Z's first Tolkien Experience

I had first seen Ralph Bakshi's LOTR in 1978, the year it first came out. I was in high school, a burgeoning geek- part of the after school "Science Fiction Club". Of course the club was into Star Trek, Star Wars and Tolkien. My first attempt to speed-read through "The Fellowship of the Ring" was pretty unsuccessful. I barely registered the plot and knew only the barest essentials about the characters. Once I saw the Bakshi movie, I at least managed to walk away with some understanding of the book, so it encouraged me to re-read the books properly.

I recall thinking rather well of the movie, and I had bought several of the film-related books.  For the longest time, the image of Boromir as a Viking had stuck with me, even though I realized that  the characterization was completely wrong. Several years ago, the movie was shown on TV, and I recall being somewhat bored by the almost endless Nazgûl chase at the Fords of Bruinen and the interminable scenes of the Orcs driving Merry and Pippin through Rohan. I didn't give the Bakshi film another thought until Peter Jackson's film version of "The Fellowship of the Ring" came out in 2001. I was very moved by that movie, and touched by the genuine warmth of Ian McKellen's Gandalf. After seeing it several times, I decided to rent the old Bakshi version, to give my first Tolkien experience another CLOSE look, this time through an adult's eyes.

The Animation

You might say that Ralph Bakshi's LOTR is half-animated. It really looks as if 80% of the film's budget was used in the first hour, and when they started to run out of money, they started to seriously cut corners in production, and the movie took a STEEP downhill slide in quality in the 2nd half.

Part of the controversy was the animation technique of "rotoscoping"- filming live-action and then drawing the cartoon cels on top of the film. It does make for very realistic movement, but there was something disconcerting about it. Characters came off as jittery and fidgety. But at least, in the film's first half, the animators really DID take the trouble to draw cartoon cels on top of the photographic image and dispensed with the photo after the figure was completely rendered in animation. In the second half, we are lucky to see half-baked traced OUTLINES of the characters, with most of the original, live-action video still visible! It got even worse during every Nazgûl, Orc and battle scene- they got rid of the animation entirely and depended on tinted, high-contrast (posterized) and distorted live-action filmed actors to carry parts of the story! It really is as horrible as it sounds- those scenes look "cheap", especially compared to the truly animated scenes (with animated characters) in Hobbiton, Bree, Rivendell and Edoras.

Another thing that I had noticed was the "flat" look of the movie. Multi-plane camera technology had been around since the 1930's, and Disney made extensive use of it to give their animated features the look of true depth. The multi-plane cameras allowed the animators to have foreground elements on one plane, characters on a different one and background elements on another. As the camera zoomed in, you would begin to see AROUND the foreground objects, and when characters walked, the foreground would whiz by, while the mountains in the back would stay fairly static, just like things would appear in real-life. LOTR  has only 2 brief multi-plane scenes (Bree and Weathertop), so most of the movie never really puts the viewer "inside" the picture.

It almost looks like we're watching 2 movies unsuccessfully spliced together- one movie was truly animated, with every scene (even freeze-framed on DVD) looking like illustrations in a gorgeous children's LOTR book. The other movie was simply shot live action, with the cheapest costuming and makeup imaginable!

Prologue: Where Less looks like Less

It doesn't start off very well. A prologue gives us the history of the forging of the One Ring by the Dark Lord Sauron and the war in which Prince Isuldur cut the ring from Sauron's hand. Isildur admires the ring, but is shot down by Orcs and the ring drops into the Great River, where it sits for ages until it is found by two hobbit-like creatures. One of these creatures, Sméagol, wants it and kills his friend for it. (On a side note, the Sméagol scenes are hideously over-acted).

Well, the idea is generally right, but the way it was shot is AWFUL. The prologue is not really "animated"- not that I can see. It's a bunch of silhouettes behind a red woven window shade! That's right- you too can film LOTR with a flashlight, a window shade and finger puppets! Or if you're ambitious, you can use a bigger shade and film your friends! No costuming, and all props can be cardboard- who'd know?

Hour 1: Where most of it is done Right

I really love the way the first hour (after the prologue) was produced. THIS is animation! Every hobbit at Bilbo's birthday party is beautifully drawn, and the painted backgrounds are real paintings.

The script follows the book reasonably faithfully in the first hour, with a few deletions- The Old Forest, Tom Bombadil, The Barrow Downs for starters. For the most part, the first hour is worth watching and I have few complaints about the quality of the animation. I find a few of the plot and character changes to be rather ludicrous, but it really isn’t as bad as it sounds. We get to "learn" the following things (which were NOT in the book!)

• When Gandalf throws the Ring into the fire, he retrieves the ring and tells Frodo that it is the One Ring. And why? Because it stays cool in the fire? Nobody actually READS it. Gandalf recites the "One Ring to Rule them all..." verses but he's clearly doing it from memory, right?

• Sam is a mind-reader and can discern important parts of historical tales without having people MENTION them. When Gandalf pulls Sam Gamgee out of a bush, Gandalf demands to know what Sam had overheard. Sam (looking very silly as he goose-steps around in a little circle) babbles that he heard about Rings and enemies and Elves and asks if he can see an Elf. Problem is, during Frodo and Gandalf's entire conversation made no mention of the word "Elves". Where DOES Sam get these ideas from?

• The Nazgûl wear SHORT GREY cloaks. When the hobbits are first "sniffed out" by a Nazgûl, it's dragging its leg as if it was run over by an 18-wheeler. BUT... later on, their legs must heal miraculously, because they don't have any trouble walking around trying to kill the hobbits in Bree! The Nazgûl have amazingly inconsistent vocalizations... in the Shire, they snuffle and moan like a pooch being put out of its misery. In Bree, they communicate via gestures and high-pitched shrieks. And at the Fords, they speak in menacing (and perfectly intelligible) whispers, "Come back! The Ring! To Mordor we will take you!"

• Saruman the White wears red robes. And the difference between "room" and "roof" is a little fuzzy at Isengard. Gandalf first speaks to Saruman in a room. Saruman zaps Gandalf and freezes him on what's supposed to be the "roof" of Orthanc. But, since they never leave the room during their battle, the walls just sorta disappear.

• Aragorn is a weather-beaten man with a sleeveless tunic and a skirt. As he draws the Sword that Was Broken, the Hobbits are SUPPOSED to know what the significance of the sword is, and they're supposed to be impressed by his name, Aragorn. Not that Gandalf had given them any, eh, letters to explain a few things...?

• Sam Gamgee is swishy and seriously in love with Frodo. Yes, I MEAN IT, shocking as it may seem. At Weathertop, when Aragorn tells the hobbits the story of Beren and Lúthien, he closes with "he was her doom, but her love as well". Sam reaches over to touch Frodo with a look of intense longing in his eyes. This tender moment is interrupted by an attack by the Black Riders. Darn! Couldn't the Nazgûl give them some privacy? They were relating! A "Swishy Sam" scene comes up much later in Lothlórien, when Sam meets Galadriel. Sam's bow is more like a curtsey, and he giggles like a girl!
  

• Legolas meets Aragorn and the Hobbits at the Fords of Bruinen. But that's okay- no one knows who Glorfindel is, so Legolas as a substitute works- fewer characters to keep track of.

• Boromir is a Viking. The significance of Gondor, and how it relates to the Sword, and how Aragorn fits into all this is never explained. It never goes into Boromir's doubt, and seeing Aragorn as a potential future rival because there WAS NO KINGSHIP in question! Plus, In the book, Boromir was the heir of Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. That was a position more prestigious than that of many kings. His cloak was supposed to be "lined with fur", and the movie has him with a big ol' PELT thrown over his shoulders and belted at the waist, with a horned helmet. Boromir's real status would be akin to a PRINCE, yet the movie shows him as a simply-dressed Viking. Gee, Gondor must be a poor realm if a prince dresses like that. I'd hate to see the sorry condition of the average farmer...

• Aragorn and Boromir can handle all types of weather in the same clothing. The Fellowship goes South, and tries to cross over the mountains via the Pass of Caradhras. They are bombarded by a snowstorm and have to turn back. So... here they are in the snowy mountains and they're STILL dressed for summer weather? Aragorn and Boromir are wearing short sleeved shirts? Sure, Aragorn has a cloak and Boromir is wearing a pelt, but didn't it ever occur to them that LONG SLEEVES are a most excellent invention? And pants? But no, both of them are wearing skirts, so their poor bare legs can freeze in the snow!

• The Dwarves designed Moria to scare the bejeebers out of people. The ruins that the Fellowship walked through did not look like the ruins of a PALACE. The Dwarves originally built Moria as a vast city and a showcase for the greatest of their arts (mining, metal work, stonecraft). It was supposed to be BEAUTIFUL, yet the movie shows Moria as a place full of scary stone gargoyles and hideous faces sculpted in the walls. Dwarves would want to live THERE? They'd make their greatest city and proudest achievement look like Dracula's castle?

• The Balrog has a lion’s head, huge butterfly wings and huge FEET. Not scary or intimidating at all. In proportion to the Orcs, the Balrog is no more than 10 feet tall.
  

The dissension within the Fellowship follows the book closely until Merry and Pippin go off on their own, looking for Frodo.

• Merry and Pippin are clueless with no sense of self-preservation. We see them tearing through the forest at full speed (supposedly looking for Frodo) and then they land smack-dab in the Orc camp at a clearing. They look like they'd practically JUMPED into the arms of the Orcs! So, when was the last time you'd searched for someone by making blind, full-speed ahead mad dashes and not bothering to look ahead of you??? I really had to replay this scene several times to BELIEVE what I was SEEING!

Hour 2: Where it all falls apart

This is where the quality of the animation goes downhill, and steadily gets worse and worse. Distorted, color tinted live-action scenes "take over" the movie. And… speaking of the Orcs, this is how they are portrayed:

• Basically, we have several types of Orcs (not that this represents any Orc factions, or any differences between the Uruk-Hai and the Mordor Orcs). We have the horned Orcs with fangs, wearing tattered dark-green short togas. Then we have the gorilla-masked Orcs wearing long, burlap sack robes. Then we have the "mummy" Orcs, who simply have a bunch of grey bandages wrapped completely around their heads, wearing robes. We also have a few, gnarly, tree-like Ent-wannabes. Worst of all, the "head on a stick" Orcs which weren't even actors at all- they were mannequins dressed up and shoved into the foreground of several scenes to MAKE it look like there were more Orcs! No "White Hand" or "Red Eye" symbols to show their affiliation.
  

In the meantime, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli spend days chasing after Orcs. We see a bit too much of the wonders of rotoscoping when Aragorn is so very realistically animated as he runs (his legs get caught up with his sword), trips and falls flat on his face! They meet Gandalf on the road. And we get to see yet another terrible "new" money-saving technique: shoving a still-life painting in front of the camera while Gandalf yaks in the background about how he escaped the Balrog. The painting does not resemble the animated Gandalf or Balrog (from the earlier scenes in Moria) AT ALL.

• Fangorn, and the Ents are merely incidental. Merry and Pippin are found by Treebeard in Fangorn Forest. But Treebeard did absolutely NOTHING. He walked around with Merry and Pippin in his branch-like hands and spat out leaves, but nothing else! Treebeard, and the Ents of Fangorn played NO ROLE in the victory of Helm's Deep AT ALL! This also leaves the Merry/Pippin/Treebeard subplot unresolved, since they never return to the film, leaving all of us to wonder "what happened to them?"
  

• The Orcs can barely speak, but they sure can sing! Based on seeing this movie, the Orcs speak in harsh, slobbering snarls. But if you get a bunch of them together with some horns and war drums, they manage to pull off some impressive choral singing (their Isengard War March) as they storm across Rohan to invade the fortress of Helm's Deep.

• In Rohan, they must have a metal shortage. Because of this, the Riders have no protective armor or helmets, making them easy pickings for their enemies. They go into battle and fight Orcs wearing only short-sleeved cotton tunics and a headbands. Even Éomer, the nephew of the King, doesn't manage to find a breastplate or any other protective gear. Even though every Rohirrim, from the humblest soldier to the Third Marshal of the Mark is armor-less, King Théoden's HORSE is protected with a coat of mail scales. Therefore, a horse must be more valuable than any of the men! Go figure.

• Back in Rohan, The battle of Helm's Deep is won when Gandalf rides in to the rescue with a bunch of reinforcements! Whoo! Then the ending narration informs us that the forces of Darkness had been wiped out of Middle Earth FOREVER! (Uh... what about Mordor? There's plenty more Orcs there!) Rumor has it that the film reels were switched, so LOTR could end on a "triumphant" note.

Peter Jackson's LOTR is a superior movie on almost all counts- well deserving of the praise and the financial success that it had received. But- just to pick a few bones, there are a few places where Bakshi did it better:

• The passage of time between Bilbo's party and Gandalf's visit to Frodo to examine the Ring. The Bakshi film showed 17 years passing. The Jackson film gives the impression that it may have been only a month between the party and Gandalf's visit.

• The Prancing Pony at Bree. The Bakshi film showed the inn as being a merry place, with a warm fire, and singing and dancing. Bakshi (rightly) introduced the innkeeper as Mr. Butterbur. The Jackson film showed the Inn as a rather scary place, filled with murderous-looking brutes (from the vantage point of a hobbit), run by a decent, but not overly friendly nameless inkeeper.

• Aragorn meets the Hobbits. The Bakshi film spent a bit more time in introducing the character of Aragorn, and his attempts to win the hobbits' trust. It correctly shows Sam's reluctance to trust some strange Ranger who they just met. Jackson's film seems a bit too abrupt concerning the hobbits' willingness to accept Aragorn's help.

• Galadriel. Is it just me, or did Jackson's depiction of Galadriel scare the hell out of you, too? It's really a good thing that I'd read the book, because in Jackson's movie, Galadriel is cold, dangerous, threatening and downright creepy. Look at things from a simple hobbit's viewpoint- after seeing Galadriel's little transformation in the garden, wouldn't you run and hide and cower at the very mention of the name "Galadriel"? Bakshi, much more sensibly, portrayed Galadriel as a benevolent queen.
  

• Better reasons for Frodo to offer the Ring to Galadriel. In Bakshi's film, after she told him that the destruction of the Ring would cause the fair realm of Lothlórien to fade away, Frodo offered her the Ring. Quite understandably, since this revelation hit him like a ton of bricks... all of the previous discussions about the Ring had only told him of its evil and the need to destroy it.  He was never told about the effect that destroying the Ring would also have on Lothlórien and everything the Elves built with their Three Rings. So, Frodo became over-awed by this responsibility, and hoped that someone as good and wise as Galadriel would know what to do with it- the matter was becoming too big for a simple hobbit. In Peter Jackson's film, the impetus for Frodo to offer the Ring to Galadriel was her prediction that the Ring would eventually corrupt and destroy everyone in the Fellowship. Huh?

Screenshots from Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings"

So, there you have it… Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings. It had so much potential, but in retrospect, I realize that this film could not have satisfied any of its target audiences. The story is too complicated for children, and the length of the movie (over 2 hours) would make kids squirm with impatience, especially since none of it was "funny" and the plot was not altered to simplify it. Teenagers would be just the right age for "pure" Tolkien… as in reading the book. And Tolkien buffs could not be satisfied with the midway-point decline in quality, or seeing favorite scenes from The Two Towers rushed through. The movie might have made it if it went on for 3 hours, and if the budget allowed all of it to be animated. Still, it is worth a look, even though your jaw will drop in disbelief when you see how well it starts off (let’s not THINK about the Prologue) and how wretched it becomes at the end.

Related Pages:
Rankin-Bass' Return of the King

This article is Copyright 2002, K.F. Louie. May not be reproduced without the written permission of the author.

Movie stills are Copyright 1978, Tolkien Enterprises, Berkeley, California. Used without permission.

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