I recently saw the old 1970's "Lord of the Rings" adaptation directed, written, and produced by Ralph Bakshit, er...Bakshi. And oh my gosh...watching that film was painful, oh I can't tell you how painful. I'll let you decide through my critique.
In college recently, I was instructed to write a critique of something to improve my critical writing skills, so I decided to bash the hell out of this film as my ciritique. Tell me if I did a good, please.
And also let this serve as a warning for you to stay away from it.
WeirdRaptor's Reviews: Bakshi's "The Lord of the Rings-Part One":
Because Completely Violating Your Audience is Fun!Introduction: Greetings my name is WeirdRaptor, this is my first attempt at making an objective review of any film. In this case, I've chosen the 1978 animated film version of the first two books of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, titled "The Lord of the Rings-Part One".
Directed by Ralph Bakshi.
Written by Peter S. Beagle, Chris Conking and Ralph Bakshi. Based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Produced by Saul Zaentz.
Music Composed and Conducted by Leonard Rosenman.
Distributed by 20th Century Fox.
Movie Ratings:
10/10: Perfection, Masterpiece
9/10: Excellent
8/10: Great
7/10: Above Average
6/10: Average
5/10: Decent Fair
4/10: Below Average
3/10: Mediocre
2/10: Bad
1/10: My Neighbor's Vacation Videos Were Better
Opening Thoughts: To put my opening thoughts in a nutshell: this film stinks to high heaven. Low production values, poor continuity, sloppy pacing, over-condensed plot, horrible characterization, and the fact that its actually only half-animated make up what’s wrong with this film. Also, Director Ralph Bakshi wasn’t even able to afford to make his animated feature...animated! He probably shouldn’t even have bothered!
While several of the scenes are word for word from the book, they are soullessly done. A story should have a "soul", if you will, and this film lacked anything of the sort. Which is a huge part of the problem with it. The original books, on the other hand...well, they almost overflowed with the stuff. The author, the esteemed Oxford Professor, J.R.R. Tolkien, spent about twelve years of his life writing them, using a typewriter. He seamlessly spun together a beautiful fabric of a story, using his craftsmanship, his devotion and his love for his work. This brought us "The Lord of the Rings".
Ralph Bakshi merely took the materials he already had and just slapped them onscreen with very little care.
I will back up these claims with hard evidence throughout this review, so without any further crust before getting to the meat, here it is:
The Review: (Spoilers abound.)
The Music of Ralph Bakshi's adaptation: Rate: 3/10.
For the description the soundtrack for this film, the music we hear in the opening credits will be used as my primary example, as it is very much what most of the music for the rest of the film is.
First of all, it sounds like the composer, Leonard Rosenman, got a hold of every instrument he could get his hands on and put it in the orchestra for the film.
Second, the music, itself, is generic and isn’t original at all. The fact that I can probably watch the entire movie and pick what every bit of music sounds similar to says much.
Third, at times, it will abruptly change to an almost completely different tune without any logical reason for it. A scene ending and another beginning normally contribute to music change in other films. So, the music changes in this film are highly distracting. Let me explain: The first music the audience hears sounds exactly like the opening of any old black-and-white "Frankenstein" film. Then it briefly switches to sounding like the opening theme of "Hogan's Heroes", and then, at the closing, it switches tunes to generic (ahem) magnificent music one might hear in any film taking place in the Dark or Middle Ages. The change is abrupt, as well as constant in this instance, and none of it sounds remotely fluent.
Fourth, this is not music suited for a Tolkien adaptation, or any adaptation, for that matter. The music in the text of the books, themselves, are graceful and subtle, usually resonating with a specific tone, whether it be sad, peaceful, or angry. That being said, the books also possessed a wide range of music, given the multiple cultures and races featured in the story. It also seemed to have a sort of "life", in itself. A true heart, if you will. This film, on the other hand, features a relentless barrage of monotonous, overblown, and an almost chaotic blasting of instruments over the course of the next few hours.
Animation of Bakshi’s Adaptation: (What there is of it, anyway)
Rate: 2/10
Sloppy, mediocre, generic, unappealing, disgusting, melodramatic beyond belief, plain, boring, uninteresting, and lacking in any kind of style or personality are the words for it.
Scenery and Backgrounds: "Flat" is the best word for this, although "unappealing" fits right in. I will refer to the pioneer of animation, Walt Disney, for a prime example of what animated backgrounds are supposed to look like. Disney used several sophisticated techniques that greatly helped give dimension and surrealism to the backgrounds in his films. Layering the background so that it actually moves appropriately to the distance the camera is from it added a nice touch of detail to the scenery of various animated features such as "Bambi". And this was the norm for most animation (until computer animation took over, but it uses the same principle).
Bakshi's scenery, on the other hand, was either just a colored sketch (hardly paintings, though), or was an actual landscape shot at high contrast to make it look more blocky, and in theory, make it look more 'animated'. This second technique did not work, as it was painfully obvious that it wasn't animated.
Character Designs: This is where all the other descriptive words apply.
The character designs were all either done with little or no regard to Tolkien's actual description, or were so incredibly generic that it doesn't matter if they followed the description or not. A few designs were so utterly out of the blue that its probably best not to delve too deeply into how the animators even came up with that particular design.
Examples of blatantly ignored character descriptions: Aragorn, Samwise Gamgee, Gimli, Legolas, the Balrog, any and all creatures and monsters, aside form Gollum, Sarumon, Grima Wormtongue, and the Nazgul. Now, a filmmaker is not actually bound to make a character look like they did in the source material, but some facsimile of their image should be carried over from text to film. In the case of “The Lord of the Rings”, it is particularly crucial to keep the characters image in mind, as they are described exquisitely and a very clear idea of what they look like is in the reader’s head. Which is why, the following are a very sorry example of what happens when the author is ignored:
In the original books, Aragorn is a Caucasian with long brown hair, and a beard and mustache. He wears typical Medieval-style clothing (tunic, pants, boots, and a cape). The Bakshi Aragorn is a clean shaven Native American Indian with short cut black hair and no pants (we even catch a glimpse of what he's wearing under the short tunic once).
Samwise Gamgee, in this film, is a short, obese, and just plain ugly excuse of a hobbit! He looked nothing like Tolkien’s Samwise Gamgee. Tolkien’s Sam was no shorter than Frodo, and while he was over-weight (like all hobbits), he wasn’t so insanely fat that he couldn’t keep up with everyone else, and he would never have caught Rosie Cotton’s eye looking like he did in the Bakshi adaptation.
Gimli: What can be said of Gimli in this film. He wasn’t even a dwarf, just a short human with in poorly animated ax. He wears no Dwarven armor to speak of, and his beard is completely unkempt. The book Gimli was a dwarf, he wore armor forged by the Dwarven blacksmiths of the Lonely Mountain, and his beard was braided and very well taken care of, as dwarves are very proud of their facial hair.
Now, as for Legolas…what were they thinking? The elegant prince of Mirkwood, son of
King Thraingul, master archer and swordsman reduced to a cross-eyed, large nosed, flat faced peasant who runs around in Luke Skywalker’s wardrobe from the first “Star Wars” movie.
The Balrog. There is nothing else in this film that Bakshi dropped the ball so royally on. I quote Tolkien’s text description of the Balrog:
"…what it was could not seen, it was a great shadow in the middle of which was a dark form of man shape, maybe yet greater..." In Bakshi's version, it was perfectly visible, had absolutely no smoke to speak of (it was a creature of "both shadow and flame" in the books), had the head of a lion, butterfly wings, and black slippers for feet. The book Balrog also moved swiftly and without a sound, this one inched along roaring like a Balrog in heat the throughout the entire time sequence.
The goblins, the orks, the Uruk-Hai, and the trolls: In the books, Tolkien made it clear that there were fundamental differences between each of these races, yet in Bakshi's film, we only see one kind of monster only. Okay, there are three different varieties, but they have nothing to do with breed or species. There are the monkey mask with Viking helmet goblins, the mummy goblins, and the goblins that are nothing but a mask stuck on a pole to look like a goblin.
Sarumon: In the books, he was described as a figure that commanded great respect and authority with his presence. In this film, he's an evil Santa Clause with the charisma of a toad.
Grima Wormtongue: Never while reading the books did I think that Worhtongue was a Jawa from “Star Wars, Episode 4: A New Hope”. He was a short, squat little…thing, with pale white skin and yellow, beady little eyes, and almost had a handlebar mustache going even. Grima was an ordinary man who was corrupted by Sarumon and his own weaknesses, not a borderline copyright infringement of one of George Lucas’ creations.
And lastly: the Nazgul. The Nazgul, in the books, they were figures clothed in all black robes and nothing of their true form was visible, other than their red glowing eyes. In this movie, however, it seemed like they were only clothed in a single tan robe with everything else exposed, which was all black. In the books, their true forms were the twisted glowing white shadows of the Great Kings they once were.
As for all the characters with accurate designs, while they were true to the book’s descriptions, they lacked any sort of style, personality, and it apparent that no care was put into them. In all truth, the designs that didn’t make the eyes bleed were horribly bland and colorless, much like the backgrounds and scenery.
Character Movement: In this sub-section, Gandalf will be the prime example of:
Subtlety vs. Melodrama: The filmmakers and animators, for reasons unfathomable to this reviewer, decided that all of the character movements would over blown, sweeping, and melodramatic. In the scene when Gandalf returns to Hobbiton after seventeen years, and confronts Frodo about the Ring of Power, he practically dances around the poor Baggins’ house. He did not sit down by the fire and discussion things with Frodo, like he did in the books, instead he paced, back and forth, ceaselessly, and gestured around madly, and even did a little ballerina spin when he was reciting the Ring’s infamous poem. Gandalf is most certainly the worse case here, but most of the other characters suffer from similar ërabid body movement’ illnesses, just to a lesser extent.
Character Portrayals and Development of Bakshi’s Adaptation:Rating: 5/10
Technically, a filmmaker, while adapting a book to film, is not bound to stick 100% to what the original book author wrote, although Bakshi did take some grossly unnecessary liberties with many of the characters. The reason I grudgingly give this section a merciful rating is because he actually got one of the characters right on the ball: Frodo Baggins.
In this film, Frodo is portrayed a normal hobbit who loves peace and quiet, but began to feel restless and the urge for adventure, and then he realzes that a part of his inheritance is an instrument of absolute evil. Frodo is a mind-mannered, though slightly pompous character, who whines and carries on about his burden, and has much trouble resisting the Ring’s temptations. He does this to the point of annoyance, yet at the same time, he is the only one has the innocence and strength to carry the Ring, such a small person with such a big task. Why isn’t this a problem with the film? It was the exact same way in the books, I am sorry to admit. Yes, that is Frodo to a tea.
Aside from Frodo, though, Bakshi got everyone else all wrong. Gandalf has a severe lack of any facsimile of a personality. All he does and talk on and on, and occasional acts borderline abusive towards Pippin. Samwise is a portrayed as a half-witted, clumsy, clownish buffoon who’s in love with Frodo, rather than Rosie Cotton. Merry and Pippin are reduced to “the two spare hobbits”. Aragorn, while they didn’t really get his character portrayal wrong, suffers from the fact that most of his story and his purpose is completely unexplained. Boromir is reduced to being an even more thickheaded and arrogant parody of himself, not to mention that they drop the subplot concerning his desire to have the Ring after the Council of Erlond for the entire movie until they reach his last few scenes. So, its like he wants the Ring, forgets about it, then suddenly wants it again. Legolas in this film is basically just a servant of Elrond. He’s not a prince, or even a high elf, according to Bakshi’s film. He is just an elf. Just a servant of Elrond, and quite bland. In the books, he was heir to the throne of Mirkwood Forest, where his father, King Thranduil, reigned. And while he was quiet, and never actually said anything unless he had to, he was most certainly not just boring background eye candy like he is for much of this movie. Gimli, just as is he animated, isn’t remotely Dwarven in his portrayal. He lacks the firy temper, the stubborn attitude, and all the rest of the typical personality quirks that refine a dwarf. Gimli also had a bad habit of talking too much in the books, something this Gimli lacks as well. Gimli was also one of the very few dwarves who ever overcame his prejudice of elves long enough to become a true friend to one, even sailing to the Gray Havens with Legolas. In this film, the prejudice seems to be one-sided. Legolas is the only one who even comments about the rivalry between elves and dwarves. Gimli just seems to take the company of an elf hand in hand. The Bakshi Gimli, in a nutshell, was another victim of lacking personality.
The Casting and Voice Acting of Bakshi’s Adaptation:Rating: 3/10
Out of the very short list of things not terrible in this film, the acting in on the top of that list. One could listen to the voice acting of the film and write it all off as flat and boring, and ask ëwhy did they hire that actor’? Well, if you actually stop and take a look at the casting, they really didn’t hire any bad actors for this film. The Casting Directors are apparently the only people who did their jobs competently. The problem in the voice acting, itself, was the horrible writing and the lazy nature of the film, itself that they had to try to add their voices to. It is likely that the filmmakers probably just went with the very first take where the actors got all their lines right. So, the flat, wooden performances that most of the actors gave out probably are not even their fault. I will use the voice actors for Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, Samwise, and Legolas of the examples. Although, Christopher Guard as the voice of Frodo was actually quite good. His voice and voice mannerisms matched the character. He was able to portray the innocence and the strength of Frodo very well.
William Squire as Gandalf was recent, at best, flat at worse, but I don’t think it was his fault. The way the writers were portraying Gandalf was working against him. They had very little time to let us get to know Gandalf, and he carried most of the important dialogue in the early parts of the story. In most of the film, he was either explaining something or yelling at someone. None of the personality, humor, or charm of Gandalf showed through in the script. So yes, William Squire made for a very boring Gandalf, but then, the writers made a very bad Gandalf for him to try to provide a voice for.
Michael Scholes as Samwise Gamgee would be I what I like to call “sleep talking”. Some live-action actors have been accused of sleepwalking their way through a movie. Well, Michael Scholes sleep talked his way through the role of Samwise. None of the life, the strong will, or the indomitable spirit of our favorite gardener ever showed in his performance. He pretty just spoke the role, occasionally crying out some illanguid gibbish, and called that a performance.
John Hurt as Aragorn was surprisingly bad. He suffered from the exact same problems as all the rest. He gave a boring, wooden performance, and this John Hurt we’re talking about here, a much celebrated Britsh actor. Not some Ashton Kutcher teeny bopper funny man.
Last and but most certainly, least, Anthony Daniels as Legolas. Just like his animation and character portrayal…oh, Mary, mother of God, what were they thinking? Anthony Daniels is most famous for playing C-3PO in the “Star Wars” films. Not only did the filmmakers reduce Legolas to being mere peasant servant of Elrond, but they also gave him a voice that makes him sound like a butler, to add insult to injury. Daniels’ performance of Legolas was snooty, pompous, and stuck up. Not only that, but he actually managed to be more bland than Michael Scholes’ Samwise.
Story Telling and Pacing:Rating: 2/10
The story telling and pacing of this film is a double-edged sword. The first hour and a half of the film’s storytelling and pacing are manageable, as it followed the plot pretty well and clearly. It was almost like an hour and a half film adaptation of “The Fellowship of the Ring” in itself. Unfortunately, this is the first volume of “The Lord of the Rings”, “The Fellowship of the Rings”, an hour and a half is not suitable. Even more unfortunate is that this is the film at its best. Even then, drastic cuts of entire scenes and sequences were made, important characters were sacrificed, character development for many of the characters they left in was nonexistent, and vast amounts of information concerning the plot and characters was omitted. In fact, the only character who underwent any real development was Frodo. All the others were mostly just paper cutout shadows of their book counterparts.
Concerning the last forty-five minutes of the film. It is the entirety of the book, “The Two Towers” told in forty-five minutes. The audience is given minimal information concerning the happenings in the Gap of Rohon, Eomor might as well be nonexistent, for all the screentime he’s given, Treebeard and Eowyn are seen once, King Theoden only has a few scenes, and Faramir is cut out completely.
At the climax of the Battle of Helm’s Deep the narrator suddenly begins telling the audience that the film has ended and there will be a Part Two.
In summery, this is very poor story telling and pacing. Each of the volume of “The Lord of the Rings” is very long, and in order to go even a single one of them justice, you would need a three hour-to-three and a half movie. Trying to tell the story of “The Fellowship of the Ring” AND “The Two Towers” in film movie was just a very stupid decision right from the beginning. It forced most of the story in both to be cut. Not only that, but they focused on the “Fellowship” part of the movie three-fourths of the running time, leaving a dry bones “Two Towers” part. They didn’t even give one of the volumes they were trying to adapt its due attention in favor of another one of them. This makes one wonder if Bakshi should even have bothered at all.
Disjointed, contrived, and cut-and-paste to the point where the “Fellowship” section and the “Two Towers” section are almost two complete different movies.
Production Values, Continuity, and Budget of Bakshi’s Adaptation:1/10
Production Values: The Opening Sequence: At the beginning of the film, the audience is introduced to what I like to call “Behind-the-Curtain Theater”. Director Ralph Baskhi used a curtain, a spotlight, a minimal number of extras and possibly, actors, and some props and costumes one might expect to find onstage at a school or church play, and a camera to film the rise and fall of Sauron, and everything after. It is not until after the prologue has ended and the film reaches the first shot of Hobbiton that the audience ever sees any actual animation.
The Village of Bree, inside the Inn of the Prancing Pony: The Hobbits, Barliman Butterbur, and Strider/Aragorn are the only animated characters in this scene. Every other character is a live-action actor or actress wearing a costume filmed at high contrast. The animators didn’t even feel the need to match the shadows or the tone of the hobbits or the two human characters to the atmosphere of the Inn of the Prancing Pony. Instead, the sounds of heavy footsteps were added when Sam, Merry, and Pippin went to look for Frodo when he accidentally slipped the Ring on.
The Nazgul’s True Forms: Live-action actors, wearing white robes, without having the original photo negatives corrected.
The orks, the goblins, the trolls, and the Balrog: They are also live-action extras and actors in costumes, sometimes with glow-in-the-dark hangs and eyes.
The Entire Last Forty-Five Minutes of the Movie: Most of it was filmed live-action for the movie, or was stock footage. Only the Frodo, Sam, and Gollum sequences received much attention from remainder of the budget.
Continuity: Now, I’m not going to go through every scene over and over, just to catch everyone continuity error, I’m not masochistic.
The Ring’s Inscription: In the scene when Frodo hands the Ring over to Gandalf in Bag-End, the wizard asks the hobbit if he sees any markings on the Ring. Frodo sees none, so Gandalf tosses the Ring into the fireplace and has Frodo retrieve it. Frodo remarks that it’s still cool, even after being in the fire. Then Gandalf concurs that it is the One Ring…without asking Frodo if he sees anything yet, then the whole bit concerning the markings on the Ring is completely forgotten.
Sam’s Telepathy: In the scene when Sam is caught spying on Gandalf and Frodo, he becomes very excited about going to seeing the elves…when Gandalf had said absolutely nothing about elves at all.
Sarumon’s Name: In this film, they apparently decided that the names “Sauron” and “Sarumon” were just too similar, and that everyone who hadn’t read the books would be confused (sure, now they try to cater to people who hadn’t read the books). So, they changed Sarumon’s name to Arumon. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough in itself…they would forget to call him that and went back to calling him Sarumon part of the time.
The Gandalf vs. the Balrog Flashback: The sequence of events that took place between Gandalf and the Balrog after the rest of the Fellowship fled is told in a series of paintings…where Gandalf and Balrog look nothing like they do in the rest of this film. This is also an unintentional blessing in itself, though, if you ask for this critic’s opinion.
Budget: This film had the funding of $8 million dollars, total. Even in 1978, that wasn’t much to make a fully animated movie with, one with a longer running time than most others at that. It actually wasn’t enough, as a matter of fact. For the first hour and a half, the film is mostly animated, with the exception of the opening narration sequence and a few rotoscoped live-action characters mixed-up in. It is after the breaking of the fellowship that things really began to fall apart, not just for the characters, but for this entire movie. Suddenly, the environment, most of the characters, and the scenes, were just filmed live-action at high contrast, or were stock footage added in because Bakshi was too lazy to actually film certain scenes. As stated before, if Bakshi lacked the budget to make his animated film animated, he shouldn’t have bothered.
Closing Thoughts: After looking through the movie, piece by piece, the two biggest mistakes that Ralph Bakshi made are definitely evident.
Biggest Mistake #One: He tried to do it for too little budget, $8 million. What he was able to do with that little amount is impression, though, I will admit, but being impression of such a small amount of money, and actually making something that actually is impression, in of itself, are two different things. He definitely needed about twice the budget that he had just to get the film fully animated, and even more than that if he wanted to add a little style to the animation.
Biggest Mistake #Two: He tried to fit the entirety of the first two books (about 730 pages total, and in small print) into one two hour and fifteen minute film. This forced drastic cuts all throughout it, especially in the "Two Towers" section, also at which point he'd run out budget for animation for the most part (filming at high contrast does not make animation). He was also forced to sacrifice personality and development for most of the characters.
All this led up to the sudden end mentioned before, in which the narrator announced "to be continued". The film was not officially titled "The Lord of the Rings-Part One", and nothing even hinted that this was merely a part of the story. It is merely titled "The Lord of the Rings", which directly implies that the entire story should have been told in this film. They advertised it that way, and they've kept it that way. In another review, the reviewer who wrote up "Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Ring, Part One: A Critique" on the "Tolkien Sarcasm Page" said, "I'm surprised there weren't any lawsuits."
Final Rating: 2.7/10
