Animation Defenestration: The one that rotoscoped Tolkien

 

Title: The Lord Of The Rings

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (1/4)

 

In the course of my reviews, I have mentioned occasionally my one actual “rule”: Every film I review gets one viewing within 3 days of when I write the review. This has in fact had a significant impact on the lineup of my reviews, as there have been more times that I finally punted on a movie because the alternative was watching the whole damn thing again. What might seem counterintuitive is that I haven’t pushed the limits that often, especially with movies I planned to review in advance. By the time I get to the point where I’m outright fudging, I usually find even my recollections start to get hazy around the edges. Once in a while, however, a little time is just enough to give me some distance to reflect. With the present review, I have a case and point, a movie I had long been familiar with but didn’t expect to get hold of as soon as I did. I present The Lord of the Rings, the animated version, from none other than my arch enemy Ralph Bakshi. Or, BAAAKSHIII!!!

Our story begins with an introduction with what will be for anyone in this blog’s demographic the familiar story of Middle Earth, the war of elves and men with the evil Sauron, and the adventure of Bilbo Baggins. As the story gets in gear, Gandalf reveals that the overpowered plot device of The Hobbit is really the One Ring, an artifact that concentrates the evil powers of Sauron in one package. It falls to Bilbo’s nephew Frodo to destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom, and the dawning realization for the viewer will be that they’re really going to try to tell a good chunk of the trilogy. In the process, we will see the invincible Ring Wraiths, various orcs, the Balrog, the Ents (or one of them), and the Riders of Rohan, all brought to life with Bakshi’s trademark blend of odd character animation and freaked-out rotoscoping. But all you really need to know is that even though this ends with a whole book still to go, it does not tease a sequel!

The Lord of the Rings was the fifth film by Ralph Bakshi, based on the first two books of the series by J.R.R. Tolkien, from a script by fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle. The film was released a year after the fantasy film Wizards, though both films would have been in production by 1976. It was not related to The Hobbit and Return of the King, both made for television by Rankin Bass. Like Wizards, Lord of the Rings was made with a combination of animation, live-action and rotoscoping. It was one of the most expensive animated films, with a budget estimated at up to or over $8 million. The voice cast included Christopher Guard as Frodo, John Hurt (see The Plague Dogs) as Aragorn and  Anthony Daniels as Legolas. The film was undisputedly profitable, but was controversial among critics and fans. Plans for one or more additional films were cancelled, and specifically left unmentioned in the film and contemporary advertising. An action figure line was produced by Knickerbocker, with only 8 figures; the line suffered from limited distribution among other issues, with a significant part of their distribution apparently coming from mail order offers in comic books. The film has remained available on home video.

For my experiences, I grew up with Tolkien long before the Jackson trilogy came out (enough to model Zaratustra on the Witch King), and in hindsight, the art from sources like A Tolkien Bestiary had a greater impact on me than the books themselves. In my further recollections, I indelibly visualized the books as paintings and animation rather than flesh-and-blood “live action”, right up to reading the trilogy in college shortly before the first Jackson movie (see… Dead Alive???) came out. What’s striking as I think about it now is that the present movie had little if anything to do with it, though I’m sure I saw at least a small part of it at a very early age. What this further cements in my mind is that Bakshi was simply the wrong person for the job, for reasons that go far beyond my issues with his work. It’s the same problem I have considered regarding Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (especially after the Narnia movies came out); you don’t have to argue which one is “better” to see that asking either one continuing the other’s work would be an obviously and epically disastrous idea. (I’ll say this once: Lewis did not do “epic”.)

With that out of the way off the bat, I will be the first to admit that Bakshi handles this far better than he had any right to. To begin with, it’s astonishing how much of the books gets in here, and not just by passing mention. It clearly would have been better if he had been allowed to spread it out over two or three movies to flesh things out. As it stands, at the pace Bakshi manages (presumably with Beagle’s help), we could conceivably have gotten the whole damn thing done in the running time of a Peter Jackson extended edition. What’s downright unsettling is how well his style works, especially for the battles. The part that’s counterintuitive is that the rotoscoping and shadow-play silhouettes fall even further short of “realism” than conventional animation would have. What it provides instead, to very good effect, is an especially grim sort of stylization that would be almost inconceivable with more “modern” methods (the same rant I made in my Conan reviews). What was vaguely psychedelic in Wizards is a somber nightmare here, with bestial orcs shown nearly in monochrome except for their red eyes and purplish blood. (Honorable mention goes to the troll, seen only as a gnarly limb.) The high point is the Balrog, which I’m sure I remember from back when somehow. In cold blood, it’s underwhelming at best, but the presentation, the setting, and the buildup are every bit as valid as Jackson’s CGI monster.

You’ll already have guessed that there’s a big “con” coming, and it is simply this: The conventionally animated characters are awful and ugly, to a degree I neither expected nor can easily account for. The easy targets are the ones that don’t even look like the  books, egregiously Saruman, who goes through his one real scene in what looks like a Santa Claus suit. But there are many more that don’t depart from the books yet still look hideous, including virtually all the hobbits. Possibly worse are Aragorn, who just looks lumpish and seedy, and Gollum, who doesn’t get any favors from an excessively English voice performance. The absolute low point, however, are the Ring Wraiths, and this is where things get mindboggling. The Nazgul as described in the books could be animated with South Park construction paper cutouts and still be terrifying. These look as threatening as deliverymen and move like boys trying to sneak into a naughty movie (Fritz the Cat?). Things only get more frustrating when the rotoscoping is applied; it’s predictably and vastly better, yet still heavy on overcomplicated helmets and other details that are distractingly odd rather than threatening.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and even at the outer limit of the time I allow myself, there was one moment that stood out and still stays with me. In turn, it goes along with a deeper long-running vent. To me, the orcs of Tolkien are possibly the greatest “goons” in all media, rivaled only by the devils of Inferno and the gangsters of Robocop. What I find other adaptations and even casual synopses get wrong is that they are really very smart, often too much for their own good. At any rate, in the midst of a battle between the orcs and the Riders of Rohan, we get one good moment that captures this. While the orcs are being handily routed, one of the more clever specimens drags away their two hobbit captives. Only then, because there is never a situation that the orcs can’t actually make worse by thinking for themselves, does he finally try to figure out if they actually have the One Ring. The hobbits play this up by imitating Gollum (who they haven’t actually met) and muttering about the Precious. It’s enough to get the orc interested, but after just a few moments of this, the orc gets suspicious or irritated enough that he (?) justifiably decides to just kill them. It’s a good moment more faithful to the books than many more acclaimed scenes, but it’s already too little, too late.

In closing, what I come back to is a question I was pondering long ago, was there ever a time or a crew that could have made a “good” animated treatment of Lord of the Rings? I have already nominated Nepenthe, the crew behind Watership Down and Plague Dogs. Bill Tytla, the animator behind “Night On Bald Mountain” in Fantasia, might have done it if Disney could have brought him back from the grave. Other prospects would be into continental or eastern Europe, perhaps a freaky Czech like Svankmajer. (A stop-motion Gollum, possibly made from taxidermied remains? Don’t bother to run, you’ll just look like food…) In the end, the honest answer is that even in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, the era of animation that could tell an epic tale like Tolkien’s was passing, as demonstrated by the mess that was The Black Cauldron. To try it again now would mean a fresh start, perhaps in the style of Secret of Kells or The Red Turtle, ideally with a few more years of distance from Peter Jackson’s series. It still might happen, but then, we’re already in an oversaturated reboot market. The best tribute now would be something original yet in the spirit of Tolkien, which is what we kind of got with Willow. (I will definitely get to it.) The positive takeaway is that anyone can dream, and some will always find a way to make it reality. And with that, I’m done with this damn movie, and boy, am I glad.