The Lord of the Rings is one of the most famous and beloved fantasy adventure tales in all fiction. The world and characters created by J.R.R. Tolkien have captured the hearts of every generation since they were first published. The first appearance of Middle-Earth on the page came in the form of The Hobbit, a shorter novel, which was published in 1937. The real meat of Tolkien’s Legendarium began to take shape with his three-part masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, which hit shelves almost 20 years later in the mid-1950s. Since then, there have been numerous adaptations of Tolkien’s material. The most well-known of these adaptations is the trilogy of live-action films directed by Peter Jackson in the early 2000s, which adapted the story of The Lord of the Rings to screen with immense respect and love for the source material. Currently, Prime Video is filming the second season of The Rings of Power, a streaming series that adapts the events of the Second Age of Middle-Earth, which are described in detail in the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings and in other books such as The Silmarillion and The Fall of Númenor.
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However, in an age long before Jackson began working on his live-action Lord of the Rings films, there were other adaptations that attempted to bring the world of Middle-Earth to life through animation. The most famous of these films was the version of The Lord of the Rings, which was directed by the experimental animator Ralph Bakshi. Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings was released in 1978, and it has received a fair amount of criticism over the years, but it also has die-hard fans that have embraced the director’s interpretation and presentation of Tolkien’s works. Despite the film’s notoriety, the story it was telling remains unfinished. It does not complete the story of The Lord of the Rings, instead ending with a note simply saying “As their gallant battle ended, so too ends the first great tale of The Lord of the Rings.” And that was it. Bakshi never made a second outing, leaving his work in Middle-Earth as an unfinished tale to be studied for decades to come. So what happened? Here’s what we know.
The Original Plan
United Artists
When Bakshi first began working on his animated The Lord of the Rings for United Artists, the idea was to make three films. Each would tell the story of one of the books published, with The Fellowship of the Ring being the first and The Two Towers the second, before ending with The Return of the King. Looking back now, this seems like the obvious move. However, it wasn’t as clear-cut during the ‘70s, when the films were being produced. Many producers and studio executives were scratching their heads as to what the films even were and why three of them were being produced. That, and the limited budget Bakshi was given, led to the decision to whittle the story down to just two parts. The first part would cover the story of The Fellowship of the Ring and most of The Two Towers, with the second finishing The Two Towers and jumping right into The Return of the King.
Production on Part One exhausted Bakshi, who was not too eager to jump right into Part Two immediately after finishing the first. Adding to his frustration was his discovery, a week before the movie was released, that the studio and advertising department had omitted “Part One” from the film’s title altogether. It was pitched to audiences solely as The Lord of the Rings, with no indication that it was only to be a portion of the story. The result of this was a lot of confusion and frustration from Tolkien fans and casual moviegoers alike. Audiences felt like they’d been cheated out of a full story, with many going on to bash the film for its misleading advertising.
What Actually Happened
On top of the frustration from viewers regarding the cliffhanger ending, the overall reaction to the film was not very positive. A lot of people were not fans of Bakshi’s approach to animation, which mixed traditional hand-drawn 2D animation with live-action segments that had been animated over through a process called rotoscoping. While Bakshi’s intent with this had been to create a vibrant and evolving visual presentation for Tolkien’s work, some viewers felt that rotoscoping was a cheap animation trick that stood out like a sore thumb from the rest of the film. As for the story, the condensing of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers into one film resulted in many sequences from the books being shortened or cut entirely. Fans of the novels were upset by this, as it removed a lot of the spirit of the story. For viewers who hadn’t read the books, the story unfolded at a rapid and hard-to-follow pace, which often resulted more in confusion than exhilaration.
Things weren’t all bad, though. There were also many people that genuinely enjoyed the film for its forward-thinking approach to animation and its mostly-faithful approach to adapting Tolkien’s sprawling epic. As for the box office, Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings was a hit. With a budget of less than $10 million, the film managed to gross over $30 million in North America. It certainly made its money back and turned a hefty profit for United Artists.
Despite his exhaustion after making the first movie, Bakshi intended to follow through with Part Two. Unfortunately, development on the second part quickly stalled for a variety of reasons. One of which was the intense backlash from die-hard fans of the series who were rejecting Bakshi’s adaptation of Tolkien’s work. One of the more crucial reasons was a lawsuit that was underway against the animation studio Rankin/Bass, which was also developing a made-for-TV adaptation of The Return of the King at the same time. Gradually, time continued to pass without any real development of The Lord of the Rings: Part Two. Bakshi moved on to other projects, leaving the door open for anyone who wanted to come on board and finish the story. Unfortunately, that never happened. Bakshi has talked a bit over the years about his openness to returning for Part Two if Warner Bros. has any interest in it, but nothing has ever come of that.
The Rankin/Bass Return of the King
Warner Bros. Television Distribution
Though Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings never received a sequel and was left open-ended, it has retroactively been considered to be part of a larger animated trilogy of sorts. The other two entries in this animated Tolkien trilogy consist of the two made-for-TV specials by Rankin/Bass. Prior to the release of Bakshi’s film, the studio had already aired its 90-minute adaptation of The Hobbit in 1977. Afterward, they claimed that their production of The Return of the King had nothing to do with Bakshi’s telling of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. They said they’d always intended to make The Return of the King, as they believed the story could be adjusted to serve as a direct sequel to their version of The Hobbit. After the extensive lawsuit over their production of the final book of The Lord of the Rings, to which the Tolkien Estate claimed they did not have the rights, the special eventually aired in 1980.
As such, the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit, Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings and the Rankin/Bass adaptation of The Return of the King are often grouped together. Though this is likely to the dismay of Bakshi, who was openly critical of the TV specials of The Hobbit and The Return of the King. At one point, the director even went as far as stating “Anyone who saw [the Rankin/Bass] version of The Hobbit knows it has nothing to do with the quality and style of our feature. My life isn’t going to be altered by what Rankin/Bass chooses to do badly.” Regardless, and unfortunately, the TV special of The Return of the King is the closest fans are ever going to get to seeing a sequel to Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings. Which is to say, not very close.
