Who, exactly, are these people who consider him some kind of genius? I’m not aware that he has or ever had a reputation as a genius of any kind, counterculture or otherwise.
I liked it. So sue me.
Munch, I read that interview, and Bakshi didn’t come off as that arrogant to me. Direct, in-your-face, pull-no-punches, yes. He had to be that way to sell anybody in Hollywood on the idea of animated films, which if they’re not Disney, are not moneymakers.
He does come off as proclaiming himself as a LOTR authority, but that’s because few people had attempted making a film adaptation before, and those that did were pathetic. You read how the producers had never even read the book, right? Of course he’s going to be protective of something he devoted part of his life to making. How was he wrong in thinking that Peter Jackson wouldn’t at least look at his version?
Plus, the way he criticized his own film didn’t come off as egotistical to me. At one time he was the innovator. He influenced a lot of filmmakers and artists. Nowadays, current methods of animation make his stuff look like etch-a-sketches, but the same can be said for any aspect of filmmaking. So give the guy a break.
That’s called a Zeotrope, not a rotoscope.
That’s Zoetrope. To quote Unca Cecil,
. 
Couldn’t resist. The Zoetrope was an early attempt to make use of the brain’s ability to connect one still image to the next in a logical sequence. The so-called " Persistence of Vision".
Enough Hijack. I met Ralph Bakshi when he toured with a print of American Pop. I was writing film reviews at a local Penn State University campus and got 2 passes to the screening. Not only was he rude, offensive and boorish to the crowd of (mostly)younger film and animation fans during the Q&A, but he made a filthy, direct and obnoxious verbal pass at my friend in the elevator- the Publicity Rep from the studio that released the picture ( Columbia Pictures, I believe ).
It was a dismal evening. The movie lacked a cohesive flow. Now, one might argue that his shifting of styles of background and music predate ** Goodfellas** by 10 years or so, but I’d argue that one might come up with a style, only to betray it. This seems to be what Bakshi did in that movie. The shot where the young punk bops along past an orthodox shul is horrificly shallow.
As for Rotoscoping, I gotta admit ( and I hate to, because I think this guy is pond scum ) that he used the technique in interesting ways. Ready for a real stretch ?? There were some shots in his **Lord of the Rings ** of horseback riders that really, REALLY reminded me of Kurosawa. ( can you tell I LOVED bating Amy Taubin in “Film Theory and Criticism”??? 
)
Okay. Shoot me now. Shadowy smokey backlit people on horses, blured images, sensations. I’m stickin’ by this one, dag blabbit !!!
Cartooniverse
Lord of the Rings
I was very disappointed that it ended half-way through. But up to that point I thought it was a good effort. It stuck to the book fairly well, and I loved the line in the inn: “Whereas I look foul and feel fair!” Up until that film, I had never seen rotoscoping. I thought it was great, in that it blurred the edges between animation and reality. (Probably because he didn’t have enough money to really animate certain scenes and characters.) It doesn’t hold up nowadays, but in its time it was good. (Erm… except, of course, for ending half way through the book!)
Wizards
I loved it the first time I rented it on video back in the early-1980s. When I rented it again many years later, it seemed incredibly dated. Too much “flower power”. But there are still some good lines in it. “Fritz! Omygod, Fritz! Yellow atrocity-filled vermin! You got Fritz!” And of course
“The old Luger up the sleeve trick.”
Again, Wizards was good in its day, but it didn’t age well.
The thing that really bothered me about it was that it was a direct ripoff of Vaughn Bode’s Junkwaffle comics. I lost a lot of respect for Bakshi when he denied he was influenced by Bode’s work.
Fritz the Cat
Good when I saw it the first time; but again, it didn’t age well.
American Pop
I liked this one a lot. I liked the concept, and I liked the story. And I liked the music.
I’d consider his work on Spider-Man to be a black mark in his record, myself.
If I remember correctly, he only animated it in its later seasons, when it went from being a series featuring Spider-Man fighting Stan & Steve-created goons, and socializing with a well-drawn supporting cast, to a show where Spidey seemed to be fighting aliens and extra-dimensional warlords all the time. Fun stuff if you’re stoned, but it wasn’t Spidey.
My favorite line: “I sure am glad you changed your last name, you son of a bitch.” (Okay, you have to hear it in context … )
I hate this man and his work. I feel like I am watching some horrible, evil, drug-induced fantasy from the mind of a mid seventies child molester when watching it. I am serious. I do not know why but I have an intense aversion, hatred, of anything done by him or that looks like his style. It sickens me.
Because it takes talent to rotoscope live action!!!
And if you didn’t notice I was being sarcastic.
Also is it true that the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons is meant to sound like Bakshi and look like Gary Groth from the Comics Journal??? WBS K TNX !!!
I’ve met Gary Groth on several occasions. He looks nothing like CBG. He’s slim, short-haired, clean-shaven and rather short.
On the audio commentaries to the DVDs of The Simpsons it’s stated that the Comic Book Guy is based on every comic book shop owner in the United States, and that the producers of the show get letters from all over the U.S. saying “I know the guy you based CBG on!”
You’re holding back. You’re amongst friends. You can share. Open up. Be honest. Tell us how you truly feel about Ralph Bakshi. It’s okay. We’re here for you.
Not to drift too far off subject, I heard that Mr. Bakshi has also catagorically refused to ever release the live-action footage that he used to rotoscope the ‘Lord of the Rings’. Now I, for one, would be fascinated to see that! It would be like my friend’s movies from junior high with Aragorn wearing sweatpants and cars in the background and such. I also heard he said one good thing about it was that nobody had to fire ant arrows, just pull the bowstring and he’d animate the arrows later. I’ll bet that Peter Jackson did the same thing with CGI in his films. HA!
I liked the Viking Boromir, at least you could tell him and Aragorn apart.
Also at the Inn at Bree scene I’d swear that Michael Dunn (Dr.Miguelito Loveless) was one of the dwarves rotoscoped. Look closely. Or maybe it was David Rappaport…dang.
I like Bakshi’s style and a lot of his animation, but in general I hate his movies. I didn’t much care for Fritz the Cat – it got a lot of its appeal through its shocking nature. At the time, the idea of an x-rated cartoon was practically unbelievable.
I liked the beginning of Wizards. The animation was good (and Elinor is sexy). The barely-rotoscoped warrior scenes were original at the time, although often irrelevant. What annoyed me were the heavy-handed yet pointless satiric efforts (the President looks like a clown, the Religion parody), the stupid way they changed the marketing of the film (In early posters they show the robot-guy on his two legged mount with “Death” written on the saddle, and promoted the film as being about fighting and war. Then they got bitten by the “Revenge/Return of the Jedi” bug and changed the word on the saddle to “Love” and the movie promo line to “A Story of Peace and Love”. Right…), and the stupid ending (the Peter Falk-like good wizard pulls a gun out of his sleeve and blows away his “Evil” brother.).
Coonskin and Heavy Traffic were worth a look, but it’s hard to love them. I’m amazed that he tried to release a movie called “coonskin” – it’s just asking for trouble.
I kinda liked Fire and Ice – it’s a Frazetta painting come to life. And American Pop was cute.
Lord of the Rings showed touches of brilliance. When Bakshi went with straight non-Rotoscoped animation, his work could shine. The Flying Nazgul were great, and Treebeard wasn’t bad. But so much of that film was so heavily rotoscoped (like the opening scene at the Inn at Bree) that you wonder why they didn’t simply print the film they shot. For me, the worst scene was the Fight with the Balrog. This is the scene I was really rooting for, because it would give them a chance to really strut their creative muscles. I was thinking about the painting the brothers Hildebrand had done of the scene.
What did we get? Painfully obvious Rotoscoping of a guy in a Balrog suit! The worst of all possible worlds!
I didn’t much care for Cool World. My wife won’t stay in the same room with it. I think Bakshi draws parallels bbetween it and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but there’s no comparison.
I liked the TV animation I saw by him. Bakshi is creative and imaginative, and he can do wonderfully fluid animation. Individual scenes are lovely, but he seems to have trouble with extended features.
ralph bakshi is another waste of talent animator who wrote racist and sexist films i don’t care he’s a legend or veteran animator plus he’s a idiot so i hate that guy
Y’all are crazy. That old Spider-Man show had like six frames of animation in its entire run.
Anyway, this bumped thread reminded me the Folding Ideas video on Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings. I’m not a big youtube person, but I like that guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr_rb_pitHk
To summarize though, I’d say its answer to the original question is basically that Ralph Bakshi wasn’t Walt Disney.
we just say that animator is not good talent he’s just make bad art which not a good art nothing more
I don’t consider Bakshi a genius, but I don’t understand the hatred.
You have to remember how bad American animation was in the 1970s. Bakshi was not competing against Disney and Fleischer. He was competing against Hanna-Barbera and Filmation. His stuff was vastly better than what was showing on Saturday mornings.
In my opinion, the hatred for rotoscoping is snobbery. Rotoscoping is a tool. It can be done well. It can be done poorly. Fleischer did it well. Bakshi did it less well. But that is because of the stories Bakshi told with the tool, not because of the tool.