Decades before Peter Jackson’s cinematic New Zealand-set vision of Middle Earth, there was another adaptation of Tolkien’s masterpiece, in animated form. Ralph Baski’s film The Lord of The Rings adapted the first two books in the literary trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, culminating in the Battle of Helm’s Deep.
The Blu-ray edition of the film has been re-released and is once again readily available for purchase, 15 years after its original release. This is not a new edition, but a repressing of the out of print Blu-ray from 2010.
The Lord of the Rings is a strange and unique beast, highly stylized and making heavy use of rotoscoping to create an uncanny realism. This was a production decision made to help facilitate the epic scale to something manageable for Bakshi’s scrappy animation team, but the result is a unique and often kind of unnerving to look at, a hypnotic mix of realistic and more cartoony imagery.
I remember the first time I saw the film as a kid, and the impact it had on me. It was animated, the kind of film that usually felt safe – but with its uncanny rotoscoped nightmare visuals and violence, it was completely unlike any animated film I had seen before, especially in the battle scenes or sequences with nefarious creatures like the Orcs, Nazgul, or the Balrog. It felt subversive, like I was getting away with watching something I wasn’t supposed to be.
The film had an impact on Peter Jackson as well, and you can clearly see certain shades of influence – specific shots, sequences, and dialogues – that draw from Bakshi’s film. For example, the “Proudfeet” gag, and the sequence in which the four Hobbits hide from the Black Rider, which are both framed in strikingly similar fashion.
Bakshi had intended to finish the story with a followup film, but that never materialized due to myriad conflicts and setbacks. Bizarrely, the film serves as the middle part of a very unofficial trilogy by assembly, at least in the headcanon of many fans, bookended by Rankin & Bass TV movie adaptations of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, animated in a completely different style. I think a lot of modern viewers assume that these three films were conceived as a trilogy, but in actuality the Rankin/Bass films were competing projects, and presented a massive and ultimately insurmountable logistical roadblock for Bakshi, effectively cannibalizing the completion of his vision and remaining a sore point in his artistic journey.
But taken together, the three films do complement each other as a collective narrative; just don’t expect them to ever show up as a box set. (Indeed, the Rankin/Bass films have yet to be released on Blu-ray which is kind of insane to me given this literary franchise’s massive fandom).
After the cultural phenomenon of Jackson’s incredible live action trilogy, the animated films have became kind of unfashionable, seen as inferior and old fashioned, perhaps no longer serving any purpose, having been supplanted by a superior version in the zeitgeist. I know that I certainly felt that way in the early 2000s. But lately I’ve enjoyed rewatching all three of these films and appreciating not only their artistry, but their differences from the now intimately familiar Jackson movies. As a fan, they are complementary rather than competing interpretations.
Furthermore this animated version has some neat surprises in the casting as well (if you can use that term to describe a nearly 50 year old movie), like the great John Hurt in the role of Aragorn, and Anthony “C-3PO” Daniels as Legolas.
Tonally, Bakshi’s vision remains unique, far darker, more textured, and more ambitious than than the Rankin/Bass productions.
The New Line franchise’s most recent film, War of the Rohirrim, returned to the world of animation, bringing things full circle: one ring. What’s old feels fresh again, and the road goes ever on.
The Package
Physically, the re-release is not a new edition but a repress identical to the 2010 release, with the same on-disc content. To that end the disc includes two ads; a dated Warner Blu-ray promo from 2008 and a home video ad for Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season One.
Special Feature:
Forging Through the Darkness – The Ralph Bakshi Vision for The Lord of The Rings (30:25)
The disc’s sole extra is a wonderful exploration of Ralph Bakshi’s life and work, and in particular his work on this film. It’s fascinating stuff, hearing how the rights came together, and how the film was made. It’s one thing to say that the film uses roto-scoping, it’s another to understand the scope and scale of how the film was actually crafted. As Bakshi explains, this wasn’t just people posing in a studio, but a huge production combining all the complex issues of both a complete live action film and an animated one.
Bakshi is a filmmaker that I’ve not always appreciated, when I was younger I often found his style grotesque and lurid. But in recent years I’ve really come to reassess and appreciate him as both a filmmaker and an independent spirit, and now I have nothing but the utmost respect. This short film serves as a great reminder of why he’s such a special artist, and my only wish is that there was more of it.
A/V Out.
Get it at Amazon: The Lord of the Rings (1978) Blu-ray
