How Can 1980’s ‘The Return of the King’ Spoil Everything — and Ruin Nothing?

“The Return of the King” is very much another interpretation, and as a means of keeping After Dark’s revisitation of the IP’s animated era ongoing? But for worse and, at times, even for better, the main legacy of “The Return of the King” is its incompleteness. Plenty of viewers, particularly children, watched Bilbo return from the Lonely Mountain in 1977. After the Rankin/Bass “Return of the King,” I certainly know a lot more than I once did. But exiting Middle-earth beside cartoon Frodo, there’s also a sense that this 98-minute musical adaptation is truly just the beginning.