Most people who are fans of LotR and The Hobbit have seen the movies, in some way or another. Most people who have seen the movies immediately find another sympathetic, unsuspecting LotR fan and go on at length about how terrible it was, how totally bizarre the effects were, and how the music was just… wrong. Or, even weirder, perhaps you went and told some unsuspecting fan how great the movies were! I’m not talking about Peter Jackson’s trilogy. I’m talking about the three animated movies (two of which were musicals) that were made back in the late seventies/early eighties by one Ralph Bakshi.
So most people who have seen them have, perhaps justly, a rather strong feeling against them. Perhaps the excessive and generally weird blending of real footage and animation in The Lord of the Rings threw you off. Or, perhaps the campy songs in The Return of the King (including such brilliant titles as “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way,” “The Ballad of Frodo of the Nine Fingers” and the “Ring of Doom,” to name only a few of many), and the odd depictions of the wood elves in The Hobbit (What’s with the frog faces and purple skin???) were slight setbacks. But perhaps we spoiled fans are too readily critical of these fine old movies. Does one ever consider the advantages?
1) They (or at least The Hobbit) were made to be on television. Keeping that in mind, and factoring in the assumption that TV will never be as good as the “Big Screen,” we can make a few allowances for the “froggy” elves and cat-like Smaug.
2) They’re relatively true to the original material. When you think of the difficulty of taking such long books and making them into cartoons, you realize how strong the temptation to cut more out or put in different stuff must have been.
3) The music wasn’t that bad. The Hobbit’s songs were all (or almost all) songs taken right from Tolkien’s poetry, and used in their proper place; and though they “sounded 70’s,” it’s a little more than even Peter Jackson can boast. A lamentable fact is that Jackson included very little Tolkien song and poetry, both of which were a major aspect of the books. (Okay, you can’t have characters spontaneously breaking into song as they travel, but perhaps he might’ve had Frodo dance on the table at the Prancing Pony, as he did in the book, or have a walking song before being chased by the Nazgûl.)
4) Actually, I’ve run out of definitely positive aspects. They did their best with what they had, though compared to now it wasn’t much. They might’ve done better, but at least they didn’t let The Beatles do their interpretation. (No joke; The Beatles wanted to make a musical version in the 60’s, casting Paul McCartney as Frodo, Ringo Starr as Sam, George Harrison as Gandalf, and John Lennon as Gollum. So thank heaven that all we got was Bakshi!)
by Redwallreader
Artwork: “Rivendell,”by Ralph Bakshi
