A Review on the 1979 Animated Film "The Return of the King"

Well friends, I watched it. And here is the promised review.

For those of you who are brave enough, I have also added scenes and clips from the film for your amusement.

1: The Story

The one word I have to describe this movie is: old. Some old movies based off of books are great with good stories and plots, while others manage to make an amazing story into a bland, slow, cheesy film. For the '70s, this movie is pretty average, but judging by story standards, it isn't great.

The story doesn't start out with Sam trying to rescue Frodo from the orcs. Instead it begins with Sam and Frodo sitting happily at Rivendell celebrating Bilbo's birthday. Then the bard of Gondor comes over and starts singing about their quest to destroy the ring. During the ballad we travel back to Sam trying to save Frodo; so basically the whole movie is spoiled for the watcher at the beginning, because it starts at the end, showing that everyone and everything turns out fine.

You'll notice in the video below that Elrond wears a rotating sparkle crown, and that the elvish king looks more like Gollum than the actual Gollum for this film. Gollum also is fat...which is just really weird.

2: The Music

For most of the movie, I didn't think the music was too bad. It was just very '70s cartoon (the bard and his very trembly voice in the video above demonstrates the style). However, once we reached this song...wow...

Orcs are complaining about going to war in this song. Orcs love war. My siblings and I found this pretty funny.

In this song Frodo falls asleep and dreams about how he wants the world to be, and what he dreams is that orcs turn good and become his friends. That was also kind of strange...

3: The Characters

For all you big Legolas fans out there, he never comes into the movie. Not once. He's never even mentioned. Neither is Gimli. Nobody has a British accent, either.

Want to get an idea of what the characters are like? This video shows different scenes of Sam and Frodo.

4: The Climax

Here, my friends, is the climax to The Return of the King:

So Gollum destroys the ring while doing a little jumpy dance before slipping and falling into a puddle of lava...okay?

5: General Mistakes

A lot of the words were pronounced wrong. They said "Sauron" like "Soren" and "Rohan" like "Ro-an". There were lots of small inconsistencies in the film, and at the end, Gandalf hints at hobbits one day turning into men, which I personally don't really think is okay.

I'm also a little confused, because apparently there's another animated LotR film that was coming out around the same time. I've watched clips of it, and though not even close to Peter Jackson standards, the characters seem to have actual character, they have British accents, and the animation is pretty good.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this movie. However, the other animated version looked pretty decent. I think I'll watch it, too...