Farm Accident Digest
Site HomeMay 24th, 2004
So tomorrow is the release of the theatrical version of The Return of the King on DVD and other lesser forms. I wonder how many places around the country are letting the hobbit-feets camp out for midnight purchases.Since this was my least favorite of the three, I think I'll be holding out for the fancy-lad version this fall. Sure, I'll rent this version at least once between then and now -- it's not that I dislike it -- but I'm hoping the fancy-lad version fixes some of my problems. Though I know it can't fix the biggest problem: that horrid score that makes bombast blush. With my luck it'll just be another 45 minutes of man-weeping only to discover at the end that George Lucas snuck in and added Hayden Christiansen swooping through the air to catch the ring at the last second. Plus special features disc 3: Sean and Elijah's Accents for Acting. I'd still buy it, though. There are few things more distressing than an incomplete collection.
This was all brought up because last night, in attempted exploitation of the nearness of the release, Cartoon Network aired Ralph Bakshi's genius 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings. You can have your fancy, realistic graphics or your big budgets or your awful British-y accents, but for my money, if it ain't rotoscoped, it's crap! The best part about this version is how obvious it is that they ran out of money. Big fighting, then suddenly it's over. Well, that moment and the one where one of the characters spends a couple minutes yelling, "Gandalf!" like Stanley after Stella.
Posted By michele on May 24th, 2004 at 8:00am It's a relief to know I'm not the only one who thought the last film was the weakest of the three. I'm also holding out for the fancy-lad version in hopes that it'll fix what's wrong with the third film the way the extended bits did with the second. Posted By Kerry on May 24th, 2004 at 11:51am The weeping, the calf-eyed looks... they could be toned down a bit. Posted By david on May 24th, 2004 at 1:16pm They hacked the hell out of it in the editing room. I sure hope the chopped bits (I envision them writhing on the floor of the studio like the Gate-monster's tentacles) are put back in the extended version. Posted By Andrea Harris on May 24th, 2004 at 7:22pm
I saw the cartoon at the Ziegfeld theater in New York City. We were kind of stoned, walking around the city, waiting for the Genesis concert that evening. We were all big LoTR geeks and we passed the theater, saw the sign and had to go in even though we knew it would suck.
We left the theater vowing to each other that one day we would make the greatest live action version of LoTR.
Oh, well.
And if Jackson decides in twenty years or so that he wants to Lucasize the trilogy, he could go back and take out some of the weeping hobbitry. That wouldn't hurt my feelings much.