ANI-MOVIES, *The Lord Of The Rings

Despite what a ton of Peter Jackson fanatics might claim, the 1978 animated version of The Lord Of The Rings by the ambitious Ralph Bakshi set the standard for fantasy movies and experimental animation that would become a hallmark in the following decade of the 80s. There had been at least one prior adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's work made a year prior of the prelude novel, The Hobbit, in a full-length animated TV movie by Rankin/Bass Productions which was the foundation for their foray into 2D fantasy animation that would eventually find its way to pop culture icons like Thundercats. Bakshi had already set a record for animating independent pictures such as Heavy Traffic, even though his first production was an animated version of Fritz The Cat making it one of the first ever Rated-X cartoon movies, but his prior work on the original fantasy epic Wizards helped secure him as a worthy director of Tolkien's works which had just reportedly gone into the public domain at the time. The screenplay for the film was written by Chris Conkling who has an extended family history in the entertainment industry, and Peter S. Beagle who wrote The Last Unicorn which helped put him in the direction of having it animated by Rankin/Bass a few years later. Bakshi's plan was to release the original trilogy of novels as a movie duology with the first one covering the majority of The Fellowship Of The Ring and most of The Two Towers. The flaw in this plan was that the first feature didn't make enough money, therefore the follow-up never got made, which left The Return Of The King to be adapted in a TV animated movie once again handled by Rankin/Bass a year after Bakshi's theatrical release, even though they had planned on doing their own take on the final book to act as a sequel to their treatment of The Hobbit. Despite what most people believe, there was no direct correlation between Bakshi and Rankin/Bass' takes on Middle Earth. Bakshi's film utilized the rotoscoping that he employed in making Wizards while still using traditional cel animation even though the cinematography makes it appear as if the live-action actors were inconsistent with more cartoonish characters. The Lord Of The Rings was initially put out by United Artists, but it has since changed hands with Warner Bros who subsequently packaged it with the Rankin/Bass animated Tolkien features, so this gave many people the impression that all three movies were meant to be an intended trilogy. The music by Leonard Rosenman gained its own notoriety as being one of the greatest cult soundtracks of all time. Some of the characters and storyboards were designed by comics veterans like Mike Ploog who also drew some of the infamous movie posters. All this talent culminated in an incredible movie, even though there were some big differences between the final product and the source material.

Not wanting to go over the entire 2 1/2 novels that the movie covers, I'll remark on the differences between the film and the books. The style is very consistent with fantasy publications of the time such as Conan and Dungeons And Dragons even though the books gave a more traditional impression of Middle Ages illustrations. Some of the character's behavior is really toned down from what Peter Jackson would do, like where Bilbo turns into Dracula after seeing the Ring for the first time in years and instead sulks at the legacy his adventures had brought upon his family. There is some amazing action scenes in the close quarters fighting such as Boromir taking way more arrows and still living through it to give his final words to Aragorn, but the real piece of resistance are the epic battles especially the battle of Helm's Deep that Bakshi used several costumed actors getting rotoscoped into a memorable final fight. Some of the characters might look off model from what you might expect such as Aragorn's appearance made some viewers see him as being Native American, while others like the elves and dwarves were mostly indistinguishable from the regular humans, even though the Hobbits resembled short persons. Some of the cast are overplayed like Sam being an overly-hyper comic relief, Gandalf acting like a fidgety old man than an weathered wizards, but the most different is Frodo who is much more reserved in this film than other adaptations have taken, plus this version of Gollum is a bit more timid than he usually is shown. The fact that the movie is an abridged rendition on the Rings trilogy means that some passages are totally left out, plus the quick jumps of one setting to another doesn't help the pacing. The major plus for the movie is it gave a grand image of what the world of Middle Earth looks like when before it was usually seen as something spraypainted on the side of the van, where here it manages to flesh out the chaotic realms of Mordor and Rohan. The film does a good enough job covering the mass of Tolkien's trilogy that it signed on to do in its single installment.

The Lord Of The Rings acted as the spark for several fantasy epics that followed in its stead such as Legend, Krull, and of course the Peter Jackson films. This also ignited interest in the fantasy genre which had been overshadowed by sci-i in the 1970s via Star Wars and helped found the basis of several fandoms in RPGs, video games, costuming, and storytelling. It's hard to say if Dungeons And Dragons would still be as successful to this day if it weren't for Bakshi's works. The vocal cast is impressive with John Hurt as Aragorn, and Anthony Daniels as Legolas, also a good portion of the actors going on to be in the animated version of Watership Down. The movie is not flawless and has some deep unsteadiness from the source material, but ultimately helped shape the animation industry at a time when Disney was barely keeping its head above water.