The Lord of the Rings

Fan of Bakshi's style? You'll appreciate this version. If you're looking for the superior telling of Tolkien's story, though... this ain't it. Personally, I'm down with both Bakshi's and Jackson's versions, but that's because I grew up on Bakshi's films and appreciate his animation style. While this version is highly condensed and an incomplete telling of the story, I think it still does an admirable job of remaining faithful to the books.

Basically the whole *Lord of the Rings* trilogy crammed into a 2h13 animated movie. It really begs the question: why am I watching this when I could just watch the infinitely better version? It's better than what I expected going in though, the characterizations are decent and I was engaged with it most of the time. It's so rushed though and it doesn't take it's time with any of the events that happen. The animation is very similar to the one it *The Hobbit* who was done just a year before. Whenever there's an action sequence though, the animation really drops... it looks like they used real actors to play the scenes and then added a Snapchat filter over it to make it look like animation. Really horrible and it ruined most of the action for me. The Balrog was laughable, Gollum looks more like himself compared to the frog version in *The Hobbit*, and Gandalf is a badass as usual. Decent score and voice acting. Final battle was pretty cool if you can tolerate the animation.

After I was unable to enjoy “The Hobbit” by Rankin/Bass, “The Lord of the Rings” by Ralph Bakshi is a considerable improvement. However, the second attempt to bring Tolkien's Middle-earth to life in the form of an animated film is not a complete success either.

The movie packs far too much of the novel trilogy into one film, which causes pacing issues. At the same time, the conclusion of the story is missing. Some characters get far too little attention, and although the animation style (apart from the questionable character design) is quite appealing in places, I've never been a big fan of the rotoscoping process.

Overall, however, there's not much missing to make a truly good movie. As a trilogy, Bakshi's Vision could have been a real banger. Then again, we got that later in live action, so no big deal. There's also no question that Peter Jackson took a lot of inspiration here. Therefore, the importance of the movie should not be underestimated.

I expected so much more. Being a huge fans of the books as well as the Peter Jackson adaptations, this was rather a disappointment. Especially given that there’s no sequel to finish the story.
The rotoscoping was rather impressive though seemed weird given that so much of it was technically live-action.

How do you make a 2-1/2 hour version of a book series that only covers roughly half the books feel longer than 12 hours of a live action adaption? If you want to learn the answer to that question, watch this.

Ralph Bakshi adapts J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as an animated feature film. Co-scripted by Peter S. Beagle, only about half of the three novels are actually covered; from the forming of a fellowship to help Frodo Baggins destroy the Ring of Power to the siege at Helm’s Deep. And this leads to a rather awkward non-conclusion in which the story ends abruptly. The animation is also quite poor, combining rotoscoping with cel drawn animation; creating a bizarre style that’s incredibly distracting. Additionally, the coloring is extremely dark and drab, using a lot of browns and grays. Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings is an interesting attempt to bring Tolkien’s work to the big screen, but it ultimately doesn’t work.

I like Bakshi’s strange style, but this suffers from not being a flushed out version deserving of Tolkien’s magnificent work. As a kid, I liked it, but as an adult I simply can’t get past the near incessant singing. I’m not a big fan of Tolkien’s written songs either, but it’s unnecessary irritating filler for what could’ve been more of the storytelling.