I know there’s a doper that swears upon a stack of Simalirions (who cares if I spelled it wrong) that Bakshi’s is better than Jacksons.
I did like that Jackson did pay homage to Bakshi’s Bilbo’s birthday scenes.
Bakshi didn’t claim to own the film rights. He claimed that Peter Jackson infringed on the copyright in the cartoon by making too-close reproductions of certain images. In fact, Jackson admitted that he had done this. Jackson said that he was tremendously influenced by Bakshi’s work and was dedicated to certain key depictions that he wanted to reproduce.
Purely my own opinion – I don’t think Jackson’s homage to the Bakshi images would have been found to constitute copyright infringement.
I saw the original Bakshi production of LOTR in the theaters when it was first released, and I agree that it bit. However, it had one scene that worked very well, and I recognized it instantly when PJ “paid homage” to it. It’s the scene where the hobbits first encounter a black rider, and I like the way the scene is set up so that we can see the rider and the hobbits all at one time - hobbits under a tree root in a cavelike setting, and rider just above, blindly searching for them. This enables us to simultaneously see both Frodo’s struggles with the Ring and the reactions of the Rider. Well done.
BTW, this guy’s review of the Bakshi LOTR film is hilarious.
I can never look at that link at work, because I always laugh until I cry. Thanks for posting it again though, teela brown, 'cause I’ll save it for home.
The heck with his Lord of the Rings movie. Have you guys SEEN Cool World?
It’s one of the five or six worst movies ever made. An absolute disgrace. That is what put the final nail into his mainstream career.
While I can’t say for sure, I’d imagine he might have trouble finding good collaborating animators. What with the fucking rotoscoping combined with bad, bad movies.
I never quite “got” the combination of rotoscoping and traditional animation in Bakshi’s LotR. It was like Bakshi wanted to make two different movies. It didn’t mesh, IMO. Pick a medium and stick with it, Ralph.
Rotoscoping can produce some pretty nifty animation.
But not when Bakshi does it. <<cringe>>
What I mean is, Bakshi should have either made it ALL rotoscoping or ALL traditional animation. The combination of the two, at least in LotR, was not appealing to me.
All this talk about the Lord of the Rings and no talk about the recently rediscovered Humphrey Bogart version?
Hey, I understood what you meant. I’m just saying that Bakshi’s rotoscoping was pretty cringeworthy.
Perhaps this is because he mixed it with traditional animation. I don’t know. All I can say offhand is that it was pretty darned unappealing.
I sometimes think that if he had done only the Black Riders in rotoscopy and the rest of the characters traditionally, it might have made things better.
He did rotoscope the whole thing. But for the orc scenes and whatnot he did a slapdash job of it.
For some reason, whenever I think of Bakshi’s LotR, all I can visualize is a vacant-stared, dancing, clapping hobbit who looks like he fell off the turnip wagon the day before yesterday.
Here’s one Tolkien fan who is glad there is a Peter Jackson. 
Fuck the fuzzy slipper-clad Balrog, too.