This Gollum reappears in Rankin-Bass’ The Return of the King (1980), where things are even worse. Sure, he lives around water… but in contrast to the 1966 Gollum, I genuinely don’t look at this creature and think of him as a fish-obsessed cannibal. The 1977 Rankin-Bass Hobbit remains the best adaptation of the book, but Eru alone knows what the animators were doing when they turned Gollum into a frog monster. Exchanging riddles with this Gollum – can you imagine being eaten by this thing – would traumatise anyone.

Seriously, Snyder missed an opportunity by cutting the Riddle Game. He’s extremely creepy, in a mad and twisted sort of way – rather than being the sort of pitiful creature one associates with the character in The Lord of the Rings, he’s something one would want to run away from. Alas, I have only seen seven of them, since the Jackanory BBC adaptation of The Hobbit (1979) has never been released again, so far as I know.Ĭonsidering that they couldn’t even get his name right, and that the film barely counts as a Tolkien adaptation, the 1966 Gollum might be my favourite representation. There are eight screen Gollums of which I am aware, not counting pre-Ring Sméagols. How, then, to visually capture this weird and elusive figure…

While I do intend to eventually post a wider Gollum analysis, today I thought I would take a look at how the adaptions handle him – it is all very well to throw up vague literary descriptions (and Tolkien’s writings are often a bit shadowy here), but the screen does not have that luxury. No-one could suggest the same of Gollum, with his six teeth and webbed feet. Denethor and Feanor have their idiosyncrasies, yes, but both look normal.

Tolkien’s Gollum is one of his most memorable characters, and this memorability is reinforced by the character’s distinctive appearance.

Animated lord of the rings gollum