MAX Drops Surprise For 'Lord Of The Rings' Fans

TV & Film

Dec 3

The Lord of the Rings art — Image Source: AgentPalmer

It’s no great overstatement to say that Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of the most successful and beloved film trilogies of all time. With seventeen Oscars, almost three billion dollars at the box office, and the love of fans everywhere (seriously, if you look at memes about the trilogy, half of them are “this happened, and it made me watch the entire extended edition trilogy again) it’s a series that has more than held up.

However, it’s not the first of its kind. In 1978, animation legend Ralph Bakshi made his film that adapted the first two books in the series. The film undoubtedly has its flaws, inevitable when you’re condensing two books of that scale into a 133-minute animated movie, and it makes some odd choices such as pantsless Viking Boromir, Native American Aragorn, and... whatever the heck they did with Sam, but it does still have a cult following. A year prior, an adaptation of The Hobbit was released, which had similar, though slightly better, reviews.

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For the longest time, neither of the films had been available on any streaming platform, but that’s all changed thanks to HBO’s streaming service MAX. On December 1st, both Rankin/Bass’s Hobbit and Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings became available on the streaming service. For the first time, fans of the Jackson movies and Tolkien books will be able to see the first experiences of Middle Earth on the streaming service. While these films will surely be behind the eight ball when it comes to how they’re perceived by Jackson fans, they aren’t without their charms. Fire up MAX and see for yourself.

Unfortunately, MAX will never have the version of the series that, and this is real, the Beatles wanted to make, with them as the Hobbits and Stanley Kubrik as the director. Oh well.

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