The Director of the Original ‘Lord of the Rings’ Seems to Like ‘South Park’s Parody More Than the Peter Jackson Trilogy

Before it was a bladder-testing, critically-acclaimed movie franchise — and even before it was a creepy-as-Hell Finnish TV show — author J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic The Lord of the Rings series was adapted as a 1978 animated feature by Ralph Bakshi, the legendary director who helmed Fritz the Cat, Wizards, and the horniest ‘90s movie to ever get a Nintendo game tie-in for children.

Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings, which only covers the first half of the full story, is a visually arresting, highly influential film. Interestingly, as Bleeding Cool pointed out, the famed animator recently took to social media to share a side-by-side comparison of a scene from his movie and one from South Park’s 2002 Lord of the Rings parody.

South Park’s “The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers” from Season Six found Cartman taking on the role of Gandalf for a Lord of the Rings game involving an epic quest to return a VHS tape, which none of the kids realize contains an adult film. Along the way, they’re terrorized by a gang of Ringwraith-like six graders who are looking to get their hands on the “precious” porn tape. 

More than a decade later, South Park expanded their LOTR parody with the video game South Park: The Stick of Truth. The game was clearly paying homage to Bakshi’s film specifically, rather than the Peter Jackson movies from the 2000s. The Stick of Truth opens with a montage recreating the original movie’s prologue, but with Cartman inserted into the 1970s-style animation.

Bakshi low-key endorsing the South Park parody is notable because he’s been highly critical of the Jackson trilogy in interviews — and for good reason. As we’ve mentioned before, Jackson’s trilogy featured several shots that were clearly lifted from Bakshi’s film, including that famous image of the Hobbits hiding from Nazgûl beneath the roots of a tree which South Park replicated. 

And an entire scene in 2001’s The Fellowship of the Ring, which wasn’t actually described in Tolkien’s novel, was seemingly lifted directly from the Bakshi version, which Jackson saw before reading the books. Bakshi, who didn’t receive any credit in the Jackson films, nor any profits from their massive box office profits, said of Jackson’s tendency to copy his animated work, “It’s a rip-off.” In another interview, Bakshi saltily noted, “I’m glad Peter Jackson had a movie to look at — I never did.”

Given all that, it sure seems as though this Lord of the Rings pioneer prefers “The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers” to the film series that won 17 Academy Awards. Another plus: It’s only 20 minutes instead of like 11 hours.