There are a lot of different kinds of Tolkien fans. There are those who refuse to refer to the three novels — The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King — as separate books, arguing instead that those are merely installments in one very long book. There are people who love the Peter Jackson movie trilogy. There are people who hate Peter Jackson's Hobbit films. There are those who defend those films. Still other fans think the 1977 Hobbit was a masterpiece, while few fans continue to pine for that half-glimpse of a punk-rock aesthetic from Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated Lord of the Rings.
Among all these different breeds of Middle-earth heads though, the rarest kind is the fan who loves the 1980 animated version of The Return of the King with their whole Hobbit heart. Today, 45 years after this movie aired as a TV special, it remains a curiosity in the pantheon of Tolkien adaptations. And here’s the thing: Even though it's slightly hard to track down this version of The Return of the King, the various haters who have skewered the film for the past four decades are generally wrong. The 1980 Return of the King isn’t great, but it’s delightful and bizarre in a way that makes it essential viewing.
