Lord Of The Rings Cartoons

[Guest Steve J. Rogers]

Whats the verdict around here concerning the Middle Earth saga cartoons that were produced in the 70's-80's?

 

I just finished The Hobbit and TLOTR and mid way through ROTK and figured I'd give some .02 on them.

 

Personally I'll take the current live action films over the LOTR cartoon but thats pretty obvious considering...

 

I liked the Hobbit the best actually, I haven't read the book (I have listned to the Recorded Books version of FOTR though and making my way through TTT now, I have some things to say about Mr. Ingiles reading but thats for another day) but it seems Bilbo and Gandalf are pretty much as they are in the LOTR trillogy, though I could do without the personfication of the Dwarfs, (for some reason they remind me of the Disney version of the Seven Dwarfs, more childlike than even Hobbits and certaintly not the nobble warriors such as Gimli) Elves and Gollum

 

However its clear that PJ took his cues from the LOTR cartoon in terms of several settings. Though its intresting that in both versions of The Fellowship that both Tom Bombadill and Glorfindel are erased from history. In the movie's defense the scenes do give more exposition for the Arragorn-Arwen relationship but there is no excuse to have Legolias in the cartoon. That seemed too much of a stretch (especially considering that they just showed Frodo on the horse at the Ford)

 

Can someone explain to me why there was the need to have Gary Yarborough in The Hobbit and ROTK? Its one thing to have a theme song, score and everything, but don't ram the bloody thing down our throats.

 

Gee they rushed through TTT portion of the LOR cartoon, I wonder why? Seemed rushed and discomboglataed and ends out of no where. I wonder why the producers didn't do the approach of the three books seperatly, or at the very least make a more than 2hr production so its not so lopsided in terms of content from Fellowship

 

Speaking of which, almost night and day between the two cartoons, though several crowd shots seemed very Terry Gilliam-esque in terms of animating photographd images and such so much that it reminded me of some Mortal Kombat style video game

 

Anyway, just some thoughts

 

Steve

[cawthon777]

The Hobbit cartoon used to scare the shit out of me as a kid. Well, it didn't scare me per say but it was very disturbing.

 

Never saw the second but in pieces.

[Guest teke184]

The Hobbit and Return of the King are watchable, although the musical aspects of both are hit and miss.

 

Hobbit is oversimplified compared to the book. Return of the King, however, is VERY good for what it is, even if they skip over a chunk of the book from the end of Two Towers (battle of Helm's Deep) and the suburbs of Gondor being attacked to Frodo being capture in Mordor and Minas Tirith being under siege,

 

The Rings cartoon is SUCH a f*cking piece of shit... Ralph Bakashi's obsession with rotoscoping the whole thing and having some "live action" scenes made it HORRIBLE in addition to the obvious pacing and story problems. I remember nodding off during the battle of Helm's Deep during it and waking up wondering how much I'd missed... and it wasn't much. They'd intended to do a sequel but the project fell through, which is why Crankin Ass (Rankin-Bass) did Hobbit and RotK.