I have read an article that was made before Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring was released, where Ralph Bakshi seemed to think he was owed some kind of credit for doing it first.
But I’m now curious what Bakshi now thinks of the finished product. Does anyone know anything?
Here’s a very short interview of RB after the release of Fellowship. Some excerpts:
No more recent interview is mentioned. Sounds like some serious sour grapes to me.
Sounds like he’s rather ticked that someone managed to do LOTR competently.
Not enough sex, bad musical numbers, and poor animation for him.
I spoke too soon. Here’s an interview from this year. Not much on PJ’s films, though:
Man, anyone who’s actually seen Bakshi’s version has to really wonder if he has any right to criticize PJ.
All the shades of Middle Earth? What, from dark orange to dull brown?
“You know, how could a guy sit down and change the dialog”
As opposed to just chopping out huge swaths of it so the resulting mess doesn’t even make sense to people who’ve read the books?
The best summation I’ve seen of Bakshi’s version:
“There are fifteen different kinds of animation in this movie – and they all suck.”
Bakshi’s LOTR was at least as innaccurate Jackson’s. From Aruman to Spam-Viking Boromir and mentally challanged Sam, it was incredibly disrespectful.
Plus, independent of the books, it was a really, really, really bad movie. I mean, geeze, just incredibly ugly. Plus Jackson did acknowledge his debt to Bakshi, both silently by using his framing for some shots in FOTR, and out loud during the director’s commentary.
IIRC, Bakshi’s version was PJ’s first exposure to the books, and led to a lifelong love for them. Had Bakshi’s version been my first exposure, it would have been more likely to lead to a lifetime obsesion with burning every copy. But that’s just me.
Bakshi’s deluded as well as overrated.
Thanks for those.
I’ve never liked Bakshi’s films, and it seems to me from these snippets that I wouldn’t like Bakshi himself either. He comes across as a bit of a petulant jerk.
The thing that bothers me the most is that he seems to think Jackson copied him in places, but in fact they were both taking their imagery from the same source material so of course a few things are going to be very similar. It doesn’t take a genius to work that much out.
Hey, Ralph! You know why he denied it until the films were already in theaters and making money hand over fist? Because any explicit connection between your movie and his would have been fucking poison! The first hurdle Peter Jackson had to clear was convincing people he wouldn’t fuck up the books as badly as you did. The exsistence of your films hurt the new LotR. You should be thankful he paid enough attention to your dreck to pick out the one or two good shots and throw 'em into his own work as an “homage.”
Whiney little prick.
Isn’t it a little presumptous to Criticize Jackson’s LOTR, when apparently RB made only half the saga, suddenly ends it on a cliffhanger, with no indication up to this point that there this is only half of the saga? Or so I’ve heard.
“But, but,” says Bakshi, “he had unfair advantages! Like a budget, and talent!”
The comments would be more presumptuous if he’d done even if a halfway decent job of making his movies. What they are is absurd. They’re ugly and dated-looking. “Rough draft” my ass. What he made was a disaster - like Miller said, their existence probably lowered the chances that there’d ever be a real LOTR movie - and he doesn’t deserve credit either as an influence or as a filmmaker.
There are scenes in both films that are strikingly similar. The prime example would be the scene in FOTR where all 4 hobbits hide under a tree root at the side of the road while the Nazgul comes riding up and sniffs around. The camera angle when the Rider is on the road above the hobbits is very much the same–if I hadn’t already known that Jackson had seen the Bashki version, I would have guessed it right here. This scene as played out in both films is not in the book: the closest occurs when Frodo, Sam, and Pippin (they don’t pick up Merry `til later) hide behind a tree when the Nazgul comes sniffing by.
There is also the way the scene is set at the Prancing Pony where the Nazgul are seen brutally stabbing the hobbits in their beds–oh, no, wait, it’s just some pillows and bolsters, and the hobbits are safely sleeping elsewhere. While the trick of disguising the beds to look as if they are occupied in is the book, this fake-out set up, where the viewer is fooled along with the Nazgul, isn’t. Of course, Jackson does it better, intercutting shots of the sleeping hobbits with the Nazgul standing over the faked-up beds, while Bashki shows the attack, then only cuts to the hobbits sleeping in Aragorn’s room at the very end.
These are actually two of the better-done scenes in the awful Bashki version, so I suppose it’s not remarkable that they made some impression on Jackson when he was putting together his own films.
That’s correct. Bakshi’s version ended with the Battle of Helms Deep, as I recall. Again depending on my memory, the last words were a voiceover: “And so Frodo and his friends won.”
No resolution of the problem posed by the Ring. No recognition that there was a loose end, let alone one of that magnitude. No journey to Mount Doom.
Urk.
Ad mentioned before, Jackson did pay homage to a couple of scenes in Bakshi’s version. Maybe Ralph has a legitimate beef for not getting a little credit.
But Bakshi’s film was just awful, and he’s quite deluded if he thinks he was being more respectful to the books than Jackson.
Another, sometimes quite funny, critique of the Bakshi film.
Once I got past the surprise of it in my initial viewing of the Bashki version, this is actually one of the things I find the most funny about it. The way this movie ends, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the hobbits to be in it at all. The last we see of Merry and Pippin is in Fangorn, when the Tasmanian-devil-looking Treebeard carries them off–for all we know, he had them for dinner. And the last we see of Sam and Frodo is heading into Mordor. This is perhaps a blessing. I really can’t see this poor brain-damaged Sam doing any of the brave things he’s supposed to in Mordor; if left up to him, Frodo would have died, the Ring would be taken by the Enemy, and Sauron would triumph.
Holy Cow, I really screwed up that second interview link, didn’t I? :smack: Here it is, with my apologies.
I’m almost certain I’ve seen this image as an illustration. Does this ring a bell with anyone or am I imagining things? I was very familar with this scene, but I only saw the Bakshi version once around 20 years ago. So, the question would be, does the illustration pre-date the Bakshi version?
I’m glad to see that Bakshi has come through all of this with his ego and his sense of self importance intact.
Is Bakshi still alive? I coulda sworn I vowed to kill him after he butchered LOTR.
Where’s my To Do list from grade 8?
<rustle> <rustle>
Ah ha, there it is… kill Ralph Bakshi right after get a date with Erin Gray
Hmm, maybe I’ll add them to this years To Do list.
Does it illuminate Bakshi’s character at all when you know that Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons was at least partially based on him? I thought so. 