Decades ago Frank Frazetta, Ralph Bakshi, Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas got together and made a movie that blew me away as a nine year old. That film was Fire and Ice, a fantasy adventure featuring buxom women and musclebound swordsmen and monsters and wizards and all the shit that you tried to include in your better homemade D&D modules. Fire and Ice, like Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings, was made using rotoscoping, giving the animation a fluid, realistic look.
Robert Rodriguez has been hunting down the rights to remake that film for years, and now he tells Aint It Cool that he’s finally got them. Says Rodriguez, ‘The awesome Ralph Bakshi and I have been working it out for a while, and it’s now a TROUBLEMAKER STUDIOS PICTURE. What’s cool is, unlike past projects that I’d get involved with that would get stalled for various reasons, I control the rights to this one. So it’s actually in my power to set it up and get it made, which wasn’t the case on other projects. And for you filmmakers out there, that’s really the best way to get things done. If you can manage to get the rights yourself to a property by dealing directly with the artists and creators like I did with Frank Miller on SIN CITY, and now with Ralph Bakshi on FIRE and ICE, it makes a world of difference and you can get started sooner rather than never.’
I imagine this is going to be another heavily green screened film, in the mode of Sin City, but with a completely different look and palette. I feel like a live action green screen version of a rotoscoped cartoon is… well, sort of redundant, honestly, but it’ll be interesting to see how this comes out.
For more about Rodriguez’s love for Frazetta, and to see him backpedal like mad on the Machete Arizona trailer, click here.
If you haven’t seen Fire and Ice, you really should. I haven’t seen the film in years – the DVD sits unopened in my house for some reason – so I don’t know if it’s as good as it was when I was a kid, but the imagery is utterly iconic when it comes to fantasy. You can buy the movie from CHUD by clicking here.
Watch the trailer:
9 comments
Just rewatched it last night. Still holds up to me, but some funky 80"s heavy metalesque goofiness. If it were more violent maybe would be more of a rewatch but the rotoscoping is the best I've seen. Lord of the Rings sucks to me.
Great news! If it works as good as Sin City did, but in that fantastic Frazetta universe, this could be spectacular.
that looks awesome! Ive never heard of it until now. Im definitely picking it up! Thank you
The animation is awesome but the ridiculousness is unbearable. The opening scene is the worst — the hero's village is being run over by a glacier and they just stand there and take it! Come on! The villain's main weapon is a glacier, just fucking get out of the way.
You really should open that DVD. Disc 2 is a well-made feature-length documentary about Frazetta.
Pterodactyl Warbirds! Giant Man-Eating Gila-Monsters! Pond Cthulhus! Awesome Boobage! Some fun stuff in this and it really covers a lot of Frazattas motifs. I'm trying to remember which recent movie ripped off the cliff dive into trees though…
Oh, that's why things get stalled that Rodriguez is involved in, it's property rights. What was he saying about Sin City? I thought Sin City 2 was going to come out before Grindhouse and he owns the rights to this. Maybe he just wants to distance himself from Frank after "The Spirit". Not to say he hasn't been putting out good stuff, Predators and Machete look great.
The DVD is nice (I have it and just watched it again the other day). I originally saw this first in my 20s and the images are stupendous and make up for the awful story. Funny about this news – last week I was telling someone Rodriguez was the only guy capable of a live-action "Fire and Ice".
Hell yhea! can't wait to see this, Rodriguez is a smart producer and director his understanding of the source material for his films is awesome.
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