Film: Lord of the Rings (1978)

Yesterday I watched Ralph Bakshi's animated Lord of the Rings, which is based on the first two books.

Recently Peter Jackson completed the trilogy across three 3 - 3 and an half hour films (not including deleted scenes included on the extended cuts), Bakshi managed to tell half of that story in just over 2 hours. Originally subtitled as Part One, a second film was planned but never created despite commercial success. The helm would later be taken over be Rankin Bass Productions Return of the King which was made more as a follow up to their earlier film The Hobbit.

Bakshi, like in his previous work, uses rotascoping to animated his characters, the process of filming live actors and then using that as a template to create more realistic movement. The use creates an odd mix of style in this work, at times you would think this was never done and then suddenly a shot would appear with such life like characters that it looks more like Richard Linklater's Waking Life (2001) or A Scanner Darkly (2006) then your archetypical cartoon [sic]. Though Bakshi at this time was seen as one of the most daring and cutting edge animators, it's no wonder that these shots look almost like dark pop art pieces.

At two hours for an animation this may seem long but considering the depth of the original books by many this may not be long enough. I thought the earlier moments of the film just skimmed past to quickly. There are some great moments in this film the most memorable for me was the encounter of Gandalf and Saruman, however i found the unbalanced mix of animation style i bit cheap and in general it seems a little flat at times.