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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Hobbit, the Musical

After reading Troll and Flame's recent post on movies for gamers, my head suddenly inexplicably was filled with a tune from childhood. You know the kind, it plays over and over in an annoying loop until you just have to roll with that. That song would be from that great (and eminently scary) scene from the cartoon version of the Hobbit in which the warg-riding goblins chase the wee ones up a tree.

Hunting down the vid on YouTube, I was struck by how much this cartoon and its bad/good brother "The Return of the King" had an influence on my own idea of what fantasy was as a kid. For years I thought of D&D elves as somewhat sinister-looking gray-green creatures; dwarves as skinny somewhat mischievous obsessives; and orcs as oppressed draftees.

Where there is a whip, there is a way...



3 comments:

  1. wow! That really took me back. In terms of Hobbit appreciation, I've really come to enjoy the graphic novel treatment of the story that was published a while back. A lot of the visuals are very similar to this clip (though the character drawings are all very different).

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  2. Yeah, that was also a big influence. I can't make order out of the jumble that is my memory but I wouldn't be surprised if that movie made me seek out and read The Hobbit.

    Hmmmm, I really want to reread that book now and rewatch that cartoon. Gah! need more time...

    Holy cow the witch king voice is lame! Don't remember that! Maybe I shouldn't rewatch it, seems memory has been most kind. Still Eowyn vs Witch King is tied with "Thou shall not pass" as my favorite WotR scenes.

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  3. @Patrick: I'll have to check out the graphic novel.

    @Norman: It's funny I can't rightly recollect myself if I read the book first or not. I went and checked out the Witch King bit. What a groaner. Childhood memory can be highly selective, no? (I remember really digging that horrible barrel rolling song for instance.)

    At any rate, that damn 15 birds song was stuck in my head all day long.

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