Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: the Rankin-Bass adaptation of The Return of the King. When Rankin-Bass’s 1977 adaptation of The Hobbit was shown on American network TV, the animation studio was already well into planning a further effort adapting The Lord of the Rings in some form as a sequel; the positive attention and ratings success of their Hobbit doubtless made them think they were on the right track. But when Arthur Rankin Jr. confessed in a 2003 interview that their version of The Return of the King was “not a very good film,” that was an understatement to say the least. While their Hobbit had flaws but was still a reasonably entertaining, focused translation of the story into a particular medium heightened by striking background work from their partners at the Japanese animation studio Topcraft, the Rankin-Bass Return of the King, which aired in 1980 and which continued to showcase work by Topcraft, was otherwise at best a muddled mess and at worst just a flat out disaster, with scattered positive elements not offsetting the series of baffling adaptation decisions that look even weirder following the success of Peter Jackson’s version of the book. What makes the pacing of the film so incredibly bizarre and frustrating, and how did the decision to tell which parts of the story in greater detail compromise the wider scope as a whole? How does the vocal casting and the respective performances end up underselling the flow of the story as a whole? Are there any good parts to the whole at all, and do they actually provide any upside to the end result? And why, why, WHY in the world are there so many bad songs throughout – even if there’s disagreement over whether “Where There’s a Whip” slaps or not?