Ralph Bakshi version

Eldorion wrote:

Recoveryanonymous wrote:Dull, weird and brown vs weird, loud and video game.

Take your pick.

Honestly, the songs in Rankin/Bass make it a no contest for me.

Spoiler:

I LOVE the Rankin/Bass songs!  

Eldorion wrote:

bungobaggins wrote:When's the next Plinkett review?

He teased that it might be LOTR in one of his intermediary videos with sunglasses Palpatine a while back.

Oh, that would be sweet.

bungobaggins wrote:I want to see a Plinkett review of The Hobbit movies, but he and Jay seemed to enjoy AUJ slightly. They're not as close to the books as we are, so they don't seem to care about all the stupid changes.

There are lots of movie-only things they could pick on, like CinemaSins did.

I think I could settle for a LOTR Plinkett review.

It's probably not going to happen, but it is fun to imagine.

Yeah, at this point I'd much rather see the gang have to watch the Shoji Tabuchi show on Wheel of the Worst.

Me too!!!

They saw that Boyfriend movie instead though.

Yeah, last time was the boyfriend movie, tree stand safety, and the weird sex-ed for 5 year olds.

Tree Stand Safety was a real let down.

Recoveryanonymous wrote:

Did they enlist a drill sergeant to compose this song?

Me waiting for the gang to watch the Shoji Tabuchi show.

Radaghast wrote:

Recoveryanonymous wrote:

Did they enlist a drill sergeant to compose this song?

Why do you say that?

Just kind of sound almost like a drill song. I dunno, maybe I'm mistaken  

Goodness, we've gone to Rankin and Bass now? This thread is a mess. Sorry, I get a little OCD sometimes.
Didn't know there was a thread for the Bakshi version, so I'll state my opinion:

I was anxious when it came out - I saw it in the theaters...and many parts of it were beautiful to behold. The crazy thing was that Bakshi didn't know LOTR, but he wanted to present it as best he could. He met with the daughter of Tolkien, Priscilla, and went over Tolkien's visualization of Middle Earth. He was enamored of certain characters- mostly the men - but he presented Frodo as he liked to do small elves (see Wizards)- as tough little creatures with minds of their own. He worked hard at it, and was succeeding when the studios cut his budget. The rotoscoping was supposed to be amazing - and at the time, it was strange to viewers.

I went to see it mostly because of John Hurt - our new Doctor Who! His raspy voice, his perfect diction, his incredible gift of being able to covey emotion all lent Aragorn what he needed to succeed. While I despaired of his unbelievably short tunic, it was one of those things that Bakshi liked to do. The broken nose was irritating, but it did lead one to believe the "Seem fairer and feel fouler" aspect that Frodo agreed Aragorn was not. He looked foul but seemed fair; and that was the charm of Bakshi's presentation.
Mistakes about Saruman's name aside, parts of the film made me gasp at the correctness - as in the battle on Weathertop, the attack of the Black Riders in Bree, Merry and Pippin being carried through Fangorn Forest by Treebeard, Legolas's cry of astonishment at the Balrog, Aragorn's attention to Frodo and the discovery of the Mithril shirt, the appearance of Gandalf after the fall, even the last stand of Aragorn and Theoden upon the field in front of Helm's Deep.
All of these moments were painstakingly hand-painted over carefully shot footage of actors.
I used to take the VCR tape and slow it down during the greeting of Legolas (Glorfindel!) and Aragorn. If you watch it in slow-motion, you can see the actors under the paint, and see how they crafted the characters that they overlaid. It's quite mesmerizing. One can also see a lot of it as Legolas guides the pony that Frodo rides after Weathertop. The actor wears ballet shoes, and walks like a ballet dancer, with pointed toes. It conveyed the light-footedness of the Elves nicely. Oh, and the actor who played Aragorn was much handsomer than the paint. Tragic, in my opinion, but enough of that. The Hobbits were played by dwarves, yes, real live dwarves...

The biggest tragedy of it was that it nearly broke Bakshi. He spiraled into a black hole of drugs and alcohol when the studio cut off his funding, and was only able to pick up the pieces and sew them together as best he could before they took the film away from him entirely. That is why the film was never properly done, never properly completed, and why some parts are exquisite, and other parts fail to impress or even insult.
It's quite an undertaking to work Tolkien's dream, and I applaud all the painters, actors, and designers of Bakshi's LOTR. It could have been better, but it is what it is, and for all of that, I still like it.
*On a side note, Tim Burton was one of the cell painters. I wonder which ones he remembers painting? He seems like a natural for enjoying rendering Gollum.

Good points, Yavanna. It wasn't all Bakshi's fault. And for all that, it was still a financial success.

Recoveryanonymous wrote:

I'll never get over the fact that they removed so many of the original sound effects.  There's supposed to be popping sounds when Gandalf throws the pine cone, and chomping sounds when the warg's are biting at the dwarves. Similar things happened to the great goblin and spiders sequence.

Didn't Tolkien say a large part of the reason he sold the movie rights was that he doubted anyone would ever manage to make a workable movies out of the books? They we're simply to long detailed and unmovielike in construction.

I think that problem shows with both Bakshi adn RB attempts.

Jackson and co found a way. Though they did it through simplifying them, removing deviations and depth and making them into straight forward action epics. A posibility I don't think Tolkien had contemplated when signing away the rights. Him being more afraid of their disneyfication. And that is probably also the reason Christopher Tolkien has had such a strong reaction to them.

I dont doubt for a minute Bakshis hard work and dedication, but I just dont trust his aesthetic sense, or maybe its so different from mine that I find it unwatchable.

I must be the only Tolkien fan in the world who'd never heard of John Boorman's LotR treatment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_in_film#cite_note-outre-12



As much as I dislike PJ's movies, wow, Tolkien fans really dodged a bullet there. And, incidentally, I don't like Excalibur at all. With LotR, I can at least appreciate why people like them, but with Excalibur...

I like Excalibuur- the 'any man who be a knight and follow a king, follow me" speech and the scene set in the moat when he hands Uriant Excalibur so Uriant can knight him and then they can deal with each other as equals gives me shivers every time- very powerful scene.

And its got the best version of Merlin ever committed to film.

And its not a bad stab at adapting the entirety of Le Mort de Arthur.

I supposed it does help be familiar with the book. But I don't care for the camera style or the performances.

I had read the book long before I saw the film so its hard for me to say how it would be if you were unfamilar with the story- the scene I was talking about- love this scene- and Im also pretty certain the stunt man that jumps down from the wall at the start must have got trodden on by the horse!

Maybe I'll see it with a different perspective at some point. But, more than anthing, to me it seems the execution is lacking (especially Merlin's lines).