Pop-Cultured Catholic #22: One Scene Included in Rankin/Bass’ “The Return of the King” That I Would Have Also Liked in Jackson’s Version

For this week, I am going to finally focus on an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. It is a long time coming, seeing how Tolkien is both an acclaimed Catholic thinker and a major contributor to pop-culture, through his Middle-earth stories that pioneered new standards for modern fantasy. And today, I am going to focus on one scene he wrote and how a more obscure adaptation brought it to life.

Decades before Peter Jackson’s live-action Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories were first adapted to film thrice in animated form, by the Rankin/Bass production company and Ralph Bakshi. It began with Rankin/Bass’ adaptation of “The Hobbit” in 1977, followed by Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 film adapting “The Fellowship of the Ring” and parts of “The Two Towers”, and then Rankin/Bass’ 1980 adaptation of “The Return of the King”. To first sum up the common consensus of Bakshi’s film, it is an imperfect but still respectable first attempt at adapting TLotR, which reportedly inspired Peter Jackson to make the live-action trilogy. I will even include a link to side-by-side comparisons. As for Rankin/Bass’ “The Hobbit”, I feel similarly and perceive it to have many opposite strengths and weaknesses compared to Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. For example, the Rankin/Bass version drastically trims down or entirely cuts out a few iconic scenes, characters, and subplots from the The Hobbit book. Meanwhile, the Jackson trilogy has so much content that many felt it got bloated at times, with the third movie in particular having arguably a lot of filler. Besides that, one’s mileage will vary between whether they prefer a more straight adaptation of the Hobbit book, or a LotR prequel trilogy which draws its main source material from the events of “The Hobbit”. If one prefers the former, then I think the Rankin/Bass version better captures that feel, with its more whimsical tone, art style evoking a children’s storybook, and use of musical numbers mostly pulled straight from the book.

Regarding the Rankin/Bass duology, “The Return of the King” was a significantly more flawed end product than “The Hobbit”, in my opinion. The Rankin/Bass movies go straight from “The Hobbit” to “The Return of the King”, skipping over “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “The Two Towers” entirely. Therefore, the viewer is starting on the final chapter, without having the Rankin/Bass versions of the Fellowship characters set up first. Ralph Bakshi’s LotR was made right before this, but that is unrelated to the Rankin/Bass films and there are still some events of “The Two Towers”, which Bakshi did not get to and Rankin/Bass skips over. Besides that, the Rankin/Bass film only has a 98-minute runtime to adapt the whole third book. And even with its short runtime, I feel the film does not make good use of its exposition and choice of scenes to deliver a fleshed-out and well-paced narrative. When I once watched it at my uncle’s house, I remember my mom stating that she would have had trouble following it, if she had not seen the Jackson trilogy. Also, while Jackson‘s RotK arguably makes more changes from Tolkien’s book, for better or worse, the Rankin/Bass version botches a few major parts. For example, I recall Aragorn only marching on the Black Gate after Frodo and Sam have already reached Mount Doom, robbing the former of its story purpose and dramatic weight. Not to mention that everyone has mocked how the Witch-king of Angmar's otherwise intimidating presence is ruined by his voice sounding cheesily like Skeletor, Starscream, or Cobra Commander. That is jarring compared to how Rankin/Bass’ previous Hobbit film makes great use of Richard Boone’s voice for Smaug the dragon. I once even did my own fan-edit trying to make the Witch-king far more menacing by swapping his voice with that of the Horned King in Disney's "The Black Cauldron". There are some good parts, though, like the moody and atmospheric background art, the portrayals of certain other characters like Samwise Gamgee, a couple nice sentimental moments, various parts faithfully recreated from the book, and certain scenes entertainingly growing on me like the orcs’ “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way” musical number. Yet, there is one more positive aspect I want to focus on in this post.

Despite its faults, Rankin/Bass’ “The Return of the King” does have one unique part I really gravitated towards, its portrayal of the book’s scene where Samwise Gamgee is tempted by the One Ring. It takes place after the unconscious Frodo Baggins is found by orcs in the mountain pass of Cirith Ungol and taken to their tower. Meanwhile, his loyal companion Samwise follows behind and plans to rescue him. However, Sam is stalled by temptation, for he has taken the One Ring from Frodo’s person, having initially feared that Frodo was dead. In his brief time experiencing the burden of ring-bearer, the cursed ring attempts to brainwash him.

I have my copy of “The Return of the King” book with me, and here is how Tolkien describes the following scene. “Already the ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be. In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.”

The Rankin/Bass film not only portrays this part faithfully, but also makes for an entertaining spectacle and adds its own complementary details, yielding an unexpected gem of a scene in my opinion. Besides incorporating all of the book’s details, regarding both Sam’s vision and the afterwards reveal of how he overcame the temptation, I think it does a good job with the animation and especially the score. The music achieves this perfect balance between sounding majestic and triumphant on the surface, suiting Sam’s fantasy, while also having this sense of madness and danger growing underneath until it erupts and crescendos. Right after Sam beholds “The gardens of my delight!”, he then declares in a megalomaniacal tone, “So shall I transform the world!”. The dream sequence closes on a newly added detail, where he forcibly transforms all the orcs into various animals for them to populate his new gardens. “All could be mine… if I but claim thee, Ring!”.

Whether such thought was put into it or not, I say the Rankin/Bass scene’s added details tie it even more closely into Tolkien’s themes and lore, regarding the Dark Lord Sauron’s former master, Morgoth. I have still not yet read my copy of Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion”. But I have heard that Middle-earth’s backstory involves Melkor, one of the angelic Valar who rebels against Eru (God), tries to sing by his own disharmonious tune, and renames himself to Morgoth. Sauron is originally one of Morgoth’s servants before becoming the last dark lord in Middle-earth. A common theme in Tolkien’s work is how Morgoth could not create his own evil beings from nothing, but merely take already-existing creatures made by Eru and corrupt them into twisted mockeries, like the orcs being a parody of the elves. This is often cited as an example of Tolkien inserting his Catholic worldview, that evil can only exist as a privation, distortion, hollow counterfeit, or misuse of the good things God has made. Whether intentional or not, it seems the Rankin/Bass portrayal of Sam is not only being tempted with glory, victory, and a majestic garden like his book counterpart, but also the opportunity to emulate Morgoth... or the temptation promised by the devil to Adam and Eve. In the dream, he vows to transform the world to his liking and further twists the orcs into creatures they were never meant to be. As many YouTube commenters have pointed out, this clashes with a moment during the “Leave Tomorrow Till It Comes” music number, where Rankin/Bass’ portrayal of Frodo fantasizes about a world where even the orcs are redeemed and on friendly terms with them.

Also, the way some people have reacted to that imagery of a corrupted Samwise Gamgee reminds me of Tolkien’s thought experiment, where he answered what would happen if Gandalf had claimed the One Ring and allowed it to corrupt him. “Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained ‘righteous’, but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for ‘good’, and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great). [In the margin] Thus while Sauron multiplied [illegible word] evil, he left ‘good’ clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil”. Reading what Tolkien reportedly wrote about the subject reminds me of one arguable reason why Jesus in the Gospels was often the harshest towards individuals among the Jewish high priests. Other sinners’ actions at least would not muddle the difference between virtue and vice so much or twist what it means to be a righteous and Godly man. Also, I remember people like my mom and various religious speakers saying that, if the devil cannot tempt you to deliberately embrace evil, then he will try to take one of your noble qualities or good intentions, then misdirect them towards a detrimental end.

In Jackson’s version of “The Return of the King”, the closest we get to that is the scene where Sam hesitates to give Frodo back the Ring, and I would have liked to have seen more of that recreated, even if it is not necessarily as grandiose. For example, as the sound of Elijah Wood’s Frodo requesting the Ring becomes muffled and foreboding music plays, Sean Astin’s Sam could be shown hearing chants for “Samwise the Strong” in his head. Then, there could be brief flashes of imagery, like the visions Frodo has when he looks into Galadriel’s Mirror. They first show an orc-infested Mordor, then the armies of orcs all painfully turning to wood, as Sam raises a flaming sword before them. Next, roots, branches, and flowers sprout from the wooden orcs, and the dark clouds are dispersed by a surreally colorful aura. Mordor now looks like an enchanted meadow with Sam in the middle of it all, wearing the One Ring. But the coloring and wildlife look subtly unnatural and off-putting, like a scene out of 2018’s sci-fi cosmic horror film, “Annihilation”. We finally see Sam’s face looking around in the vision and realizing something is wrong, right before the real Sam moves the Ring towards Frodo, who snatches it away. As the two later walk into Mordor, Sam could mention that the Ring tempted him with a garden, but it would have been too big for him to tend with his own hands anyway.

I wanted to share my thoughts on this one part of the Rankin/Bass film, which I felt warranted a great deal of appreciation, even amidst the rest of the movie’s flaws. And now here are some supplementary links to the clips and quotations…

1.) Rankin/Bass' Samwise the Strong Scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PE-5ETUtW4

2.) Rankin/Bass' "Leave Tomorrow Till It Comes" Scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_274z9AO6Q8

3.) Quote in Tolkien's Letters About a Ring-Corrupted Gandalf Cited By Humphrey Carpenter:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9762789-gandalf-as-ring-lord-would-have-been-far-worse-than-sauron

4.) Peter Jackson's Closest Equivalent to Sam's Temptation Scene:
https://youtu.be/qQZKLIexcVk?t=128

5.) "The Lord of the Rings Side-by-Side: Ralph Bakshi ('78)/Peter Jackson ('01-'03)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t7KSarpfFM