The Return of the King (animation)



"It's so easy not to try Let the world go drifting by If you never say hello You won't have to say goodbye Its so easy not to try Never stay around to cry Move along when troubles come Like a mindless butterfly For what good is it to love When the loving always ends Travel on the road that's straight Not the one with hills and bends Its so easy not to try Let the world go drifting by If you never say hello You won't have to say goodbye"

The Rankin Bass adaptation of the third The Lord of the Rings book, this is a follow up both to their adaptation of The Hobbit and the Ralph Bakshi adaptation of the first three Books (or one-and-a-half volumes).

"Minstrel: Why does he have nine fingers? Minstrel: Where is the ring of doom?"
 * Exclusively Evil: Averted. The cartoon goes where even the books didn't and actually humanizes the orcs to a degree. The song, "Where There's A Whip, There's A Way" basically says that they fight because they're being made to, not because they want to. This suggests that only the higher-ranking orc officers are truly malicious and evil.
 * Animated Adaptation
 * Animesque: Virtually all the animators and one of the two character designers were Japanese, so this may actually be more half-Anime than pseudo-Anime Animesque.
 * Badass: Samwise, so much. And he manages it without losing anything of himself in the development.
 * Behind the Black: Hilariously, no one notices the Minstrel of Gondor until Gandalf introduces him. Apparently he was just standing there silently during the entire party waiting for a cue.
 * Big Damn Heroes: Couple of instances, most notable being when the Rohan army arrives, naturally, at the single most dramatically appropriate moment to save the day. Aragorn's arrival is actually more badass in this version, since it looks like he routes the evil army just by showing up.
 * Big No: By Sam, a couple of times. In fact, maybe only by Sam. Nearly every other character says "Nay" rather than "No".
 * Broad Strokes: The dialogue is surprisingly accurate, though.
 * Camp: (cue disco beat) Where there's a whip * WHIPCRACK* there's a way. Where there's a whip * WHIPCRACK* there's a way.
 * Canon Foreigner: The "Minstrel of Gondor".
 * While I don't know about the animated figure so it might be different, but the original does have a minstrel singing about Frodo's journey at the Field of Cormallen.
 * Continuity Lock Out: You had better know the basic story and major characters, or this makes no damn sense.
 * Covers Always Lie: The DVD cover only seems to vaguely represent the film's contents, if it indeed represents them at all. It features two generic chubby hobbits, neither of which look quite like Samwise or Merry, let alone Frodo or Pippin. They are riding on a horse, despite the fact that there is no scene featuring hobbits riding horses (only significantly smaller ponies). Also prominently featured are two dwarves who do not appear in the film at all, and do not clearly resemble any of the dwarves who appeared in The Hobbit either (although one looks vaguely like Thorin). In the background are two vaguely-portrayed palace-like structures -- one light and one dark -- that do not clearly resemble Minas Tirith, Cirith Ungol, Barad Dûr or the Black Gate which appear in the film. All in all, the cover looks like it was drawn by someone who really hasn't seen the film or read the books at all but merely slapped something random together with short people, dwarves, knights, castles and a dragon, which makes you wonder if the powers that be who signed off on this DVD release simply didn't care.
 * Demoted to Extra: Legolas and Gimli do appear very briefly in a few scenes one being in Aragon's flashback, a few shots during the battle scenes, and can be seen during the parade, neither of them have any lines. For that matter, Aragorn has less than a dozen spoken lines either, and he's the title character.
 * Disneyfication
 * The Dragon: The Witch King.
 * Everythings Funkier With Disco: Orcs groove out to the funky bass riffs of Where There's A Whip There's a Way. Lampshaded: "I can't! I can't continue!" -- "I'd rather be singin' a good old hobbit song myself..."
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: This has Roddy McDowall ("Oi! Blimey Mistah Freodo!") as Samwise, Casey Kasem (Shaggy Rogers) as Pippin, Orson Bean as Frodo & Bilbo, folk singer Glenn Yarbrough as The Minstrel of Gondor, and Don Messick (Papa Smurf) as King Theoden.
 * Not to mention that Gandalf is John Huston (the Lawgiver, as well as a very good director), and Denethor is William Conrad of Cannon, Jake And The Fatman, and refrigerator alarm fame.
 * The Final Temptation: Sam is tempted to claim the ring, lead an army to claim the Dark Tower for his own, and turn Mordor into a vast garden paradise. "Hail, Samwise The Strong! the sun shines for thee alone!"
 * Frodo's confrontation in the Cracks of Doom is drawn out, stretching and deforming the timeline quite a bit, since he apparently claims the ring and wanders around Mount Doom for quite awhile while the story proceeds. Oddly, it's portrayed as a disaster if Sam should put on the ring in sight of Mount Doom (as in the book) but Frodo can do so and all that happens is the quest gets derailed with Sam wandering around the inside of the volcano looking for him!
 * "BEHOLD! THE GARDENS OF MY DELIGHT!!" Aww... Dark Lord Samwise is so cute.
 * For Doom the Bell Tolls: The Cracks of Doom
 * How We Got Here: To Bilbo's birthday party? And how did Frodo lose a finger?


 * Made for TV Movie
 * Man Hug
 * Notable Original Music:
 * A very warbly How We Got Here song, "Frodo of the Nine Fingers", sets up the film as a Whole-Episode Flashback sung by the "Minstrel of Gondor".
 * A bittersweet Lyrical Dissonance ballad, "It's So Easy Not to Try", whose music is actually a rearranged version of "Roads" from The Hobbit animation that came before. The Return of the King animation gives it some additional new lyrics, ups its Tear Jerker effect, and makes the song the film's main and closing theme. It's the only song that features in both animated films, but becomes more notable in the latter.
 * An "I Want" Song, "Less Can Be More".
 * As the title implies, he doesn't want all that much. He actually wants this and not the One Ring.
 * A Villain Song, "Towers of the Teeth".
 * The aforementioned Marching Song, "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way".
 * Our Orcs Are Different: Than the Goblins in The Hobbit, a case of Art Shift.
 * A few of the old-style goblins are mixed in, suggesting this is simply a more diverse force.
 * Paper-Thin Disguise: Sam and Frodo are half the size of orcs, have radically different skin tones, hair tones, and facial structures, lack horns, fangs, and cat-like eyes, and have their hairy hobbit feet plainly visible, but I guess if they're wearing orc armor it's convincing enough for the slavedriver.
 * Given how varied the real orcs are in this version, he probably just thinks they're scrawny.
 * Second Hand Storytelling: All action taken from The Return of the King is described as a series of Flashbacks.
 * Silence, You Fool: Aragorn, when he and his army arrive at the gates of Gondor.
 * Talking to Himself: Orson Bean as both Frodo and Bilbo, also the scene where the orc commander argues with the captain of the Rangers both voiced by Don Messick.
 * What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Sam turns an instance of anti-orc discrimination to his own purposes.
 * Whip It Good/A Taste of the Lash: see above.
 * Whole-Episode Flashback
 * Wingding Eyes: Frodo's animesque eyes (even larger than Elijah Wood's) go from Chibi to Nightmare Fuel when he wields the Power of The Ring, causing him to appear tall and brightly lit, Saiyan-style, and the pupils of his eyes become flames! This is a slight exaggeration from the book, where Frodo does indeed appear to grow into a powerful figure (like Galadriel and Gandalf in the live action films) when asserting control over Gollum.
 * The X of Y