#but smaug is such a 'wtf???' that he gets an honorable mention too

[laora-ryn]

Omg y'all, my husband's family had a tradition growing up that when any of them were sick (which was pretty often, since he's one of seven kids), they would watch the 1977 Rankin/Bass Hobbit movie. Their dad really loves Tolkien but was generally not a fan of letting the kids use The Tech (tm), so I think this is the compromise the older kids wrangled from him

I have heard about this movie from him and his siblings, but didn't really know anything about it myself since my parents weren't super into Tolkien, so I got into it with the PJ LOTR movies

ANYWAY so we've been sick all week and James found out that movie's on HBO, so he sat me down and made me watch it as a Time Honored Tradition

And I.

Bilbo has approximated Leia buns??? I spent an hour and seventeen minutes looking at him, but still have not figured out what is going on with this guy's hair

They really leaned hard into "there's thorin and uhhhhhhhhhh twelve other dwarves idk their names don't matter." The only ones I could keep straight were fili and kili, since they were blond, and balin and dwalin, because they have like, six-heads and brain wrinkles on their head lol

James always described Gollum in this movie as a booger, and now I understand why. They also made him blind, which doesn't make a ton of sense in the context of Bilbo using the ring to escape, but imo it's a neat design choice nonetheless

They really did THIS to thranduil oropherion I am still laughing my ASS off at this. He also spoke with a really shitty, half assed French accent for no discernable reason

And then there was? Smaug??? Who has laser beams for eyes?? And fur on his back?? And a tiger's face???? And pecs????????

I was too flabbergasted to remember to take more pictures but the conversation right before the battle went like this:

Thorin, Bard, and Thranduil: let's fuck these guys up!!

Gandalf: STOP you fools!!! As we speak there is a FOURTH army of goblins on its way here!!!

Thorin, Bard, and Thranduil:

Thorin: King Thranduil, my dearest friend and greatest ally, I would be honored to join forces with you to defeat this evil

Thranduil: oh mighty king thorin, it would be an honor [I wish I was making this up, if it weren't made in the 70s I would've thought it was a meme]

Also, at the end, bombur shows up in front of Bilbo only to keel over and die, before we cut to Bilbo's conversation with gandalf:

Bilbo: how many of our original thirteen remain??

Gandalf: seven :(

Bilbo: and thorin??

Gandalf: soon, it will be six :((((

No explanation for this or like, explanation of who else they arbitrarily killed off or anything

So anyway, this movie was An Experience (tm) and I wanted to share and also, y'all should watch it if you get the chance bc lol