The Rankin/Bass Hobbit is so damned great. I feel like the voice actors they got for Gollum, Gandalf, and Bilbo were absolutely wonderful. Gandalf in particular is great -- I feel like he is every bit as good as Ian McKellan. All of the songs are excellent and they mix the light-hearted nature of the book with a kind of melancholy and seriousness that you didn't really see in animation until Studio Ghibli really got rolling.
Decades later I was so delighted to see South Park do a brief but highly amusing tribute to The Hobbit in the form of Lemmywinks (and later Wikileaks).
Return of the King was such an odd bird. While it's nowhere near as good as The Hobbit, they did about the best they could considering they had to condense 3 books' worth of characters and exposition into a brief TV movie. They were doomed to fail, but if you look at it as a companion piece to the books rather than a straightforward adaption it is more satisfying. The songs and music are still great, and I think ROTK still gives you all the heart and emotion of the story without getting too mired in all the details.
Decades later I was so delighted to see South Park do a brief but highly amusing tribute to The Hobbit in the form of Lemmywinks (and later Wikileaks).
Return of the King was such an odd bird. While it's nowhere near as good as The Hobbit, they did about the best they could considering they had to condense 3 books' worth of characters and exposition into a brief TV movie. They were doomed to fail, but if you look at it as a companion piece to the books rather than a straightforward adaption it is more satisfying. The songs and music are still great, and I think ROTK still gives you all the heart and emotion of the story without getting too mired in all the details.