Say what you will about Peter Jackson’s sprawling adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but he at least got the job done. Ralph Bakshi was less fortunate when tried to adapt the books 20 odd years earlier. He’d originally planned, like Jackson, to make it as a trilogy, later trimmed down to two lengthy films and eventually was let down when distributors United Artists got cold feet and pulled the plug on the planned second film. What’s left is an odd and frustrating film, reasonably faithful to the source but only half finished, ending the story at the climax of the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and angering many fans who felt cheated by the fact that it was never going to be completed.
A prologue sets the scene – in the “Second Age” of the fantasy world of Middle-earth, Elven smiths made nine Rings of Power, shared between mortal Men, Dwarf-Lords, and Elf-Kings. Dark Lord Sauron makes another, the One Ring, in a bid to seize power but after Sauron is defeated, the Ring falls into the River Anduin where it lies for 2,500 years. In that time, Sauron captures the other rings, transforming their owners into hideous Ringwraiths. The One Ring is eventually found by Déagol and Sméagol, the latter becoming obsessed with the Ring which mutates him into a creature known as Gollum (Peter Woodthorpe) who takes it with him into the Misty Mountains. Hundreds of years later, the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Norman Bird) finds the Ring and takes it home with him to the Shire. Many years later it passes into the hands of his nephew Frodo (Christopher Guard) and Gandalf the wizard (William Squire) learns that Sauron is about to make his move against the One Ring. Gathering together a “fellowship” comprised of three Hobbits, Frodo’s cousins, Pippin (Dominic Guard), Merry (Simon Chandler), and his gardener Sam (Michael Scholes), the humans Aragorn (John Hurt) and Boromir (Michael Graham Cox), the Elf Legolas (Anthony Daniels) and the dwarf Gimli (David Buck), Frodo is despatched to the volcanic Mount Doom to dispose of the Ring once and for all.
Bakshi had been a fan of the books for many years and had ambitious plans to adapt them, but he was thwarted at every turn by a lack of budget. He relies heavily, almost exclusively in fact, on the technique of rotoscoping (animating over previously shot live-action footage) which meant effectively shooting the entire film twice which pushed the budget way beyond what it was originally expected to be. The result is a curious looking film, occasionally very beautiful but far too often the rotoscoping gives it an ugly look that ultimately proves distracting. The lack of resources shows through most in the big battle scenes that not only look cheap (they are effectively heavily tinted live action scenes) but also highlight just how few people were on hand to do the actual fighting – at the climax of the Battle of Helm’s Deep a vast army or orcs, mostly realised through still painted figures in the background, are routed by Gandalf and about a dozen Riders of Rohan swooping down on them from a hill.
Elsewhere, Gandalf’s encounter with the Balrog is ruined somewhat by the inescapable fact that the terrifying monster has merely been rotoscoped over footage of a man in a rubber monster suit, some weirdly psychedelic moments are ill-fitting with the kind of story that Bakshi is trying to tell, and it just lacks the grandeur that the story demands. Scenes involving the Ringwraiths have a nicely creepy feel to them, but the whole enterprise feels empty, lacking in the depth of character that Jackson brought to his films and the action scenes are spoiled by the same group of extras clearly running in and out of shot to do the same bit of business over and over again.
Contrary to some claims to the contrary, The Lord of the Rings was a hit at the box office though it’s hard to see who it was actually being aimed at. At the time, fans of Tolkien were disappointed by the fact that the story remained tantalisingly incomplete (United Artists decided late in the day to remove the planed “Part 1” from the title, leaving viewers to perhaps expect that they were going to get the whole story) and certainly one can’t help but feel let down by the ending. Those less well-versed with the original books might well get a bit lost in the messy adaptation, written by Peter S. Beagle and Chris Conkling, that seems to assume at least a working knowledge of the complexities of the novel, and younger viewers might have been slightly taken aback by some surprisingly gory, slow-motion orc-slaying at the climax.
It’s not hard to see how some of the visuals inspired Jackson’s films, but Bakshi seemed bitter about not having been invited to be a part of it, though he later apologised for some of the more disparaging remarks he made about the live-action films. It’s understandable perhaps as Bakshi spent so long trying to get his adaptation made only for it to never be completed. Today, the film is a little better regarded than it was in 1978 when the critics mauled it and fans, even pre-internet, were not shy in letting their feelings be known. But it still feels more like a noble attempt to film something complex that became an unholy mess, a brave try made with a lot of love, but it was possibly misguided to have tried it on a budget that clearly wasn’t up to the task.
In May 1980, ABC broadcast an animated special based on The Return of the King directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr which had been in pre-production before the release of The Lord of the Rings (they’d previously adapted The Hobbit in 1977) and producer Saul Zaentz tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the broadcast as Bakshi was still, at that point, working on a sequel that was eventually never completed. It almost got there when word broke of the Jackson films and Warner Bros. approached Bakshi to complete the sequel, but he was so miffed at not having been told about the new films that he declined and that was the end of that.
Bakshi put the experience behind him and made a string of films in the 80s and 90s that were much more in the style of earlier work like Fritz the Cat (1972), Heavy Traffic (1973) and Coonskin (1975), films that included American Pop (1981), Hey Good Lookin’ (1982), Fire and Ice (1983) (the odd film out here, being a return to the kind of fantasy he’d previously explored in Wizards (1977) and The Lord of the Rings) and his last feature to date, Cool World (1992).
This brings back memories. My best friend and I were Tolkien nuts and for Christmas one year he gave me the soundtrack to this film (this was late seventies so it was a two record set). I loved listening to it and I think the music is one of the stronger aspects of the film. I never got to see it in the theatre but enter VHS and I rented and watched it and…found it disappointing. I think it starts strong and the initial animation is good but the rotoscoping (as you said) just looks odd. And the ending sadly looks like the money was running out. Rankin and Bass’ The Hobbit was wonderful (better than Jackson’s bloated trilogy) but their animation style couldn’t capture the epic nature of the Lord of the Ring so “Return of the King” was also disappointing. Years later, that same friend emails me one of the earliest images released of Jackson’s cinematic vision for the books and I got excited all over again. And this time I was not disappointed. But in retrospect, I give Bakshi a thumbs up for trying.
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I agree, he definitely deserves credit for trying but it just wasn’t to be. A noble effort but one probably doomed to failure from the start.
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Sometimes the time and circumstances are on the side of the filmmakers and sometimes not. Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings was a pinnacle for filmmaking at the beginning of this century and just after Gladiator. It’s enough to make me more sensitive to all the efforts for how this animated original came about.
Thanks, Kevin, for your review.
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As a child I found this creepy and somewhat unsatisfying, but it stuck with me. When I became a teen I found myself searching hard for the (then rare) video of that weird LotR adaptation by the guy that made Fire and Ice, and when re-watching I found it fatally flawed, but with so many interesting and unique points I couldn’t help loving it. As someone said above – the Rosenman score is memorable and catchy, and some scenes work well. I found it, when re-watching, to be, like Tron, so unique in it’s own way, it was like time-traveling to see it again. The ending is still the worst case of cinematic coitus interruptus ever, though. But it does make me long for the ‘what if’ of the second half we never got to see. Like you said, the movie – despite going over budget – was a financial success, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason to not have given the sequel the go-ahead. I think it deserved more recognition when Jackson’s version came out, as though Jackson denied at the time even seeing the Bakshi version there was clearly some inspiration taken from it. I believe Jackson has since admitted it being an influence (I think that’s correct – I could be misremembering). I seriously doubt anyone who grew up on the Jackson version could find the Bakshi version satisfying, but whether an animation fan, a Tolkien fan, or a fan of 70’s Prog Rock (yes really – I make that connection!) I think people should own a copy of this – it’s much-maligned, and some of that is deserved, but it’s still a valiant and interesting stab at a sprawling fantasy epic from a time when – like with live action superheros – lovers of those things had very little to keep them going, and you frequently took what you could get. It’s a dark masterpiece next to the Rankin Bass ‘Return of the King’ effort (not that I dislike Rankin Bass, their ‘Flight of Dragons’ was a constant re-watch when I was younger).
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