1978's The Lord Of The Rings directed by the infamous Ralph Bakshi is terrible.
First of all I need to establish I have no care for this man's work, and rather I don't personally get the "praise"? But all I will say is the argument that he was "progressive" and "kept animation from dying" makes no logical sense- if he was so profound, and really moved animation from just being "for kids" why are most adult animations stuck on TV? Furthermore animation can be mature yes, but he didn't seek to create "older stories" with value, instead most times going for obscene with the occasional message sprinkled in. I will say however that if he had truly made a great work, while I'd still complain about his other projects I could praise it... but that's not the case here.
But that's not my purpose here really, I'm talking about the '78 LOTR and the film itself... is pretty bad. I admit it's what I wanted "a mature animated film, thats mature to tell an older focused epic" but without being obscene and it is that. But... it's also one of the worst most confusing animated films I've ever seen with sequences that are so confusing and baffling... to quote my original review
"The film has moments where you actually think it's competent and interesting, then it goes off the rails, and down the toilet, and then somehow even into a further toilet... it's bad. For one the animation is just ugly, I'm not talking about just the hand-drawn it's the 80s, it's fine. But the actual like character designs, the movements, oh my gosh the rotoscoping is so bad. You flat out can tell it was rotoscoped to death, the characters have the normal hand-drawn then randomly have smooth running or riding animations, then jagged random whatever- and the colors are just OFF. "
Like what even is this- that's meant to be a scary Balrog but like... what
and Ik he had a tight budget- but like I must ask politely... where in the books does it say... "Balrogs have wings?" This is not terrifying, this is corny as all-get-out.
It's also got many other scenes that your just like "what am I looking at?" Like... there's a scene where Frodo's controlled by the Wraiths and it's just so sketchy in terms of quality level... great film to laugh at... which is not the intention...
It's also not titled Part One which is just false marketing because... spoilers... it's only 1.5 books, it's all of Fellowship (with edits) and half of the two towers with a really weird cliff-hanger and the final battle becoming completely nonsensical with slow motion blood splatters and it's just like what??? How... did United Artist see this and think y'know... maybe we should give him the budget to redo the end? It's so bad.
What can I praise it for? Well, it is ambitious, and it is darker, and generally the voice-cast most times works, I'll admit no TLOTR trilogy cast but they work well enough. The opening also has some level of charm and "aura" or at least filmmaker flair, the decision to do live action for the opening narration footage is definetly questionable but show's a level of boldness.
and he did after all do what he set out, and that was make a theatrical Lord Of The Rings. Make a 2 hour adaptation of at least 1.5 of the 3 book material. He did acomplish his ambitious goal, and he did make a film that narratively works for the most part and has good pacing. I don't think it's good but I mean it's better then say Wizards (1977) which has been called flat-out boring.
and on another plus, his choices heavily were said to have inspired Peter Jackson when making his trilogy, I'm not sure what scenes or in what ways, but hey, that's a compliment!
I do wish it was better, and that it could've been a return to making something actually groundbreaking but it was not, at least for me.
