The Hobbit (1978) + The Return of the King (1980) – DVDs

THE HOBBIT
**/**** Image B- Sound C
screenplay by Romeo Muller,
based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Jules Bass & Arthur Rankin Jr.

THE RETURN OF THE KING
**½/**** Image B- Sound C
screenplay by Romeo Muller,
based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Jules Bass & Arthur Rankin Jr.

by Walter Chaw There are a couple of ways to tackle screen adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and its prequel, The Hobbit. One is to do as Ralph Bakshi did with his 1978 animation The Lord of the Rings and present a sexualized and disturbing vision of Middle Earth; the other is to make a film for children that omits the more troubling elements of Tolkien (the racism, homoeroticism, religiosity), as with Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.’s two feature-length television specials: The Hobbit (1978) and The Return of the King (1979).

Each approach is problematic: The former gives short shrift to the magic of the work, and the latter leaves off the complexity and immediacy; here’s hoping that Peter Jackson’s much-anticipated adaptation of Tolkien’s Rings Trilogy strikes a comfortable middle ground. If his Heavenly Creatures is any indication, Jackson is quite capable of marrying the fantastic and the disconcerting.

The Hobbit begins with the enlistment of diminutive homebody Bilbo Baggins (voiced by Orson Bean) by Gandalf the Wizard (John Huston) and a gaggle of little people to steal a treasure from a dragon named Smaug (Richard Boone). Along the way, the small band encounters a trio of flesh-eating trolls, endures an attack by Goblins, and encounters giant arboreal spiders. The highlight of the piece, and arguably the most memorable moment in all of Tolkien, comes in Bilbo’s battle of riddles with a twisted creature called Gollum (Brother Theodore), which ends in the discovery of The One Ring that gives title to Tolkien’s most beloved fiction.

The Return of the King takes over from there with an extended introduction that essentially summarizes the two middle books represented by Bakshi’s psychedelic animation. Covering the end of Tolkien’s trilogy as a fellowship of humans, elves, and dwarfs led by Gandalf and heroic hobbit Frodo Baggins (nephew of Bilbo, again voiced by Orson Bean), The Return of the King follows the desperate attempt to destroy The One Ring in the fires of Mt. Doom, nestled in the middle of the evil Sauron’s realm.

There is nothing overtly wrong with either The Hobbit or The Return of the King, yet neither is there much to distinguish them: the animation is passable if wilfully unremarkable; the voice acting is enthusiastic if uninspired (of chief disappointment is Huston’s flat Gandalf–of chief delight (in The Hobbit) is Otto Preminger’s Elvenking); and the decision to score and perform many of the songs from Tolkien’s novels fails to involve as completely as their printed counterparts. Clearly children’s films in that the plots have been simplified while many of the scarier moments have been sanitized as musical production numbers, Bass and Rankin Jr.’s companion pieces also reveal themselves as television movies through the following of numerous false climaxes with gaps to facilitate commercial interruption.

The “safeness” of the two films raises a complaint of mine regarding entertainment for kids. The best children’s stories are those which retain a certain darkness: The instinct to feed kids pabulum is one of the misguided instincts of our culture. Those wondering why the current generations don’t seem well equipped to handle life’s trials and disappointments and trials can look to the fearful product we’ve provided these past few decades for their consumption.

That said, The Hobbit and The Return of the King are reasonably entertaining as recapitulations of the source material–they serve as uncomplicated, banal introductions to the world of Middle Earth. While both could have benefited from higher aspirations, they have an agreeable and clockwork aptitude (dreary late-’70s bearded folksinger interludes not withstanding).

THE DVDs
Timed to capitalize on the renewed interest in Tolkien’s novels spurred by Jackson’s films and, in an ancillary way, by the popularity of Harry Potter, Warner DVD’s bare-bones releases of The Hobbit and The Return of the King are as undistinguished as the films in question. Their fullscreen video transfers are remarkably free of scratches and age artifacts; muted colours are most likely a result of the no-frills animation. The Dolby centre-channel mono soundtracks are fine. The shared extras of cast & crew lists, a brief bibliography of Tolkien’s work, and a short essay on hobbits round out the sparse DVDs.

• The Hobbit
  78 minutes; PG; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; Warner
• The Return of the King
  97 minutes; PG; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; Warner