the glorious voice of William Conrad, yay. Faramir is never mentioned, although I think we see him briefly in Aragorn's triumphal procession near the end. Gollum still looks like a giant frog (as he did in The Hobbit). Sam's rescue of Frodo from the Orcs is filled with nonsensical events; for just one example, instead of taking Frodo's magic items when he thinks Shelob has killed Frodo (the whole thing with Shelob isn't in the movie), Sam simply finds them lying on the ground in front of the tower where Frodo dropped them during the struggle and the Orcs didn't pick them up. Events from the books are strangely lengthened or shortened - the Battle of Pelennor Fields takes several days, and strangest of all, several days elapse after Frodo puts on the Ring, during which Sam hunts for him in the pathways around the edge of the inner volcano in Mount Doom, until Gollum shows up to do his canonical thing. Frodo then leaves with Bilbo from the Grey Havens instead of living with Sam in Rivendell for a while, which is very sad. WTF???? Sam and Frodo are, as usual, way over the top in their, ahem, devotion and affection.
Here is a site with a bunch of good screencaps if you want to get an idea of the look-and-feel.
The story is told in an interesting flashback style, with Frodo, Sam, and Gandalf explaining to Bilbo about the quest to destroy the Ring. As TODS pointed out, this would make it easier for younger children to watch, who might be attracted by the animated style but frightened by the story if they didn't know everything would turn out all right. I thought that was a cool way to handle it.
I understand that movies often need to make changes and can't replicate books down to the last detail, but many of the changes in this movie didn't make sense. I had heard that Legolas and Gimli are not in the movie, but I didn't realize that even Aragorn has little more than a cameo, arriving all by himself on the Black Ships since they left out the whole Paths of the Dead subplot. Eowyn gets her wonderful line verbatim: "Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!" but that's the first time we see her - Merry fills Pippin in on several chapters of the book in about two sentences - and she looks as if she wandered in from the anime studio next door. The Palantir is an infallible crystal ball instead of a video phone. Denethor has the glorious voice of William Conrad, yay. Faramir is never mentioned, although I think we see him briefly in Aragorn's triumphal procession near the end. Gollum still looks like a giant frog (as he did in The Hobbit). Sam's rescue of Frodo from the Orcs is filled with nonsensical events; for just one example, instead of taking Frodo's magic items when he thinks Shelob has killed Frodo (the whole thing with Shelob isn't in the movie), Sam simply finds them lying on the ground in front of the tower where Frodo dropped them during the struggle and the Orcs didn't pick them up. Events from the books are strangely lengthened or shortened - the Battle of Pelennor Fields takes several days, and strangest of all, several days elapse after Frodo puts on the Ring, during which Sam hunts for him in the pathways around the edge of the inner volcano in Mount Doom, until Gollum shows up to do his canonical thing. Frodo then leaves with Bilbo from the Grey Havens instead of living with Sam in Rivendell for a while, which is very sad. WTF???? Sam and Frodo are, as usual, way over the top in their, ahem, devotion and affection.
Here is a site with a bunch of good screencaps if you want to get an idea of the look-and-feel.
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Date: 2008-05-20 09:46 am (UTC)And when I was around 10 or so. The Lord of the Nazgul became my favorite character, and I dressed my favorite toy dinosaur in a home-made black cape and red crown and pretended that he was the Witch King of Angmar.
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Date: 2008-05-22 02:31 am (UTC)I noticed that dragon-beast - I thought it was *beautiful* in an appropriately-creepy sort of way.