J.R.R. Tolkien Animated Films Set (The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings/The Return of the King)
by Arthur Rankin Jr., Jules Bass, Ralph Bakshi
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Actor: Brother Theodore, Christopher Guard, Cyril Ritchard, John Huston, Orson BeanDirector: Arthur Rankin Jr., Jules Bass, Ralph Bakshi
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Arthur Rankin Jr.
Writer: Chris Conkling
Writer: J.R.R. Tolkien
Writer: Peter S. Beagle
Writer: Romeo Muller
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Japanese (Subtitled); Georgian (Subtitled); Thai (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Animated, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 308 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-12-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of J.R.R. Tolkien Animated Films Set (The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings/The Return of the King)
DVD Review: Classic cartoon
Summary: 5 Stars
If you like the books, this is a great cartoon. I would recommend this as a way to get your 10 year old kid interested in reading the books.DVD Review: Have sound,will travel.
Summary: 1 Stars
After having watching these movies for over 25 yrs,i was SO happy to finally find them on dvd. I open up the "Hobbit" and what do i hear? A soundtrack thats different from the original vhs version! I wish i had read some of these reviews before i bought this. Lost sound effects and voice work,say it ain't so! The most note worthy of these is when bilbo and the dwarves are in mirkwood and have been caught by the spiders. Bilbo goes to free them and kills the spiders. But wait! No humming sounds from sting! No sound when the spiders die! No sound when bilbo hits the spiders! Now this might seem like a "minor" thing,but i've loved those sounds since i was a young lad,and to NOT have these sfx in the movie is like not drinking water! Needless to say after that i took it out and haven't watched it since. I'm not gonna even bother with the other two. Do yourself a favor,skip these abominations and either get em on vhs or find someone with dvd recorder or get one yourself,get those tapes and make your own copies! You have been warned! By the way, i only gave it a one star because you have to rate it,otherwise a big ol' ZERO!DVD Review: LOTR animated films
Summary: 3 Stars
The Hobbit is a great movie. Fellowship was very drawn out and boring. Still have yet to watch Return of the King; but I absolutely enjoy the animation of the HobbitDVD Review: A truly nifty combination
Summary: 4 Stars
This package of three titles brings together a Ralph Bakshi production with two by Rankin-Bass (who would have thought?).
'The Hobbit' and 'The Return of the King' are the R-B Productions, and in quality they evoke much of what endeared other R-B animation to TV viewers during the holidays. As one reviewer has already pointed out, the animators they use prove to be great stylists within a limited budget. I always thought R-B was trying to rival Disney at a fraction of the cost, and in retrospect they clearly had. Especially because Disney went into a down period with its animation (though the Black Cauldron from the same era as these is films is Disney animation at its most spectacular and unsaccharine). With the R-B films you get beautiful landscapes and backgrounds, nice voice characterizations, and some enjoyable music.
Bakshi's 'Lord of the Rings' is a sorely under-rated animated feature (and a rather long one for the genre). Watching this again decades after I had seen it in a shopping mall movie theatre, I was struck with something that couldn't possibly have occurred to me when I first saw the film. In terms of visualizing about the first half of Tolkien's trilogy, this film is obviously extremely influential on the later Jackson smash hit films. In some ways it almost seems like a storyboard come to animated life if you watch this film with the Jackson films in mind. It also struck me as more true to Tolkien's plot, characters and action in some respects.
The downsides include: (1) A musical score that sounds like a Sousa martial anthem (I guess that was the idea, since after all these books are quite 'martial'). (2) Sometimes flat voice characterizations. (3) Extensive use of a technique called 'rotoscoping' that actually makes this 'LOTR' look like a cartoon-colored live action film, especially the many battle and fight scenes where it looks like psychedelically red tinted live action photography. (3) Some characters and movements that look no better than what you would have seen on a Saturday morning cartoon of that era (Aragorn/Strider and Boromir are especially disappointing, though their voicing is fine).
Reviewers of that era often compared Bakshi's 'LOTR' unfavorablly with Rosen's 'Watership Down'. I think both in retrospect are successful in challenging the Disney near-monopoly on animated features for theatrical release. But it is important to remember that this was an era when animated features were overall not that popular, and audiences were being enthralled by science fiction laden with miniature effects, like 'Star Wars' and 'Battlestar Galactica' (on TV). Another factor affecting the Bakshi film's limited impact was that Tolkien's works were still largely of cult status, read and enjoyed only by people who liked SF and fantasy (and might not be that interested in film because SF and fantasy were almost always associated with lousy budgets and cheesy effects). Fantasy plots and creatures like 'LOTR' were still seen as silly by the mass of movie goers then; they hadn't read the books and were not going to go out of their way to see an animated film.
To conclude, this nifty package brings together an alternative set of films that let's you enjoy much of the content of the 'Hobbit' and the 'LOTR' trilogy in three animated features. The Rankin-Bass productions evoke much of the gentleness and human touches you find in their other productions. Bakshi's production is much more rough-edged and would appeal to those who like cult horror. I have no doubt there is a Bakshi-Jackson connection there, since Jackson showed himself to be a master of cult horror before he got to be a mainstream Hollywood director commanding huge budgets and large numbers of effects production teams.
I think another experiment for comparison and contrast would be to watch Bakshi's work with Disney's the 'Black Cauldron'. Bakshi had the rights to the literary masterpiece, but Disney had the budget and the animators to produce something much more lush and easy on the eye than Bakshi's film (though I think at the time much was made of how high the production costs of 'LOTR' were--perhaps too much of the money was blown on shooting the live action scenes that got rotoscoped).
DVD Review: JUST LOVE LORD OF THE RINGS IN ANY FORM..
Summary: 4 Stars
I already had this boxed set but I have a son-in-law that wanted it as he has all the movies and figurines. He is enjoying it very much
Description of J.R.R. Tolkien Animated Films Set (The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings/The Return of the King)
Animated versions of three Tolkien classics: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Return of the King.The Hobbit
The J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy classic set in Middle-earth was adapted into this excellent 1978 animated feature first broadcast on television. Codirectors Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr., working from a script by Romeo Muller, are faithful to Tolkien's story and for that alone they get big points. The vocal cast can't be improved upon: Orson Bean is perfect as Bilbo Baggins, the timorous hobbit who grows brave on his adventure with the wizard Gandalf (John Huston). Otto Preminger is the voice of Elvenking, Richard Boone is Smaug, Hans Conried is Thorin, and Brother Theodore is very effective as the weird Gollum. Terrific for kids and adults alike. --Tom Keogh
The Lord of the Rings
Although it was ultimately overshadowed by Peter Jackson's live-action Lord of the Rings trilogy, Ralph Bakshi's animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic is not without charms of its own. A target of derision from intolerant fans, this ambitious 1978 production is nevertheless a respectably loyal attempt to animate the first half of Tolkien's trilogy, beginning with the hobbit Frodo's inheritance of the One Ring of power from Bilbo Baggins, and ending with the wizard Gandalf's triumph over the evil army of Orcs. While the dialogue is literate and superbly voiced by a prestigious cast (including John Hurt as Aragorn), Leonard Roseman's accomplished score effectively matches the ominous atmosphere that Bakshi's animation creates and sustains. Bakshi's lamentable decision to combine traditional cel animation with "rotoscoped" (i.e., meticulously traced) live-action footage is jarringly distracting and aesthetically disastrous, but when judged by its narrative content, this Lord of the Rings deserves more credit than it typically receives. --Jeff Shannon
The Return of the King
The creative team behind 1978's impressive animation feature based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit returns with this 1980 entry drawn from Tolkien's famous Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's good work all around, and not at all the kind of feature-length cartoon that reduces good books to treacle. Orson Bean returns as the voice of Bilbo Baggins as well as that of the trilogy's hero, Frodo. John Huston is commanding again as the voice of the wizard Gandalf, and also in the vocal cast are William Conrad, Paul Frees, and Roddy McDowall. --Tom Keogh
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