That would make sense if the books were only about the trek to Mount Doom, but that’s not the case.
Evil, there is a huge difference between “pacing” in an epic story that spans three books, and “pacing” in a movie that spans less than two hours.
I’m talking about dramatic pacing. I’m talking about the speed of events, and how they are meant to affect the audience.
If a director does not know how to pace events in a movie, then the events have less dramatic impact than they should, yes? And then the movie comes across… well, kind of lame. It gets even worse when all the characters are frantically gesturing as they speak, jumping around (in the case of the hobbits) and generally acting like they’ve all taken three or four large bennies. Gandalf, in particular, spends most of the movie kinda bugeyed.
It is not any one of these things that torpedos the Bakshi LOTR. Any one of them would be a handicap, sure… but when you load on ALL of them… well… it’s just a friggin’ trainwreck of a movie…
Good grief, I knew about the Bakshi film, but I never knew about the Rankin-Bass stuff.
Orson Bean also did Bilbo in the animated Hobbit, which I rather liked, and John Houston did the voice of Gandalf. One of the voices in the Hobbit that I did like was Richard Boone as the voice of Smaug. Before I saw it I wasn’t sure what Smaug would sound like, but I thought the rough, gravelly tones of Boone were just right.
I love that song! My dream is to buy the DVD of Peter Jackson’s Return of the King, and find this song in the “extras” part.
We don’t want to go to war today
But the lord of the lash says, “Nay Nay Nay”
We’re gonna march all day, all day, all day
For where there’s a whip, there’s a way…
OK so I watched the first half of the Bakshi LOTR (up to just before the breaking of the Fellowship).
Laughed my bottom off.
Actually, I thought it was all right, in a sort of “it’s-so-bad-it’s-good” way. I thought it stuck to the story all right, except for Legolas just showing up when Frodo got the blade in the shoulder, and no one really being all that concerned with Frodo’s health.
I know Frodo’s supposed to be a “fair” hobbit, but it still strikes me as humourous that every Frodo I’ve seen has been the most adorable thing you can find. I just wanna hug him silly.
Yeah, well, I believe I described him as “Mr. Potato Head with huge brown eyes.” The guy looks like a stuffed toy with Disco Hair.
And when a filmmaker is utterly incapable of making the Bridge Of Khazad-Dum sequence moving, frightening, or suspenseful in any way… well… man, it’s just time to throw in the towel. The Fellowship is seen to flee screaming from… what, twelve orcs? And even then, the orcs promptly stop when Aragorn threatens them.
…whereupon the group parts in the middle to allow the Balrog through. The Balrog appears to be about six and a half feet tall, wearing a lion mask, big floppy wings, and… yes, I believe those are fuzzy bathrooms slippers. Either that, or the Balrog has a bad case of Muppet Feet.
In the Jackson version, I looked at THAT thing, and thought, “Well, I can’t blame them for running. Plainly, mortal men nor elves could handle THAT critter.”
In the Bakshi version, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry or throw up. “Gandalf Vs. The Muppet Of Doom…”
What strikes me as humourous is that Elijah Wood is the Bakshi Frodo…
It’s a saggy diaper that leaks!
That’s OK, I thought this was going to be about Shaggy and Scooby vs the Lord of Nyquil.
It’s an epic saga of Shaggy and Scooby attempting to infect the land with their head colds and thwart the efforts of the Lord of Nyquil to subdue them. The scene on the subwayis not to be missed - the Lord of Nyquil joins forces with the Duke of Dimetapp while the Squire of Sudafed waits patiently for our diseased duo at the next station.
Touche`
OK, so I finished the Bakshi LOTR…apparently the second half is just Helm’s Deep, and then the end. Fan-bloody-tastic.
Overall, the first half was OK, but there was something about Legolas that bothered me. Aragorn was entirely wrong.
And there weren’t enough of the hobbits! ::stomps a furry foot::
I’m bumping this to note that Master Wang-Ka is pure, unadulterated evil, for by reading this thread I was forced, under penalty of mean stares by Walmartians and tsk-tsking by employees, to purchase said DVD from the same discount bin.
The really hilarious thing is how much better the Rankin Bass movie is than Bashki’s coverage of the first two books, even though it’s pretty campy.
And now that I have seen what Peter Jackson did with “The Hobbit,” I am driven to revisit my own thoughts. And the hell of it is… given the time, and the quality of TV animation… I kinda think that Rankin Bass didn’t do that bad a job at all. Their version of the Misty Mountains song isn’t bad. And while they left out quite a bit, and rendered most of the Battle Of Five Armies as a bunch of dots scrambling around a map, it’s a lean mean retelling of the story.
Even with Hans Conried, of all people, as Thorin Oakenshield.
Alan Oppenheimer did the voice of Skeletor and Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon cartoon. He was the first person I thought of when I heard the description of the Witch King’s voice
No, actually, I think it was Chris Latta. He’s not in the credits, but upon repeated viewings of the cartoon, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that voice howling, “Retreat! COBRA, RETREAAAAT!”
I just want the scene where there is a long hallway with doors on either side. The Witch King is chasing the gang. They enter a door on the left and come out a door on the right. They come out of doors on opposite sides and crash into each other. That sort of thing.
There is no such scene in “Return Of The King,” but after thirty years of Scooby Doo cartoons, durned if I don’t think you could find a scene in a Scooby Doo episode of essentially the same thing… if not with the Witch King Of Angmar, then with a close duplicate.
Scooby and Shaggy got chased around by damn near everything in any given mythos at one point or another.