"The Hobbit" cartoon: what's wrong with it?

[Editor's Note: this was originally published in 2005 before I even got started on the LOTR project. I thought that since I was in the midst of blogging The Hobbit - From Book To Script in anticipation of the coming Peter Jackson films that I would move this to the newest section]

I mentioned in my last post that I was not thrilled with the Rankin/Bass one-hour cartoon version of "The Hobbit". This was not always the case.

When I was about ten years old this was my only exposure to Tolkien. It was cheesy, yes. The animation was crap, agreed. But what else was there? In fact, up until Peter Jackson's films, the template for Gandalf that was seared onto my brain was John Huston's voice and the badly animated wizard that appeared in this film.

A couple of years later, an illustrated version of the book - it was probably Houghlin-Mifflin - was published and I bought it. The pictures were taken right from this awful version. But it helped me visualize the world of Middle-Earth and better appreciate the story.

But looking back, I have many criticisms. First and foremost, are the elves. These buggers look like pixies from the worst fairy tales you've ever seen and King Thranduil was voiced by Otto Preminger. Seeing the king of the wood-elves and hearing a bad German accent does not jibe with anything Tolkien had intended in writing this story.

Then there was the strange sight of goblins singing show-tunes as they dragged their drawf prisoners down under the Misty Mountains (and later under the trees with the wargs). Ugh.

I must admit, I refer to the tunes in this movie when I come to the poetry in the book. "O Tra-la-la-lally, down here in the valley" and "Far over the Misty Mountains cold..." and all that. It comes in handy as I read it to my son. But even a nine-year old can tell when the melodies are almost identical from song to song.

But perhaps the worst image that stuck in my mind and screwed up my imagination reading the book is the way they presented Gollum. Gollum (aka Smeagol) was supposed to have been a Hobbit once. But they present him as this slimy little frog-man that is more annoying than anything else. Voiced by some German weirdo named Brother Theodore, Gollum seemed as inhuman as he could possibly be portrayed. It was this presentation of the character that undermined by appreciation of the story arc of Gollum presented in "The Lord of the Rings". I mean, I couldn't understand why Bilbo didn't just beat the snot out of this little wretch. After all he was only a frog-thing.

Back to Gandalf for a moment. I always thought that John Huston's voice was the end-all be-all of the Tolkien's wizard. Of all the character portrayals of the Jackson films, Gandalf was the one I was most skeptical about. But happily I can say that Ian McKellan's Gandalf is absolutely THE standard by which any performance has to be judged. If they ever film "The Hobbit", they must use McKellan as the old wizard or the whole project will fall apart.

Anyway, I suppose if you've read the books and seen the movies, watching this version isn't all that bad. But I'm doing my damnedest to keep this version away from my kids until they have seen the Jackson version. Although it's tough, my goal is to hold off each of my sons until they're at least twelve. Any sooner might just fill their heads with enough terrible images to give them nightmares for years to come.

UPDATE: After five years I finally decided to get around to working on the Hobbit, which started with this post