The Lord of the Rings (1978)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1978
	Director: Ralph Bakshi (Wizards, Fire and Ice)
	Actors (voices): Christopher Guard, William Squire, Michael Scholes, John Hurt (1984, The Oxford Murders)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Adventure, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 15.01.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: In a fictionnal Middle-Earth, Frodo the Hobbit inherits a magic Ring from his uncle Bilbo. Guided by Gandalf the Magician, he will join a company to bring the Ring to destruction.
Review: Twenty years before the production of the famous trilogy by Peter Jackson officially started, somebody had already tried to bring to the big screen the masterpiece by J.R.R Tolkien which was supposed to be impossible to adapt. This man is Ralph Bakshi that I knew already from the Heroic Fantasy animated movie Fire and Ice which I quite liked. Like on Fire and Ice, Bakshi uses on The Lord of the Rings the technique called rotoscopy, i.e. he shot the whole movie in live action and then every single film frame was redrawn on celluloid to be later on animated. The advantages are that the animation is much more fluent and realistic, and the movie is supposed to be cheaper to do than a better-looking live action film or than a pure celluloid animated (because the artists mainly have to copy and not animate from scratch). This technique can also give the movie a more artistic tone as the backgrounds can be painted for a more dramatic impression. The drawback is that depending on how well it is done, you can either lack of details, or be confused by the too large amount of motions. So how was the result on The Lord of the Rings back in 1978? Well, it is interesting to see one of the first animated movies for adults produced at a time when Disney was on the decline, and the fluidity of animation brought by rotoscopy is indeed interesting. But I can't shake the feeling of boredom I had when watching the movie. Some reasons for that may be the poor acting and the poor voice performance, the too slow pace and bad editing, and expecially the soundtrack which is not exciting at all when there is any. It is a pity because it was a noble enterprise. Funny detail: in one scene and thanks to one look, the often interpreted latent homosexuality feelings between Frodo and Sam are made veeery obvious. There is another major problem but you notice it only if you watch the whole movie (2h16m). I remember to have read that the third book (The Return of the King) was extremely shortened in this movie, but it is actually not covered at all! The first 1h15 is dedicated to The Fellowship and the next hour to The Two Towers, and the movie stops there with the mention that it was the first part only. It is obvious that a second part was planned but never produced in spite of the commercial success of the movie. But the worst is that you expect to see the whole Lord of the Rings story as the Blu-ray cover doesn't mention that. I learned that it never did, neither in the cinema posters nor on the VHS/DVD/Blu-ray releases: cheaty marketing. Note that there exist animated versions of The Hobbit and of The Return of the King produced by a different team (more for children), and that the three movies are sometimes sold in a package. The recent Blu-ray edition is accompanied by a 30-minute making-of documentary entitled Forging through the darkness, but it is rather a fascinating tale of the life of Ralph Bakshi with minor emphasis on The Lord of the Rings. I had always thought that Peter Jackson claimed having had no influence at all from the Bakshi movie, but when watching some shots (Proudfeet!, Helm's Deep) and editing choices (exit Tom Bombadil, Shelob moved to The Return), it is obvious that this was not true, and I finally learned that Jackson acknowledged the influence and even praised it. Having recently watched An Unexpected Journey twice and all associated documentaries, The Desolation of Smaug in the cinema and this 1978 version of the Lord of the Rings, I am now very tempted to watch the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson version) in Blu-ray, which I haven't done yet since I purchase it. The more I write about this movie the more I want to give it a good rating because of its historial and cultural significance. I started at 2/10 and raised it to 4/10, but seriously I leave it at 3/10.
Rating: 3 /10