The Lord of the Rings (1978)
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The Lord of the Rings Movie Review
The Lord of the Rings is a 1978 animated fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi. It’s a solid and frequently impressive, but ultimately very flawed experiment.
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“One ring to rule them all; one ring to find them.
One ring to keep them all, and in the darkness bind them!“
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I am not a fan of this franchise and I certainly had a hard time watching this film too as it was simply too long for me at over two hours. I was bored with the last battle quite a bit. The movie has a big problem in its approach where the story is presented rather quickly and those not already acquainted with the source material would certainly be lost and I was lost myself more than a couple of times.
The story is pretty much what I expected and personally the movie is on par with the first entry in Jackson’s trilogy which is the only one I liked from that franchise. Because Fellowship of the Ring is easily the only interesting part of the story in this trilogy, I ended up liking this film and the other Two Towers part expectedly bored me to death.
The characters are as boring as usual. I did like Gandalf here, but Frodo is boring, though his friends are less annoying this time around. Saruman unfortunately did not fight Gandalf here, but Gollum is reliably memorable and interesting. Others not so much though.
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The Lord of the Rings features very intriguing, experimental animation that sometimes worked and sometimes it didn’t work. The rotoscoping did not work for me personally. I get what he was trying to do with it as he wanted more fluid, realistic movements for his characters, but the end result was too similar to live-action and not enough animated in its feel. It was a bold move that needs to be respected, but it did not end up great per say.
However, the animation itself is gorgeous, aside from those problematic battle scenes. I did like the use of the color red and black in those scenes, but otherwise they were too silhouetted for my personal taste. But the characters mostly look really good and I absolutely loved the imagery in this film which is frequently quite impressive. The natural landscapes and interiors look beautiful and sometimes the film looked like a painting or a postcard in some highly charming shots. It’s by far Bakshi’s most visually appealing flick.
What I also appreciated in this version of The Lord of the Rings is its horror tone. That set it apart from the others and led to a very interesting experiment. I loved the Orcs and how disturbing they were in their creepy designs, but some scenes in the first half in particular felt very trippy and weird and scary in the best way possible. I did find Bakshi’s adult style suitable for this story and to me more violence and horror worked out well here, though many would disagree apparently.
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But the movie is too long, it mostly lacked in the adventurous/fantastical department as was to be expected from this overly boring and dark story plus the action sequences really bored me as they lasted for eternity. The runtime was too long and he should have opted for three instead of two movies, but this one didn’t work out so we never got a sequel to end the story. But nonetheless it’s one of the director’s best films and his most ambitious.
The 1978 version of The Lord of the Rings has its problems such as an overlong runtime, boring action sequences that just never end and the story and characters are per usual mostly uninteresting, but the animation is the director’s best with a lot of impressive, postcard-like imagery and many beautiful shots, though the rotoscoping did not work out as well. I also really appreciated the dark and creepy horror elements which made the movie a very interesting and ambitious, if flawed experiment.
