YMMV / The Return of the King

Rankin-Bass Adaptation

• Anvilicious: In case you miss the deeper meaning in any particular part of the movie, there's usually a song to explain it to you. Or two. Or three. See the page quote for a good example.
• Ass Pull: Éowyn, due to the compression and Rankin-Bass barely touching anything from the first two books. She appears out of nowhere with no prior set up to bump off the Witch-King and then vanishes completely with only a brief appearance at the end. More glaring since they took the time to explain Gollum.
• Awesome Music: The entire soundtrack, as performed by Glenn Yarbrough, and written by Jules Bass & Maury Laws.
• Broken Base:
  • Similar to the Ralph Bakshi film, either you'll hate this film and/or watch it to snark at it, or you will be intrigued by and at least appreciative of what Rankin-Bass made.
  • Whether the Rankin-Bass versions (including The Hobbit) are better than Bakshi's, regarding the different run-times, art styles and adaptation approaches.
• Cant Unhear It: Carried over from The Hobbit:
  • Orson Bean as Frodo and Bilbo
  • John Huston as Gandalf
  • Brother Theodore as Gollum
• Character Rerailment: After the Ralph Bakshi movie wrote him as a dimwitted, whiny coward who hardly pays any attention to Frodo, Samwise in this movie is closer to his more badass, loyal, and heroic self from the books.
• Complete Monster: The Lord of the Nazgûl, Sauron's right-hand, is a supernatural phantom leading Sauron's armies on the field to overrun Middle-earth. Overseeing the attempted slaughter of countless innocents, the Nazgûl Lord personally leads the charge to Minas Tirith and the collapse of the gates to have everyone within killed, before personally confronting Gandalf and causing the death of King Théoden.
• Cult Classic: In spite of being not as popular as its predecessor or the more successive adaptation that would come years later, this film has its fans due to the Narm Charm and its slightly Darker and Edgier tone.
• Designated Hero: Aragorn, again due to the compression. Apparently he was just off doing his own thing with nothing to do with the rest of the heroes until he arrives with his army at the Siege of Gondor. But here the Orcs are already in full retreat after the Witch-king's death, making it less like The Cavalry and more like mopping-up. Even afterwards, there's nothing to indicate he was ever part of a Fellowship with them. He's rude to Gandalf, sneering at him while taunting him over his reluctance to march on Mordor, a move motivated not to buy time for Frodo but because he thinks they have Sauron on the run. And despite barely doing anything to help, almost getting his army killed and being a rude prick, he's still celebrated as the savior at the end without ever acknowledging or even noticing Frodo and the hobbits. Very different from the more heroic Peter Jackson version, let alone the one from the books, to be sure.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  Aragorn: Why so glum, wizard?
  And the very un-Tolkienesque line:
  Pippin (about Denethor): He's gone loony I tell you!:
  • The orcs' Villain Song "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way" features the lyrics "We don't want to go to war today, but the lord of the lash says nay, nay, nay!" Thirty-five years later, the rapper Silentó gave us the hit single "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)."
  • In the "Sauron's defeat" scene, Aragorn tells Gandalf that they're doomed, because the earthquake destroying the area can't tell good from evil. In this film, the good guys are only saved by the arrival of the Eagles. When Peter Jackson redoes the scene in his own film, the earthquake that destroys Barad-Dûr crumbles most of the ground out from under the villains' feet before stopping just short of the heroes' army.
• Ho Yay: Samwise somehow manages to have this with the One Ring, of all things. "YOU! Ooo, I can feel you throbbing with anticipation!"
• Jerkass Woobie: The orcs in the "Where there's a whip there's a way" song, who are villains but are repeatedly whipped by the lord of the lash and forced to march into war even though they don't want to.
• Narm:
  • The scene where Gollum bites off Frodo's finger, which is hilariously narrated by choir: "Frodooooo, of the niiiiine fingers, where is the Ring of Dooooooooom?"
  • The Mouth of Sauron scene is arguably more accurate to the book than the live-action film, but Aragorn's delivery is often considered unintentionally funny due to Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable.
    Mouth of Sauron: Is there anyone in this rout with authority to treat with me? Not thou, Aragorn! It needs more to make a king than a rabble such as this!
    Aragorn: We shall seee.
  • It's also hard to take the Witch-King seriously due to his bizarrely high-pitched, distorted voice, which has been compared to Starscream, Skeletor, and Mr. Slate from The Flintstones. Watch here. It's even worse if you saw The Hobbit since John Stephenson is doing the same voice he had as Dori. You half expect him to go "Bilbo!"
• Narm Charm:
  • "BEHOLD! THE GARDENS OF MY DELIGHT!" Aww... Dark Lord Samwise is so cute. Samwise's blackest desires of despotic tyranny involve turning the Plains of Gorgoroth into a lush garden paradise and Sauron's army of orcs into raccoons and tropical birds. Hardly the stuff to crush Middle Earth beneath his Hobbit-sized heel... which is the point - Samwise very much isn't Dark Lord material, and that's a major reason why he can resist the Ring's temptations.
  • Where There's a Whip, There's a Way. It's so hilariously catchy, it's hard not to enjoy it.
  • The friendly orcs during the dream sequence. Silly? Yes, but very endearing. The silliness is mostly justified, as it's Frodo's fantasy of the two sides being at peace.
  • The songs. For some, out of place, and overly folksy. On the other hand, they are still quite catchy and their messages and delivery may also tug at a few heartstrings.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The battering ram, Grond, looks like a wolf instead of a mechanical dragon, and actually seems to be alive as seen with its red saliva^note Entirely appropriate, as the battering ram is named after Morgoth's warhammer.
  • The Witch-King's voice. Imagine watching this scene without any prior knowledge about how Skeletor sounds. A harsh, mechanical grate grinding out in conjunction with a manic, high-pitched squeaky voice. The overall effect somewhere between Darth Vader and Judge Doom. Then again, if the viewer is familiar with Skeletor, the scene can become downright hilarious.
  • There is also Samwise's fantasy with the ring that grows more intense and twisted by the second until he comes within a hairsbreadth of donning and being consumed by the Ring.
  • The Eye of Sauron, unlike the film version that portrays it as an unambiguously fiery reptilian slit eye, it's very subtle. It's portrayed as a reddish-orange sun like object with subtle outward expanding ripples covered in an aura of flames, which on closer inspection resembles a rippling, hyper-realistic eye of something incomprehensible entity. It even stares at you on the cover of the CED videodisc release!
  • Sauron himself in this adaptation compared to the Ralph Bakshi and especially Peter Jackson films, is given no information of his background or form. It just states he's the Big Bad, which makes his Unseen Evil aspect all the more terrifying due to the lack of information about him in this adaptation.
  • The Watchers of Cirith Ungol are unsettling vulture-like statues. Introduced with a Scare Chord, the way they silently follow Sam with their eyes builds the tension of their scene, and right when the viewer thinks Sam is safely past them, they unleash a terrifying scream.
• One-Scene Wonder: William Conrad as Denethor, who gives one of the best speeches in the film as he goes "loony."
• Questionable Casting:
  • Roddy McDowall as Samwise Gamgee!? Roddy was a fine character actor but he played Samwise with his usual posh voice instead of a more working-class accent one would accept from a humble gardener.
  • Casey Kasem as Meriadoc Brandybuck, not really for his performance but rather for his really recognizable voice as it's impossible to unhear Shaggy.
  • John Stephenson as the Witch-King of Angmar...using the same voice he did for Dori in The Hobbit. Difficult to take him seriously when he sounds like a dwarf.
• Sequelitis: Generally considered to be not as good as The Hobbit, which was a decent Adaptation Distillation of a much shorter book, while this comes off more as a Compressed Adaptation of one of three longer books, the first two not even completely covered by the earlier Bakshi film. Also the original folk-y songs fit The Hobbit better since it was a children's book to begin with, while this was based on a more complex and epic work.
• Ugly Cute:
  • The peaceful orcs in the "Leave Tomorrow till it Comes" sequence. One of them even smiles and waves to Sam and Frodo.
  • Heck, the orcs during the "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way" song. Rather than being the remorseless monsters we typically see them as, they look more fearful and unsure, and the song makes it clear that they don't want to fight but are being forced to by their masters.

The video game

• No Problem with Licensed Games: The Electronic Arts videogame is based on the live-action film, which had been released shortly after. It was received with much praise as an Even Better Sequel to the one for The Two Towers: the levels are huge, the paths are not linear, the characters have some limited interaction with the scenery, there are no glaring bugs, the expanded story fits perfectly well with the plot and style of the original material, etc.

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