April 03, 2023

49. Some Kind of Horrible Subpar D&D Fop Who Just Shows Up.

1 hour 21 minutes

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: the Rankin-Bass

adaptation of The Return of the King. When Rankin-Bass’s 1977 adaptation of

The Hobbit was shown on American network TV, the animation studio was already

well into planning a further effort adapting The Lord of the Rings in some

form as a sequel; the positive attention and ratings success of their Hobbit

doubtless made them think they were on the right track. But when Arthur Rankin

Jr. confessed in a 2003 interview that their version of The Return of the King

was “not a very good film,” that was an understatement to say the least. While

their Hobbit had flaws but was still a reasonably entertaining, focused

translation of the story into a particular medium heightened by striking

background work from their partners at the Japanese animation studio Topcraft,

the Rankin-Bass Return of the King, which aired in 1980 and which continued to

showcase work by Topcraft, was otherwise at best a muddled mess and at worst

just a flat out disaster, with scattered positive elements not offsetting the

series of baffling adaptation decisions that look even weirder following the

success of Peter Jackson’s version of the book. What makes the pacing of the

film so incredibly bizarre and frustrating, and how did the decision to tell

which parts of the story in greater detail compromise the wider scope as a

whole? How does the vocal casting and the respective performances end up

underselling the flow of the story as a whole? Are there any good parts to the

whole at all, and do they actually provide any upside to the end result? And

why, why, WHY in the world are there so many bad songs throughout – even if

there’s disagreement over whether “Where There’s a Whip” slaps or not?

Show Notes.

Jared’s

doodle – and

it really is all that is deserved.

Come join us in Portland for our live episode recording if you can!

April 22, 2023 is the date, we’ll be at

Passages Bookshop, and we’ll be there

with our fellow podcasts It’s Just a Show and

Game Show 1939!

News of more Rings of Power casting. Good luck, everyone.

Ciarán Hinds really is all

that. But as mentioned in a post-recording edit, Ned made a mistake and

muddled two There Will Be Blood scenes – the confrontation scene he talks

about is absolutely stunning for

sure, but the one where for the

first couple of minutes Hinds just very carefully watches, smokes and takes it

all in is the one nearer the beginning where Paul Sunday first sits down with

Daniel Plainview.

The UK National Archives

post on the newly discovered letters by

Tolkien.

The Rankin-Bass Return of the

King! It

sure did return.

Our earlier episode on the Rankin-Bass

Hobbit. A lot of information on

Rankin-Bass in general which also applies to this production is linked there,

so we won’t repeat it all here. (And since we do mention Bakshi’s film a

couple of times, here’s our episode on

that.)

Oh I think we all know about the Star Wars Holiday Special. But the

forthcoming documentary could be interesting.

The John Culhane New York Times piece from

1977 where Rankin’s quote about their plans for The Return of the

King comes from.

The 1980 LA Times piece by Charles Solomon mentioned is available to read via

Newspapers.com though only via a free trial; its first part can be found

here along with the awesome

Joan Jett photo.

If you really actually want to watch the Rankin-Bass Return of the King,

don’t say we didn’t want you.

Rick Goldschimdt’s interview with

Rankin; the quote about Return

of the King is towards the end of the clip.

The one-album vinyl

redaction of the movie from 1980.

Want a view of that Seattle Kraken tentacle?

Enjoy.

Oriana’s fine with the

orcs not being depicted

in a racist fashion, Jared likes the design of Minas

Tirith. We’ll take what we

can get.

The Last Homely

House

does look like it should be snow covered in the Swiss Alps or something.

Ah the minstrel. Yes. Yes

indeed.

Where there’s a whip! (But

yeah, some love or at least nuance for the orcs, we love to see it, as we

argued in our own episode about

them.)

Barad-dûr

is…odd.

Neuschwanstein

Castle, if you ever

want to check it out.

Sauron, though, that’s pretty interesting. And definitely not Mike

Wazowski.

Our Silver Call duology episode.

Still a very strange piece of work.

Bring on The War of the

Rohirrim!

crossed fingers

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By Jared Pechaček, Oriana Scwindt, and Ned Raggett

4.8

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