Is Veggie Tales Lord of the Rings a Masterpiece?

I've never been a big VeggieTales fan and I know that may shock and horrify some of you and that yet more of you are are wondering what VeggieTales is and why I'm talking about it on my Lord of the Rings channel to answer your first question VeggieTales is an animated children's cartoon that uses CGI vegetables to teach children about Jesus and the Bible and Christian morals and I'm here to talk about it because one episode didn't just teach children about the Lord it taught them about the Lord of the Rings or or beans whatever a few weeks back one of the viewers of this channel told me about the 2004 Veggie Tales episode called the lord of the beans and while I may have never been a super huge VeggieTales fan as a child I will never pass up the chance to go down a Lord of the Rings Rabbit Hole I'm Jess and today I am taking you on a journey to Center Earth to talk about the simultaneously best and worst adaptation of The Lord of the Rings that I have ever seen we open on the SIM image in the world a fire and a bean and I'm already going to interrupt myself to ask the question what kind of Bean is this Bean because I have been fighting with my co-workers over this for like um five to six work days and it's a kidney bean right because kidney beans are like the quintessential being when you think about a bean yeah listen I'm reasonable I can even accept Lima Bean or or green bean as like the quintessential Bean but if one more person tries to suggest to me that I got our Bonzo Bean is the quintessential bean I am going to lose my we're then treated to some Sumptuous tunes and an establishing shot of the Shire here we meet our protagonist Toto baggy pants played by the child star Junior Asparagus now at this point you may be asking me Jess did you spend real human money on a bit where you pinned up printed photographs of all of the lord of the beans characters only to get home and realize that you forgot to get the second character of the episode printed out but you're kind of way too embarrassed to go back to CVS and have them print out one more picture of a VeggieTales character in Lord of the Rings cosplay foreign I'll never tell anyways we're introduced to Randolph the wise white-haired wizard played by Mr nezer the zucchini and we go straight to this reunion to the birthday party of Bill boy baggy pants played by Archibald asparagus the asparagus the flabets are having a great time at the birthday party until Mr baggy pants gets up to make a speech yeah today is my 12th and tooth birthday I'm growing tired you see I'm feeling like chocolate pudding scraped across too much ham I mean we've all been there then we launch into the first musical number of the episode which I've I gotta be honest it's just a banger it's a great song [Applause] [Music] in it little boy sings about Earthly Delights like root beer pizza and cupcakes and how chasing these Earthly Delights has brought him no closer to True Joy then with that ringing endorsement he encourages the other flabbits to continue their pursuit of hedonistic Delights throws down a bean which is clearly a kidney bean and then vanishes or I guess like turns into a cake I'm I'm not strictly sure and it's never explained in the lore so um billboy then returns home to pull out his old monogram tank top which sidebar how does an asparagus wear a tank top no shoulders you you need shoulders to wear a tank top right foreign wear the tank top Randolph arrives at Bill boy's house and points out that he's changed since they last met growing both taller and richer billboy is reluctant to explain saying oh being friends with you can be such a bother which incidentally is what my co-workers say when I bring up the empirical superiority of the kidney bean for the third time that day but the reason that bill Boyd has been able to pursue these Earthly Delights like food and height is because of the bean and despite having everything that he needs Mr baggy pants feels a void inside of him and in order to fill that void he's leaving the Shire leaving his house his accumulated wealth and the bean to his nephew Toto then billboy exits the scene and is gone a record-breaking six minutes into the narrative it's a little weird to me that bill boy gave up the bean so easily but I guess they haven't technically established it as having any Sinister Powers so it scans Toto is pretty unfazed by the absence of a soul parental figure which is fine in in the books or movies when Frodo seems at least like he's like over the age of 18 but asparagus plants only live 10 to 15 years so Toto is definitely a minor and should not be left alone like this child neglect aside Randolph gives toad of The Bean warning him that this bean is not an ordinary being and now we get the exposition that we've all been waiting for Randolph explains that many years ago four beans were given to the leaders of Center Earth the first being allowed the user to create any food the second could transform the physical appearance of the user the third being could provide the user with any fine clothing and the fourth Bean could create any small kitchen appliances I firmly believe that these beans could act as like a new house sorting system kind of like Hogwarts has so um if you look in the description of this video I have created a quiz where you can find out which bean team you're on comment below uh your being team if anyone cares I'm small kitchen appliances those beans unfortunately were lost to time or eaten in a stew depending on who you ask however there was another [Music] and that theme could do and here's the thing I can't really fault them for making the kind of specific powers of the being so ambiguous Because the actual power of tokien's ring is also kind of ambiguous however despite the fact that the bean can do anything they really only seem to use it for physical Boons like a clothing food hair that kind of thing although having a celery stick take the bean and enslave the Earth under their iron rule may have been a bit dark for the veggie Jesus show so I guess adjustments were needed the bean is thrust into a fire where it reveals a message use wisely and this takes us to the heart of the problem because tolkien's ring is not meant to be used you can use it but because it is inherently and entirely evil it will end up using you however the bean is neutral it could be used for good or evil and it's only been used for evil in the past because people were using it cell selfishly but there's no way to use tolkien's ring wisely or unselfishly because it is evil it will beget evil unlike the bean which is capable of being used wisely so that I would argue is the fundamental difference between tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and the 2004 hit the lord of the beings besides the obvious I suppose Toto expresses that he doesn't want or need the bean but Randolph explains that it is his gift and he has to figure out how to use it Toto keeps pressing for some kind of guidance so Randolph explains that the Elders of the raspberry Forest may be able to help however to make it to the raspberry Forest they're going to have to make the harrowing journey across the mountains of much snowya this has made all the more dangerous by the dark lord scary man played by the ever duplicitous scallion number one he's a scallion scary man is leading an army of unnatural sporks in a scorched Earth campaign to reclaim the being at any cost that is one of those sentences that would send a Victorian child into a coma Toto's bravery outweighs his trepidation and he's going to make the journey despite the danger but to do that he's gonna need help and here we meet ear of corn played by Larry the Cucumber legolam played by Jimmy Gord and of course grump be played by paw great there's also Legoland's brother simply known as the other elf who is a character that concerns me and I I do not get the point of he's played by Jerry Gord with the Fellowship of the being formed they set out on their Journey delayed only by the frequent bathroom breaks of the other elf it's the only thing he does for like the majority of this episode and it's entirely possible that I am simply not in the Target demographic of an eight-year-old in 2004 but I just don't get why he's here the bathroom break thing is the only thing he does for a while and even when they do kind of reveal his purpose in the third act I just don't think the joke was worth it they make it up the mountains of much Snowy out with a spork Army hot on their heels at this point irocorn accidentally pushes them off a cliff but because they're vegetables and not humans they bounce much better than most humans do which means they make it safely down into their the raspberry Forest when grumpy inquires about eating The Raspberries Randolph ominously tells him not that kind of raspberry before they find what they seek Randolph warns them that they must be on their best behavior and that at all costs they must not laugh at the elders who lost their sense of humor like decades ago as it turns out the elders are trees and their leader Lord follow minion terroglyth son of therabil lithium greets Randolph Randolph points out the absolute Bling That Lord fallominium Terror with son of pharaoh lithomon is wearing and Lord thalaminian terriglist son of therabil lithiumon tells him it was a gift from a friend and we all know that gifts from friends are never a Bad Thing Randolph tells the elders that they have the being of power and they're informed that they should take the bean through the Blue Gate into the land of Woe meanwhile that old Rascal iricorn approaches one of the elders and that Elder blows a raspberry at him raspberries are technically speaking one of the funniest things in the world so the fellowship is getting a case of the giggles as it turns out blowing a raspberry is the traditional greeting of the elders but that does not change the fact that they are as I said very funny Randolph does his best to continue gathering information explaining that the land of woe is incredibly dangerous but before he can get the full picture he has to get the fellowship out of there they are on a one-way train to giggle town and even a Snicker could have them executed for treason but it's too late that bastardia corn can't keep it together and bursts out into laughter getting them all imprisoned in a high tower and what do you do when you're trapped in a high tower with no hope of Escape apparently you sing a song [Music] Toto serenades his captive audience with a song about how having a gift is a great thing as long as you know what to do with it which encourages the rest of the fellowship to start thinking of a way to get out of there I kind of hope they were already planning on on getting out of the tower even without Toto singing them a song but oh well nevertheless salvation seems close at hand when they see an eagle approaching but alas not all goes well for these madcap veggies foreign the eagle is understandably pissed about having been jumped by a house salad and he tells them to get their own ride before promptly leaving of course now the gang is out of the Tower and can escape the elders on foot I'm just gonna take this time to point out that their land speed must be incredibly slow they all hop everywhere and I can't help but think that if they were just willing to roll every once in a while it would increase their prospects greatly by the morning the fellowship makes it safely to the Blue Gate which surprise surprise is blue they are greeted by a riddle which Toto manages to Solve the Riddle is oddly involved and long and the answer didn't really seem that relevant to the plot so I'm not entirely sure why it got quite as much screen time as it got however it is entirely possible that I am just a little bit bitter because I was unable to solve this riddle and the child-coated asparagus was the gate opens but it turns out that the real gate inside the bigger gate is too tiny for anyone but Toto to go through I do want to point out that if if grumpy here who is I'll remind you a grape just took his helmet off or something he could probably definitely fit through the gate but either way Toto decides to head off alone despite the danger ahead the rest of the fellowship is deciding what to do when something rides up on a unicycle I say something because for the life of me I cannot tell you what he is I got a new umbrella and it's me bride enjoy when the rain may come in the sun maker will be walking right for me head to death I'm a lucky boy I've got a new umbrella even the VeggieTales Wiki which is just obscenely and astonishingly detailed just calls him the crazy looking guy which really doesn't bode well please please try them off in the comments if you can tell me who or what this guy is after singing a song about his new umbrella crazy looking guy tells them to head down to the Red Gate which is apparently wide open and especially notable due to the presence of an army of sporks dead set on retrieving the bean from the corpse of a young asparagus crazy looking guy over there heads off and as he did I I kind of realized that he's probably supposed to be a Tom Bombadil standing which is bold but I don't get it I'm scared of him and and and frankly I'm glad he's gone the fellowship heads off to save Toto and now it's time for the intermission and I've gotta admit this is what broke me on my first watch through I felt as drifting more and more off the actual plot of The Lord of the Rings and the realization that I at 23 years old was using my one day off to watch VeggieTales hit me like a ton of bricks and it hit me all at once when this title screen came up foreign to quote the all-knowing VeggieTales Wiki in the dialogue before the VeggieTales theme song Bob tells Larry to play the guitar but Larry tells Bob that he cannot due to his lack of hands but in this episode's silly song segment that's exactly what Larry does this segment consists of Larry the Cucumber who I must note doesn't have hands dressed as irocorn a parody of Aragorn from tolkien's original 1950s trilogy dressed as Elvis a couple questions about myself the song consists of him singing about how much he loves his elf and then his elf coming out and berating him in a language that requires Papyrus text as subtitles the whole thing reads a little bit of ooh wife bad which isn't quite to my taste and goes on for a full two minutes which is very long until my hero legolam comes out and calls him an Elvis impersonator then that segment is over then we're back in the action with our heroes rushing to rescue Toto and Toto wandering through the aptly named land of Woe then in drops our Golem stand-in played by Mr Lunt the decorative Latin gourd he finds out that Toto is taking the bean to the land of Woe and demands that he give it up when Toto outruns him he explains that these Woods are crazy and that Toto's gonna need a guide Toto relents and they go on together where we find out that this Golem stand-in is named ahem because of the noise that he makes in his throat which is fair play ahem reveals that he was once an ordinary flawbit which begs the question what are flawbits because the background flabbits in the Shire definitely aren't asparagus like the baggy pants family they look almost like fleshy kind of like fingers but but then how would a hem have formerly been a flawbit if he is as established by the VeggieTales Wiki a decorative Latin gourd what vegetable are the flopits Toto actually remembers ahem from back in the Shire because he was well known as having an addiction to buying As Seen On TV mail order items ahem was obsessed with labor-saving devices a fixation that was only limited by his lack of money however one day he ordered a new crock pot okay side note but a crock pot is by no means a labor-saving device it is a labor delaying device because yeah you come home to dinner on the table but that's only if you wash Chopped season prepared the entire meal that morning don't get me wrong I'm a huge proponent of crock pots however calling them a labor-saving device is a complete misnomer and within the packing peanuts of that new crock pot there it was the bean instantly ahem began abusing the power of the bean using it for food clothing and the life of luxury he'd always desired one day though he flew too close to the Sun creating and consuming a 200 pound marshmallow peep now just for fun and not not because I've been thinking about this for days let's do a little bit of math here I scoured the internet for the average weight of a decorative Latin gourd sources were not generous so we're going to go like wacky crazy here and say that a hem here is two pounds and that's and that's a gourd especially considering that he has no significantly taller or larger than a singular small stock of asparagus but you know sure so for him to eat a peep that is more than 100 times his body weight in one sitting that would be like if Bertram here ate um 20 of these five pound bags of rice could you do it bud is this what the life of a YouTuber is like all right I was ill-advised well after consuming that amount of food a hen fell into a coma and to be quite quite honest I I think he probably just should have died but when he woke up from that coma the bean had been taken ah the hubris of the decorative Latin gourd but since then ahem has fallen into ruin unable to perform even the simplest physical task for himself the rest of the fellowship finally arrives at the Red Gate which is yellow a pretty good setup and payoff however before they can pass through the sporks arrive I was gonna throw sporks at this part but it turns out that you really can't buy sporks in very many physical stores the fellowship sees that it's only a few sporks at the gate so they charge in ready to fight for Toto and the beam however it turns out to be a trap and they're surrounded the other elf dashes off for yet another bathroom break and the fellowship is left outmanned and outclassed by their spooky silverware foe meanwhile Toto and a hem stumble across a village that is really dusty no seriously that's like it's primary characteristic and once again I want to ask the question what are these background characters because they look like worms or fingers neither of which are vegetables and you can't just establish a world in which all of the living characters are vegetable or or food eating products and then just have strange flesh creatures that's not how World building Works um and the children in the Villager also peas which is fine I guess ahem tells Toto to leave because it's a miserable place but then all of the villagers approach them begging Toto to help them and like what is what do they expect him to do meanwhile the fellowship is surrounded and the sporks plan on using their pointy ends if you know what I mean all seems lost but then the spork smells something something good and at last the point of the other elf is made clear to me it's a Keebler Elf joke he comes out of the tree that he went into with a plate of fresh cookies and the sporks are immediately intrigued because we ain't had nothing but maggoty bread for three stinking days and then we are back with Toto and ahem Toto points out that the people of the village aren't evil just thirsty which means that anybody who is saying that the land of Woe Is Evil was just saying that because the people there were were thirsty what is wrong with these vegetables Toto decides that this is his life purpose and despite ahem's protests that the bean should be used for selfish purposes Toto decides that he's going to save the village I just realized that this whole board is at the wrong angle and it's too late to fix it the rest of the gang arrives in the village followed by the army of sporks who has been turned from foe to Friend by the intervention of the Keebler Elf but plot twist guess who else is in the village it's scary man scary man he pulls a sword on Toto and reveals that he had bribed the elders to send them to the land of Woe as a trap it's also at this point that we catch the back of scary man's head and we see what it looks like when they try to put hair on a scallion and let me tell you it's not pretty scary man scoffs at Toto's plan to help people and says life is short if you have a gift use it for yourself before you've lost it and it's too late which is fine but also makes me wonder why he benefits from promoting this message shouldn't he be saying something like give your gifts to people who know how to use them properly so that he can get control of it but who am I to critique the scheming of scallion number one but then a voice calls out and someone is Dashing Around The Village at a frankly quite unsettling speed and then with a sudden blow scary man is heated across the village and Bellboy baggy pants is the one that did it Toto first roast Bill boy for having bad clothes and being short which frankly feels a little bit hypocritical but then he remarks that bill boy gave up everything so that Toto could have the beam as it turns out it was Bill boy's life's purpose to use his innate gifts to help people but that kind of just leaves Toto wondering what his gift is for since the elders were lying and he wasn't technically destined to come to the land of Woe maybe he's not supposed to help these poor people after all however Bill boy explains that sometimes the way you get to your destiny is a little wacky and wild but that can still be your destiny so Toto throws the bean into the well and wow there's water and plants again and the crops finally grow for this weird guy who's just been hoeing dirt this whole time which I'm gonna say does imply that they Farm vegetables so VeggieTales cannibalism it's more likely than you think then they all sing a rousing number about how great it is to use your gifts wisely and how cool it feels to know what your gifts are for foreign so to their credit they did fit the basic characters and plot points and even some of the themes from the original Lord of the Rings trilogy into just 45 minutes and if you've watched any of the Obscure adaptations videos that I've made on this channel you'd understand what a feat that is the only other adaptation that got even remotely close to covering all of those basic events was the finished one which was three and a half hours long and quite honestly showed me far more of Gollum than I ever wanted to see hey we just saw his balls we just saw smeagle's balls The Writer's skill in compressing and Distilling a story are honestly quite impressive however this piece acts as a statement that carrying over the basic events and characters of a story doesn't make it an adaptation because in order to save so much time they had to change the core message of the story instead of addressing complex themes like inherent evil Temptation sin and weakness like the original Lord of the Rings trilogy did they made the message much more digestible for Their audience I would argue that the Lord of the Rings and The Lord of the beings both tell fairly christian messages Tolkien was an incredibly devout Catholic after all but because these two stories were written for different audiences and with different intents their nearly unrecognizable from each other besides superficial similarities and you may be asking why that matters because the lord of the beans obviously was not trying to be an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings but it serves as a gentle reminder that the superficial elements of a story are far from the full picture looking at any art superficially intentionally disregarding what it's doing and what it's trying to do strips it of so much value although it is definitely a little bit silly comparing the Lord of the Rings and The Lord of the beans is a great reminder that you shouldn't judge books by their covers all of that being said do yourself a favor and go watch the lord of the beans it's free on YouTube and it honestly got a lot of laughs out of me it's great for kids but even if you're not a kid or even a Christian the message of using your personal gifts wisely is certainly valuable for anyone I'm kind of surprised that I hadn't heard about this before so I I am wondering if I'm the only one so please let me know in the comments if you've seen it or if you haven't seen it what you thought of my analysis now this video is actually going to be the last one for the next two weeks I am moving again in in a week or two and so I just need some time to pack up my entire life and put it in a storage unit but worry not I will be back in two weeks in a new location with lots of fun stuff thank you so much for watching and I hope that you have a very happy flavity day [Music]

Channel: Jess of the Shire

Views: 217,436

Keywords: Video Essay, LotR, Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Rings of Power, the Hobbit, Veggie Tales

Id: q6TztNhIaF8

Length: 28min 19sec (1699 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 16 2023