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Animated Tolkien

post #1 of 15
9/28/11 at 10:30am
Thread Starter 

My personal favorite Lord of the Rings is the one made by Ralph Bakshi. It turned me on to Tolkien when I was a young child. LoR was considered satanic in my church especially after the Bakshi cartoon came out and it was considered a horror movie. overall it perfectly captures my vision of the book even though some of the drawings are different from how Tolkien described them. It is more faithful than Peter Jackson. The sequel I am writing owes a lot to this cartoon and I wondered if I was alone in loving it. The Return of the King cartoon is okay too but not as good as Bakshis.

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post #2 of 15
9/28/11 at 10:57am
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post #3 of 15
9/28/11 at 11:00am
Thread Starter 

I really wish he'd gotten to do the ents at Isengard.

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post #4 of 15
9/28/11 at 11:05am
196
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post #5 of 15
9/28/11 at 11:15am
392
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post #6 of 15
9/28/11 at 11:24am
Thread Starter 

PJ has said that he did the tree scene as a tribute to Bakshi. That picture of Legolas with his leg up is out of context.

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post #7 of 15
9/28/11 at 11:42am
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post #8 of 15
9/28/11 at 12:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Morgan View Post
 It is more faithful than Peter Jackson.


I don't know what version of Lord of the Rings you've been reading but it most certainly is not. Bakshi might've kept certain lines direct from the book but he completely lost the tone and characters of the book. What he did to the character of Sam is pretty unforgivable. He just missed the heart completely. Personally, I thought Bakshi's version was pretty terrible. 

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post #9 of 15
9/28/11 at 2:32pm

In terms of point-by-point storytelling, Beagle's screenplay is more faithful, albeit heavily truncated. I have a copy of the shooting script (as well as the original draft by Chris Conkling, which told the entire story from Merry and Pippin's point of view [!]); but the what Beagle wrote was actually a very faithful rendition of a compressed Lord of the Rings. All of the visual deviations are straight-up Bakshi; even the prologue, which we see by way of shadow play in the film, wasn't written as such. Indeed, neither Aragorn nor Boromir are written as wearing skirts, and Aragorn is described very much as he is in the book -- not as a Native American.

 

However, Jackson, while taking many liberties, definitely captured the tone of the novel in a way Bakshi never did; but he also had 11.5 hours to do it. And in either event, Jackson wins. But Beagle's screenplay featured few of the things that Bakshi is condemned for; and that includes the "(S)Aruman" debacle.

 

(With that said, I REALLY wish Bakshi hadn't robbed John Boorman of the chance to do his four hour live-action opus; not only does Excalibur give us a sense of how it would have looked and felt, but that screenplay is fucking nuts.)

 
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post #10 of 15
10/4/11 at 8:21am
Thread Starter 

Do not get me wrong, I looooooooove PJ's version, but his movies are just the calendar art. Bakshi made it his own. It is very unique.

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post #11 of 15
10/4/11 at 2:21pm

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Morgan View Post
Bakshi made it his own. It is very unique.

Bakshi rotoscoped the shit out of actors. And in some cases, merely recolored live-action shots. "His own" should be applied very liberally here. And as far as "unique", yeah considering it's incomplete and only the first 1/2 or so of 3 books, forcing the vastly superior R/B adapters to only be able to put out a RETURN OF THE KING without any context besides song mentions of THE HOBBIT's plot... I guess it IS "unique".

 

I saw it on VHS as a kid and dismissed it as a fever dream until revisiting much later. It's weird, alien, ugly, and lacks any of the warmth from other versions. "Unique" for sure.
 

No offense.

 

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post #12 of 15
10/4/11 at 4:50pm

not gonna lie, i remember watching Fritz the Cat on cinemax at 3am one weekend. one of the select few drug movies that makes me NOT want to do drugs. and thats saying something

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post #13 of 15
10/5/11 at 4:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 View Post

 

Bakshi rotoscoped the shit out of actors. And in some cases, merely recolored live-action shots. "His own" should be applied very liberally here. And as far as "unique", yeah considering it's incomplete and only the first 1/2 or so of 3 books, forcing the vastly superior R/B adapters to only be able to put out a RETURN OF THE KING without any context besides song mentions of THE HOBBIT's plot... I guess it IS "unique".

 

I saw it on VHS as a kid and dismissed it as a fever dream until revisiting much later. It's weird, alien, ugly, and lacks any of the warmth from other versions. "Unique" for sure. 

No offense.

 



Agreed on everything here with the exception of the R/B films being "vastly superior." Have you seen Return of the King recently...? It makes Bakshi's film look successful as an adaptation of Tolkien by comparison.

 

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post #14 of 15
10/5/11 at 6:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by erik myers View Post

Agreed on everything here with the exception of the R/B films being "vastly superior." Have you seen Return of the King recently...? It makes Bakshi's film look successful as an adaptation of Tolkien by comparison.

 


Considering how successful they were at THE HOBBIT and Peter S. Beagle's THE LAST UNICORN, I'm gonna chalk it up to being hampered with leftovers and  an attempt to find a focus with a limited running time and no chance to introduce other trilogy-meaningful characters like Legolas, Aragorn, etc. I believe if they were able to do the entire series, we'd be looking at a different version altogether.

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post #15 of 15
10/6/11 at 4:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 View Post

Considering how successful they were at THE HOBBIT and Peter S. Beagle's THE LAST UNICORN, I'm gonna chalk it up to being hampered with leftovers and  an attempt to find a focus with a limited running time and no chance to introduce other trilogy-meaningful characters like Legolas, Aragorn, etc. I believe if they were able to do the entire series, we'd be looking at a different version altogether.



"Successful" is a relative term. Yes, they were successful with children; but as an adaptation of Tolkien, THE HOBBIT wasn't exactly "successful." It just wasn't the screaming shit-fest that was RETURN OF THE KING.

 

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