Onyx
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Since I'm currently finishing up Return of the King, I've also revisited the animated films for the first time in nearly 40 years. I recalled much of their flavor, but rewatching them was a little surprising.
Bakshi's 1978 Lord of the Rings is essentially awful. The DVD I watched contains a Ralph Bakshi interview about how it would have been "impossible" to traditionally animate battles and such, but then you see something like Nausicaa (made just a few years later) or even Return of the King's battle sequences and you wonder just what sort of an animation expert he was. All of the actual animation was rotoscoped, so characters move in this overly 'realistic' way that makes the movements seem slower and less real than traditional animation. And then much of the film isn't actually animated, but "solarized" which makes real images look vaguely like they were painted in a monochrome. So bit characters look considerably more 3D than the main characters who were painted without contour shading.
The backgrounds themselves varied from standard animation backgrounds to monochrome splatters. Frequently, the backgrounds and what the characters are doing match poorly - like when the characters are running in an S shape but the background looks flat, leaving no reason for their curving path. Often the characters just wander for many seconds on screen, as if to 'run the meter', when nothing is really going on. "Special effects" from magic and such are also really basic and poor.
The actual character design is also pretty poor. Aragon, Gandolf, Boromir Gimli and Frodo are fine, but Legolas looks like a bunny and Samwise is animated as if he doesn't have knees and is incapable of running. Golem also just looks like the least imaginative version of that character, and the Orcs look like Sand People attending an outdoor concert with fangs made of paper glued to their masks.
The Bakshi film sticks more closely to the books in many details, but this also just seems like a lack of imagination on the part of the director.
In contrast, the 1980 Return of the King done by Rankin Bass is traditional and nicely done animation throughout. The backgrounds are gorgeously detailed watercolor paintings, and the characters are thoughtfully designed with many changeable details in their dress throughout the film (animated characters often always dress in the same outfit to better be able to reuse animation). Frodo and Sam wear hats, armor, less armor, cloaks, no cloaks, etc. Gollum is imaginatively realized as an aquatic creature with a beaky face and eyes bulging out the sides, rather than a simple starving hobbit. The orcs and Urukai have very contrasted looks that would only work in stylized animation. Mount Doom and the various castles are daunting and magical.
Because the Return of the King was not officially or stylistically the sequel to Bakshi's film, Rankin Bass designed the story to stand on its own as a continuation of their 1977 Hobbit, so it doesn't depict characters that were less pivotal in the third book, like Legolas and Gimli. Instead it focuses mainly on Frodo and Sam. Bilbo's birthday at the end of the book is used as an opening to tell the tale. And many small details are used in a different manner, like Galadriel's vial having different powers and a secret origin (according to Frodo).
One thing the film did especially well is visually depict both Frodo's torment and Sam's fantasy vision of keeping the ring for himself, which I thought was particularly powerful.
Overall, the alterations made don't change the main story, but reduce the amount of backstory required to follow the tale, eliminating painful exposition.
Roddy McDowell as Sam is excellent, as is Sam Houston as Gandalf is as well. Frodo and Bilbo (here and in the Hobbit) are voiced by Orson Bean, and he's sometimes a bit too 'on the nose' with his delivery, but the tenor of his voice is great for those characters.
I think the Return of the King brings some really nice perspective to the story, and is, in some ways, the most artistic adaptation of the various live and animated versions. (The Jackson films are great, but maybe a little too straight.) It is hard to believe that it is the product of TV movie production. The only way it really appears to be budget limited is a somewhat low frame rate - some scenes are a bit choppy. Some reviewers also didn't like the use of music and singing in the story, but I found most of it charming - particularly the orcs' "Where there's a whip, there's a way" marching song.
I would also say that the four young hobbits are depicted much more like real people in the Rankin Bass movie - with passion and anger at times, rather than happy-go-lucky fools having a "bogus adventure", as especially Merry and Pippin are shown in all other versions.
I'll never watch the Bakshi movie again. I don't get its fan following, and can only presume that some of it is for its campiness, and some for fans' allegiance to Bakshi from previous work. I could see watching Return of the King now and then, though. And I will likely get the 1977 Hobbit next to watch.
Of note, the actual animation for Hobbit and Return of the King was handled by Topcraft, the progenitor of Studio Ghibli, but also did the incredible Macross: Do You Remember the Love? and Nausicaa.
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