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Lord of the Rings (1978)

To continue our Week of Alt Animation, films that are unique in their animation styles, we want to talk about Ralph Bakshi and his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.

He’s a man who himself is incredibly unique in his style, how he views the world, and how he generally exists.

So let's take a second and explore the fascinating and at times great (and other times not so great) world of Bakshi and his Middle Earth.

Multiple Adaptations?

That’s right, before Peter Jackson took on J.R.R. Tolkien’s book series Ralph Bakshi had his turn to frolic in Middle Earth. But he wasn’t the first person to try and make this movie.

Walt Disney was rejected because Tolkien didn’t like his style of filmmaking. Even the Beatles, yes that’s right, the Beatles desperately wanted to make this film. They went as far as attempting to pull Stanley Kubrick in to make a musical version, but Kubrick said no because he felt he wouldn’t be able to capture the scale the book deserved.

But eventually the film landed with Ralph Bakshi who was at the time an incredibly transgressive filmmaker, making indie animation about race and sex and gender. He never shied away from these topics even when it was in his best interest to, so it was honestly surprising when the studio hired him.

So, was Bakshi successful?

This movie is uneven

This film does a lot right but it does contain an equal amount of wrong.

For one the film is incredibly faithful to the book. It is full of rich lore and brilliant interpersonal relationships, but also like the book, sometimes it takes time to motivate a scene and can meander a lot. The pacing is at time’s completely uneven and generally feels like Bakshi’s take on it was no take at all.

What makes adaptation of classic stories so interesting is what directors bring of themselves to it. A great example of this is David Lowery’s adaptation of The Green Knight. Lowery takes this story we all know so well and adjusts its messaging to a more precinct message that is more in line with our modern conception of what chivalry and hard work get you without selling out the original text.

Even Jackson has a take on LOTR even though it is very faithful; he portrays the scope so well and is clearly so focused on the humanity of these people rather than the unknowable but expansive universe he’s building. The characters are shown as people who change over the course of the film. They are stretched and hardened but build bonds that are beautiful to watch and experience.

That being said, Bakshi does have specific moments that play really well and make for an experience that is more fascinating than it is fun. He shows you what everything in the book would look like come to life but does so in a disjointed way that feels as awkward as Bakshi is.

Why Does it Look Like That?

This film uses a technique known as solarization, a method used with film that processes the celluloid film, exposes it to light, and processes it again to help create an inverted image; for example, instead of being bright, an image of the sun would appear dark.

Then they would then paint over the image or just affect the color of it to make the whole thing “match” the animation. They ended up shooting the majority of the movie this way.

This is, in my opinion, what makes this film so special. The animation style is so odd and interesting, with an uncanny nature to it.

We normally talk about “the uncanny valley” as something trying and failing to look like something real, but in the case of Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings it feels so unreal because it is something real trying to convince you it’s fake.

The whole effect is worth studying and also just generally punk as fuck. Bakshi gives all the rotoscoped characters an interesting look that, if not wholly, successful is worth looking into.

The process is now the norm with works like Avatar and the Robert Zemekis animated features which utilize reference actors in the form of motion capture performances from its actors.

Today’s Scene

For more information on this, the always incredible Folding Ideas did an excellent video essay on this film from earlier this year that is an hour long and goes way deeper than we ever could over email.

So if you are curious about this film or just love LOTR we encourage you to check it out.