Well, a good rule of thumb is that if you seem to remember something from the animated LOTR that you liked, then it wasn’t from Bakshi’s film. (The “whip song,” for example, was from the Rankin/Bass ‘Return of the King’.) My respect for Peter Jackson only increases when I learn that he was broadminded enough to sift through all that hideousness for crumbs of inspiration.
I’ve also noted a tendency for the annoying bits from the Rankin/Bass version (some of the songs, that freaky hallucination where Orcs turn into bunnies, etc.) to become conflated in memory with Bakshi’s attempt. One wonders if the same principle will apply with the Jackson films, and twenty years down the pike Tolkienphiles will be going, “Man, do you rememer that goofy bit in Bakshi’s film where Faramir decided to take the Ring?”
It’s not like he doesn’t have enough to answer for already.
Saul Zaentz wasn’t exactly the moneyman or liason for both films. I dunno exactly what he had to do with the Bakshi version… but the reason he’s in the credits for the Jackson LOTR films is because, from what I understand, he still holds the film rights for LOTR. In short, he’s not giving them money. THEY’RE giving HIM money…
And there WAS a reason the Forest Elves were all German. That reason was this: the voice talent. For some reason, the King Of The Wood Elves was voiced by film director Otto Preminger, whose thick Deutsch accent has lasted durn near as long as Henry Kissinger’s.
Precisely why we got a famous film director to voice the Wood Elf King is not known. We got a famous film director to do Gandalf, sure, but John Huston was well known for his dramatic voice and did a lot of voiceover work. As mentioned previously in this thread, he SOUNDS like you’d expect Gandalf to sound.
Preminger was not known for his voiceovers. I think this may be the only one he ever did. All I can think of is maybe Preminger was in town and Huston ran across him at whatever bar famous film directors go hang out in, and he brought Preminger with him when he came to record his voiceovers, and they figured they’d stick ole Otto in there, too, so’s to pad the credits or something…
I’m just resurrecting this old thread to ask if anyone else is catching Bakshi’s LOTR which has been showing lately on TOON? I had seen it in '78 when it first came out, but had successfully blocked out nearly all recollection of it. However, I took another gander since I wanted to see a few key scenes that I knew PJ had built on when he filmed his movies.
Most of it truly is painful, but the Nazgul/hobbits/tree scene was actually pretty good. And the absence of Arwen during the Ford of Rivendell scene was a blessed relief.
Anyone else catch it? And isn’t TOON showing The Hobbit as well?
My girls (8 and 4) were watching this while I cooked dinner yesterday, and I came in to tell them to wash up, and I saw it and knew what it was right away (they were watching the scene where Frodo slips the ring on in the Prancing Pony) although I hadn’t seen it in at least 15 years. So I got all excited and I was going to allow the rare trat of eating in front of the T.V. Then the Ringwraiths attacked on Weathertop, totally freaking out the 4 year old. So I remembered that the LOtR was inappropriate material for pre-schoolers and then wondered how the heck they could show this stuff on the Cartoon Network before kids’ bedtimes?
I don’t know if the Hobbit is showing as well, but I just wanted to tell everyone that I loved PJ’s LotR movies, but HATE the fact that the Hobbit was not made as well. It’s still one of my favorite books of all time, and I can’t help but see it as PJ would have created it when I read it now. Would it have taken that much more time and money to film The Hobbit? arghhhh!
Anyone who decides to cinematize LOTR has their work cut out for them. As evocative as the book is, there’s a hell of a lot of dreck, and inconsistency of tone.
Tom Bombadil and Glorfindel are all 100% extraneous, for example. Both films did away with them entirely, and good riddance.
The Paths of the Dead sequence rings anticlimactic in the book. All they had to do to gain redemption was attack some boats? Doesn’t make sense. The Jackson film retained the eeriness of the passage while giving it a reason to occur.
As you get to the end of RotK, the tone of the narration suddenly reverts to that of the early passages of FotR. I don’t recall reading this in the biographies I’ve read of him, but I swear he wrote the beginning and the end first, and then someone slipped him some funny aspirin as he wrote the middle part.
In short, as well-loved (and well-deservedly-loved, I should say) as the story is, the book has some serious issues that have to be dealt with one way or another.
Jackson just made MUCH better choices than Bakshi.
Is it my faulty imagination, or do I correctly remember seeing a diamond (or some sort of gemstone) on the ring of the RB The Hobbit (or at least on the videotape cover), like some sort of gaudy engagement ring?
I hold those films responsible for my aversion to Tolkien for so many years. As a child, I saw The Hobbit and I HATED it. It was so hideous and I was so bored and creeped out by it that for years I refused to read Tolkien.
(Although I don’t know if it was the Rankin/Bass version, or the Bakshi version. It was so long ago I can’t remember!)
Then I saw the Peter Jackson films and changed my mind.
Blech! I saw part of it on Cartoon Network the other day and it brought back nightmares.
It was just so embarassingly BAD. The elves all looked like gremlins. What’s up with THAT? Aren’t elves supposed to be tall and slender and beautiful and ethereal?
Aragorn doesn’t wear pants? WTF? (Although if it were Viggo, I don’t think I’d complain…)
I bought the Bashki LOTR for $5 last summer out of curiosity, and for the most part find it hilariously awful. When I watch it I always wonder:
What costume party Aragorn and Boromir got pulled away from to go on the quest. I also sometimes sing that old MST3K stand-by, “Pants! Pants! Sing the praises of pants…”
1a) The naughtier part of my mind also wonders if I were… oh, say, 3 1/2 or 4 feet tall around all these big men in very short skirts, wouldn’t I be more than a little nervous?
Is the person who does poor, brain-damaged Sam’s voice the same person who did Nanny’s voice on the old Count Duckula cartoon? They sound just the same. (However, while most of the goofiness of this film amuses me, I do love Sam, and this travesty of him is almost painful to watch at times).
Is that expansive and lovely garden that Gandalf and Frodo are walking through near the beginning when they talk about the Ring supposed to be the grounds of Bag End? It looks more as if it could be the grounds of Pemberly! Obviously, the Mr. Bagginses are even more wealthy than we had ever imagined.
Can you actually watch the budget of this film decay over the course of it? Some of the animation near the beginning isn’t too bad–that garden, for example, or when the hobbits are first hiking–but by the end it’s all rotoscoping
Is it just me, or does Treebeard resemble the WB Tasmanian Devil?
Also, I get the general impression that the hobbits are presented more like young boys (with oddly furry feet) rather than grown-up little people. There’s one scene in Lothlorien where Aragorn and Frodo are play-swordfighting and Aragorn lets Frodo win; he falls down and Frodo puts one foot on his chest. (I sometimes wonder if Jackson was inspired by this to do the scene in FOTR where Boromir teaches Merry and Pippin to fight, and they tackle him.) Now, this would be darling if Frodo were about 10 years old. But since he’s about 50, it’s kind of weird and perhaps a bit creepy.
There is a ton of critisim of Bashki in this thread, but I wanted to point out his greatest movie. American Pop follows four generations of Russian immigrants and American music. Its a surreal trip through these men’s lives from their start in Russia, to the early 80’s. Tons of great music, a good theme running through it and the beautifully roto-scoped animation make it one of my favorite films.
I still think his LOTR was crap. Jackson LOTR was crap too. There is no way to successfully put that book into film form, although Jackson did it better than Bashki.
I remember reading an interview with Bakshi when the movie was coming out. As I recall, he strongly implied that he’d just personally invented rotoscoping, and said that nobody had ever used slow motion in animation before (also untrue).
I also hated Wizards. Here’s a sample line: an adorable child is asking his mother why the good guys are getting their asses kicked by the evil people; she explains, “They have weapons and technology. We only have love.” Almost lost my lunch. For some reason this movie seems to be popular with the women in my life.
He explains that the studio execs originally wanted LotR to be one movie, and he argued them up to two, since of course there’s no way to condense it down to one. He also wanted to title it LotR Part 1, but the studio wanted him to drop the Part 1 because they didn’t think anybody would come to see a movie advertised as “Part 1”.
Further in the interview Bakshi does admit his animation is crap, but he didn’t have the budget to make it better. He also acts like he doesn’t know Peter Jackson but is certain PJ is going to copy him.
[Homer] Yes honey, that man is known as a penis.[/Homer]
>Is it my faulty imagination, or do I correctly remember seeing a diamond (or
>some sort of gemstone) on the ring of the RB The Hobbit (or at least on the
>videotape cover), like some sort of gaudy engagement ring?
The final shot, if I remember correctly, was a zoom-in on the ring in Bilbo’s house, and it sparkled ominously or something.
I also saw the recent re-showing on Cartoon Network and I’ve got to echo the thoughts stated above: How did I ever like this thing? I saw it waaay back in the day when it first came out and thought it was OK. The funny thing is I have a few memories of some scenes that I thought were outstanding, only to find I must have built up the mental imagery over the years because watching the actual movie was SOOOOOO painful. While PJ may have played with certain plot points to make his movie work, he at least GOT LotR. But Bakshi’s hit-a-plot-point-every-second approach (admittedly, not his fault) wasn’t his worst sin; he so obviously didn’t really get LotR. Again, I can’t believe I once thought this was any good.
