The Lord of the Rings is one of pop cultures most prominent book series, it is probably more well known than other book series like Narnia, Harry Potter and Dragon Riders of Pern. J.R.R. Tolkien's fantastical tale of wizards and hobbits and the horrors of war has enchanted, delighted and horrified many a reader, and has made its way into multiple other formats, ranging from video games and Hollywood features, most notably the Peter Jackson trilogy that was made and released in the early 2000s, defining the decade and fantasy cinema of the future. However, this was not the first attempt at adapting Tolkien's story into a feature, as in the 1970s Ralph Bakshi took a stab at it with a Screenplay by Chris Conkling and Peter S. Beagle, yes, the same Peter S. Beagle who wrote The Last Unicorn. Despite the talent and ambition, and some fair responses at the time, it has largely been overshadowed by Peter Jackson's version, for a while until it garnered some attention online. Of course, it isn't as good as the Jackson trilogy, but is it any good on its own?
The story is a loose adaptation of the first two books, up to the Battle at Helm's Deep. It has a uniquely done prologue that tells the story of the one ring, then it's a pretty straightforward telling of the story, with, as you can probably guess, a fair share of omissions. I have not read the Lord of the Rings books, honestly I haven't even watched that much of the Peter Jackson movies, so I can't say this with one-hundred percent certainty, but I do believe they get the important bits down. They skip Tom Bombadil, but they get through the Ringwraiths in Rivendell, Gandalf meeting with Saruman, the council of Elrond, the mines of Moria, Lothlórien, Boromir's death, Merry and Pippen being taken by Orcs and meeting Treebeard and Frodo and Sam meeting Gollum. It is condensed but I do think the important stuff is there. Likewise, I do believe the characters are fairly accurate, though this is only me guessing from learning from second-hand sources, so I'm bound to have someone commenting about every minute difference between the book characters and the movie characters. Please note, I don't actually care, I'm not Dominic Noble, comparing books to adaptations is not my job. Aragorn is pretty badass, but also can take a moment to chill and Gimli is not just made completely to be comic relief. On top of that, I really did feel like the group had a sense of friendship and camaraderie.
The biggest issue with the story is the editing can be really... hilarious at points. I thought the editing to The Swan Princess was a problem, but in this movie, they literally talk about going to Lothlórien and then the next shot is Galadriel welcoming the party to Lothlórien, that made me laugh when I saw it, like this is something you would see in like, a spoof comedy. That being said, when shots needed to drag, they do drag, but not for too long. One of my favourite shots in the movie was when Frodo and the Hobbits were about to be spotted by the Ringwraith, the scene shows them leaving the road to hide, but it lingers, it stays still as we hear the Ringwraith ride closer until it appears on screen. It's honestly a pretty well done shot, and there are more editing choices like that then randomly cutting to Galadriel. Editing wise, this is not as bad as The Thief and the Cobbler or The Swan Princess, but it isn't exactly great, and does contribute to this movie coming off as kinda sloppy.
The animation is pretty notorious to people who know of this film. Most of you will know that the movie mixed traditional cel animation with live-action rotoscoping. There is a fine line between good rotoscoping and bad rotoscoping, it's one of those things where if it isn't one-hundred percent good, it's garbage. Personally, I think that is a bit of an exaggeration, there is really good rotoscoping out there like the music video for A-Ha's Take on Me, and while this rotoscoping is a bit more middle tier, it isn't terrible, at first. As the movie goes on, the rotoscoping does sometimes look like someone just put a filter over the footage, and when obviously live-action people have animated characters next to them, or worse, animated parts attached to them, it looks really out of place. As for the traditional animation, it's really solid, the facial animation is a bit bizarre, almost Hercules and Xena levels honestly, but the body animation is realistic, most likely thanks to the rotoscoping references, and the character design is okay. They look nothing like you would expect them to look like if your familiar with the live-action movies, but they still look mostly distinct from each other, you can pick most of them out in a screenshot. Speaking of design, the backgrounds are all fantastic, though they sometimes do this thing where the backgrounds fade away and it looks like someone put a greenscreen effect in an animated movie. It's... an interesting choice, to say the least.
The voice acting was really good though, I don't imagine that any of these names are familiar to most movie goers, unless you're really big into British television. The biggest names I recognized were John Hurt, who is an icon who has appeared in so many things and plays Aragorn in this movie, and Anthony Daniels, most known as the voice of C-3P0 in Star Wars and plays Legolas in this movie. That being said, the other actors do great jobs, William Squire as Gandalf does have that presence that Sir Ian McKellen has while still being distinct, and honestly I kinda prefer Christopher Guard as Frodo instead if Elijah Wood, Wood just kinda comes off as vulnerable all the time. The acting gets a huge thumbs up from me, and so does the score really. I do not understand the choice of music they went with, it's kind of jovial, almost reminiscent of pieces like Entry of the Gladiators, but honestly, I kind of love it. It's beautifully triumphant, though not as epic. The music was done by Leonard Rosenman, who also did the music for movies like Rebel Without a Cause, Fantastic Voyage, A Man Called Horse and two of the Planet of the Apes sequels. I'd say this was an excellent score.
Overall, I can't say that Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings movie is a truly great movie, I do think that, if he had the budget he probably could've done better by making it a trilogy. That being said though, it isn't a bad movie on its own. I think when people think of "The Lord of the Rings", they think of "Epic", and animated epics are... kinda rare honestly. Other than The Prince of Egypt I can't really think of any other animated epics. If you temper your expectations, I do believe you'll see an ambitious project that was probably way ahead of its time, truly the biggest problem of this movie is simply that it was probably too ambitious. Do not let that keep you from watching this movie, simply as a curiosity or as a Ralph Bakshi fan. I enjoyed my time with this movie, and I do believe that others will find something to enjoy, or at least something to talk about. Remember, this was one of the movies that led to Peter Jackson's trilogy. Also, this movie is over two-hours long, so maybe don't make this a casual viewing.
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