Hobbit, The (1977)
Hobbit, The (1977), produced and directed by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass.
I had never seen the Rankin/Bass made-for-TV animated Tolkien shows before because, judging by the posters, I figured they were silliness for young children.
They are a bit better than that. In this 1h17m Hobbit, we get all the major episodes (quickly, of course) except:
No Beorn
No Master of Laketown
No Arkenstone, meaning Bilbo does not get to be the peacemaker, a key part of the tale.
There are none of the loony extravagances of the Peter Jackson trilogy. In fact, it must be said, for all its problems, this covers the story better than Jackson.
Further, the illustrators have studied the text closely and put in many little bits readers will appreciate.
On the down side: the music is awful, particularly the folk-balladeering narration. The dwarves' "Over the Misty Mountains" isn't bad but everything else spoils the experience.
Worth noting:
Although shown here, neither the map of Middle-Earth nor the Shire had been invented yet; they are from The Lord of the Rings.
The trolls wear clothes.
Elrond has a halo of stars!
The Ring is "adorned".
Gollum is frog-like which matches the book, with those large lamp-like eyes.
We spend a very long time at the Riddle Game.
The wood-elves are a bit monstrous looking.
Smaug is an oddly cat-like dragon with fur on his back.
Back home, Gandalf prophesizes that the Ring will someday have great importance to a future generation of hobbits. This is not in the text.
