Today, 45 years after this movie aired as a TV special, it remains a curiosity in the pantheon of Tolkien adaptations. The 1980 Return of the King isn’t great, but it’s delightful and bizarre in a way that makes it essential viewing. In this way, the 1980 Return of the King is like the opposite of Jackson’s Hobbit movies. In some sense, because this animated Return of the King is trying to be cutesy, that fact makes the undeniable dark material in the story even darker. You cannot legally stream the animated 1980 Return of the King online right now, unless you want to wade into the depths of the Internet Archive.