Lord Of The Rings, The
There can be few people that haven't heard of Peter Jackson's excellent trilogy of films on The Lord Of The Rings but before that, all that fans of J.R.R Tolkien's magnificent fantasy tale was this animated version, released to the movie going public in 1978 and it's all we had for over 20 years.
There can be few people that haven't heard of Peter Jackson's excellent trilogy of films on The Lord Of The Rings but before that, all that fans of J.R.R Tolkien's magnificent fantasy tale was this animated version, released to the movie going public in 1978 and it's all we had for over 20 years.
For those that don't know the story already, it's the tale of a powerful magic ring and the attempt by the powers for good to see it destroyed before its evil creator can possess it again and, through it, rule the world. That's the simple, one-line, précis but it's a vast tale that started life in Tolkien's earlier work "The Hobbit" where Bilbo Baggins found the ring, lost by a creature called Sméagol, under a mountain and returned with it to his home in The Shire. Tolkien then developed that sub-plot into what was to become one of the classic books of the 20th century.
The ring was forged by the dark lord Sauron as a means of controlling the Elven rings of power given to the rulers of the races of Middle Earth, but Sauron was defeated in his first attempt at world domination and the ring was lost for thousands of years. Now Sauron is rising again in power and his minions are abroad, looking for the one ring.
Meantime, Bilbo passed the ring to his nephew Frodo, upon who's diminutive shoulders is laid the task of carrying it to the only place that it can be destroyed - Mount Doom, deep within the heart of Sauron's power - in the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie…
Review
Forming the first half of an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, this movie covers the events in "The Fellowship Of The Ring" and "The Two Towers" up until the battle of Helm's Deep. Director Ralph Bakshi's original plan was to have three movies but production constraints cut that down to two and then those were pared to the bone to get the story told in the time allowed. Unfortunately the second and final instalment was dropped by MGM and remained on the drawing board until Peter Jackson met with Saul Zaentz, who owned the film rights, and New Line Cinema to discuss filming the entire three books so we'll almost certainly never see the completion of this project now. Released by Warner in late 2001, this DVD version was obviously an attempt to get on the bandwagon before Peter Jackson's well-publicised work hit the screens.
I remember thinking when I read the book in the early seventies that it would make a great movie but the chances of anyone translating such a huge fantasy tale into film was almost certainly never going to happen. Even if they did, goodness knows how they would manage to do the big effects sequences like Moria, Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith or Mordor convincingly. Animation seemed the only answer at the time as we had nothing like today's CGI visual effects. Unfortunately, Ralph Bakshi's decision to use one particular animation technique is in part responsible for a lot of the criticism the film received on its release.
That technique is called rotoscoping, which basically involves filming a sequence with live actors in the traditional manner and then getting the animators to paint over the frames to achieve the desired effect. This is often used to reduce the time, and money, taken to generate an animated sequence but, as with most such techniques, the results can vary tremendously and it is seen by some animators as a tool of those less skilled in the craft. The main characters of the Fellowship are all nicely animated and fluid with the exception of a couple of scenes, when leaving Rivendell and a scene in Moria, where it looks like they skimped on the finishing artwork. This somewhat unfinished looking rotoscoping technique is also heavily used elsewhere, e.g. the inn at Bree, the Rohirrim, all of the evil characters (Orcs, Goblins, Trolls, the Nazghûl and the Balrog) and the battle for Helm's Deep. Strangely, it works quite well for the Nazghûl, who are often depicted against an odd unearthly background but the Balrog, a creature that should have been one of the most terrifying monsters in the movie, is reduced to looking like a big bloke in a fancy dress costume.
The other main criticism is that we only get half the story and even that seemed rushed in the second half. I can only assume that Bakshi was under pressure to get the movie completed within the time frame and budget allowed and this is evident in other places. The rich and involved tale has had to be pared down to fit into the just over two hours running time allowed. It does manage to cover the major events from the book and does skip along at a reasonable pace but at the expense of some good parts of the tale. For example, the trek over the pass on Caradhras, where the Fellowship learn just how difficult this quest is going to be and what they are up against, is skimped over and the snow effects are terrible.
The picture is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, which works quite well with no compression artefacts but it does suffer from some graininess and some obvious print damage in places. Colours are good but it is also quite dark and I felt that blacks could have been better. The rotoscoping animation techniques also give it a somewhat jittery look against the hand painted and sometimes psychedelic backgrounds. The aforesaid hand painted backgrounds are pretty well done but differ so much from the animated characters that they make those seem somewhat poorer by comparison.
The sound is presented in Dolby 2.0 Surround, which gives it a bit of an improvement over the movie's original stereo soundtrack and it's nice to see that they did a little work to appeal to todayÕs market. The quality of the soundtrack is okay with clear dialogue and a decent score by Leonard Rosenman. There is reasonable left right separation but not much from the rear except during some of the more frantic and busy scenes. Voice characterizations are clear throughout, although I wasn't convinced that John Hurt's voice, excellent though it is, fit the physical appearance of Aragorn. Peter Woodthorpe does a good job as the voice of Gollum but I can't say I recognised many other names in there except Anthony Daniels as Legolas and Annette Crosbie as Galadriel.
Bakshi had good intentions at the beginning of the project but he didn't really get to make the movie he wanted to and that much is evident here. That aside, it is watchable and anyone that already knows the story should be able to follow it fairly easily. There was a TV version called The Return Of The King made by Warner to complete the story but I haven't ever seen this and it is reputedly a pretty poor affair and as far as I can see, the DVD version of this is only available in Region 1 format.
Extras
There are no extras, other than a page of cast and crew credits, which is a pity. There must have been something they could have included from the archives.
Overall
With the release of Peter Jackson's far superior films onto DVD, it's unavoidable not to compare the two. Against that master work, this DVD offering may seem like too little, too late and that is pretty much the case but there is some value in it for Tolkien or animation fans.
Anyway, there are no extras and only half a story but if you're a Tolkien fan, then you might like to see this just for completion and to see what we older members of society had to make do with in the seventies. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone else though.
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