Pi in the Sky

The Lord Of The Rings (1978)

Posted on May 27th, 2007 at 6:49pm by Pi.
Categories: Cinema.

The Lord Of The Rings
Fantasy. USA, 1978
Director: Ralph Bakshi
Writers: J.R.R. Tolkien (original novels), Chris Conkling (screenplay), and more
Cast: Christopher Guard, William Squire, John Hurt

Failed attempt to translate Tolkien’s monumental work into a series of movies, and certainly disappointing from multiple views.

This is an animation movie which comprises about half of the original book, in little more than 2 hours. It contains the first part, and half of the second. It ends abruptly after the battle at Helm’s Deep. There were plans to make a second part, with the other half of the story; but the studio never put the money for it.

So, basically this is an incomplete story, since the second part was never made. We never get to know if Frodo got to destroy the ring, nor if Aragorn went to Minas Tirith to save Gondor. At that point, the entire movie is disappointing.

The entire movie is animated used a technique called rotoscoping, which consists in filming live action, and then drawing over the filmed frames. Supposedly this yields a more natural animation. The whole movie was filmed in black and white and then rotoscoped. However, retouched black and white live action is often substituting truly redrawn graphics. In some scenes, this effect gives great results, but overall it makes the movie look quite badly done.

The visual design is quite poor. For example, orcs look like cheap rehashed Morlocks, or like any low-budget 60’s blobby monster. The characters have a quite simple and clean look, which contrasts greatly when a lot more detail comes in when using retouched live action. There aren’t any big scapes, or wide angle views of the battles or anything, there’s no sense of perspective or depth in many shots which should have been made to look grandious. Plus, you get to see a dwarf who is as tall as an elf. Only some of the backgrounds are worth it, and I honestly have to say that some of them were quite well done. But the rest, it’s quite poor.

The original story has been greatly simplified. I don’t mean cutting parts not essential to the story, for example, Arwen doesn’t appear. I mean making the whole story a whole lot simpler, and in a way, shallower. There’s a feeling that all the surviving details of the story are slightly distorted, and that’s, in my opinion, the real big flaw of this movie. You can’t see anything of the spirit of TLOTR in this movie. It’s like someone who has heard the story from second hand is trying to explain it to you: the basics of the story are there, but beyond the first layer, there’s no other similarity. There’s no magic or depth in the characters, situations, dialogues, battles… The ring, which should be a character on its own, barely appears. And I could go on and on and on about things which should have stayed, but somehow the writers decided that they could go.

Anyone who has read the original book will see that the movie falls very, very short in that aspect. As an adaptation, this movie is awful. But, even not counting the movie as an adaptation, it still fails. While the plot is simple and clear, often you don’t know what’s exactly happening. Scenes are sometimes confusing, not knowing how you got from one to another. The characters’ motivations are often unclear or not understandable at all, and the characters are very poorly developed. There’s no tension or thrill in most of what they should have been climatic moments, and in general the movie doesn’t seem interesting.

To add to the whole mess, the soundtrack is pretty weak. I really don’t think that there are more than two or three good moments in terms of music, the rest is fairly bland and unoriginal.

And all that is without comparing it to the new TLOTR trilogy by Peter Jackson. If I had to compare to it, I would just put “absolutely awful, avoid at all costs” and be done with it. Oh well, I guess I would also comment that some of the shots are surprisingly similar between both versions. I guess Jackson still got some inspiration about how to do a handful of scenes; and a lot more inspiration about how to not do the whole lot.

Now, beyond all my evil critics towards the movie, I’ll also add that, for the time, it was a very brave attempt at making a great story in animation form, using some risky techniques and original approaches. While maybe the result is flawed, it shows some originality in the way it’s made, and IMHO it could have been at least decent if it could have had a bit more budget and a bit more brain in the script. You can see that there’s an effort, althought it didn’t give the intended results.

Still, I think it’s interesting to see it, for a variety of reasons. There’s an historical interest, from the perspective of TLOTR fans, to know about the first adaptation. There’s also some interest in comparing this with Jackson’s creation, which makes a big contrast. And I think it’s a quite interesting piece of cinema from a technical point of view, for all that rotoscoping and stuff. It is not a good movie IMHO, but I think it could be interesting. However, if you’re not interested in any of these things, but in watching a cool movie, then I’ll just have to say that you should avoid it and go directly for Jackson’s ones.

As trivia, it was the first movie that Tim Burton worked in, as a temporal animator. He’s not even credited, but it was his first job in the movie industry.

My score: 5/10. Not good, but interesting to watch once if you can stand it.

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