The Hobbit, Rankin Bass and the Book

The Hobbit, Rankin Bass and the Book

Genre

The Hobbit is a Book, the Rankin Bass adaptation was how I was first introduced into the world of Tolkien and is a animated movie with ugly hobbits and wrinkly goblin elves. 

The Hobbit is a book I have my Ballatine Books copy "The enchanting Prelude to The Lord of the Rings" the back has an advert "you're interested in hobbits (look into the lord of the rings 1 2 and 3)" 

It also has cool maps and that good old book smell. The difference between the hobbit adaptations and stuff like the harry potter series is "the book is better" meme but the book just has more time.

The Book has time to note Bifur's Raspberry and apple tarts. The movie condenses the party before the journey into a song https://youtu.be/pSYZ-5mVRN4 and skims over "unnecessary" parts becasue they were drawing everthing by hand.

https://youtu.be/R4rbzifxB_o This is the scene of Gandalf explain the beauty and treasure they would pursue on their quest, the book can only paint these pictures in words, but the movie can have Gandalf talk and literally paint a picture of dwarves at work and pictures of bejeweled crafts resplendent and beautiful. 

Ill not post a clip of Smaug chatting with Bilbo, it covers about the same points condensed, misses a cool factor of dragons that I suspect goes into a lot of fantasy and DnD. Dragons are intelligent! Smaug in the book tries to poison Bilbo's mind "oh you got 1/14 a share of the treasure huh, how are you gonna take it home? they promise to cart it, feed you on the way home?" 

The Arkenstone from the Book (and new movie) didn't make it into the old Rankin Bass movie. Reconciliation came quick with Thorins death either way. 

In summary the book tells the tale in full, and is not tinted with gobliny elves you can imagine the elves as you wish. But the movie paints both picture fair and wrinkly.

Social History

Well the Hobbit was Tolkiens little hit that he decided to wrap into his English myth from the Samarillion, and he turned up his success with a three part sequel. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit                           The 1937 Book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1977_film)     So the 1977 comes four years after the spark and 23 years after LoTR. Its like a comic book movie, its from something already pretty popular book.

From my own recollection, I had no real idea what the source The Hobbit was this cool DVD was what was in front of me, The Rankin Bass movie was this charming enchanting thing, which was inhabited by funny dwarves, a wise powerful wizard, and fraught with dangers such as the goblins, gollum, and the powerful Smaug. Something about Smaug I learned about relatively recently was his voice actor was a black hat bad guy cowboy voice actor Richard Boone, 

Jules Bass primarily adapted Tolkien's original lyrics, this really brought the music to life for me, performances on youtube and Rankin Bass on youtube, especially misty mountains cold. The dwarves singing and the artist showing what the king under the mountain had which lead to the dragon's residence.