What do you think of the Bakshi cartoon?

EEK!!! Those are so stupid it's hard to believe! The Balrog looks like a browny with a lions head, Aragorn wears a miniskirt, Gimli wears a coffee bean sack on his head, The orcs look so stupid, Gandalf, Sauraman (who they call Auraman), and all the Nazgul gymp and are very scary, Gandalf is always pointing at people, and above all SAM IS A BLOODY IDIOT!!! I Hate that movie.

[The Only Real Estel]

Shall we rant about the new movies, then?

Legolas wears tights, Aragorn talks through his nose sometimes, Arwen breathes her words, Elrond always looks constipated, Frodo's always being stupid with the Ring, Barliman is such a dork, the men in Bree are obviously on stilts, I thought Orcs catipulted heads over the walls of Minas Tirith, not fake heads! They call Sauron 'SOUR-on', the Orcs were wearing masks, Farmer Maggot only had one dog, there were practically no actual houses in the Shire, Bill Ferny didn't have a Southern friend, Saruman & Gandalf pronounce Caradhas differently...

Really it's pointless isn't it? I really don't even care about most (or all) of the things I just listed, personally. I no that under 'The Movies' sign, it says that you can even discuss the animated ones, but if you want to discuss them, lets try to do so slightly more intelligently, shall we?

p.s. understand i'm really not knocking you (even though it might sound like it), i'm just demonstrating what your post sounded like (slightly exaggerated). more of a knock on your post than anything, i suppose :/.

[Lord of Angmar]

Yet another sterling topic, Corin. I hope you get plenty of replies from people who are just as murderously angry about a cartoon from the 1970s as you are.

[Elianna]

Uh, The Only Real Estel , check to pronounciation guide in Sil, you're supposed to pronouce Sauron "Sour-on."

[Laitoste]

They WERE stupid, but look on the bright side: they're something to watch to make you laugh, hysterically if you're anything like me. And another good thing-almost no one knows about them. Now, anything else you'd like to discuss. This topic really is not one to stimulate much discussion...no offence.

Yeah they did give me a good laugh.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Bakshi's movie was seriously flawed in a dozen different ways: the abrupt ending, the strange characterizations of the Hobbits including presenting Sam as a doofus, Boromir as a "Viking", the lack of funds which meant that the rotoscope animation (or whatever it's called!) of the first hour of the movie was not too bad but went steadily downhill from there.

I vaguely remember when I first heard this movie was going to be made. Many fans had high hopes. The most encouraging thing was the man they chose to write the script: Peter S. Beagle. He was an accomplished fantasy writer and, in fact, wrote the intro to one of the editions of LotR. What came out was definitely not what we expected. The funniest thing was this: nowhere in the pre-film advertising did anyone mention that this film only covered half of the book. Everyone went to the movie premier thinking that they would be seeing the entire Lord of the Rings, and came out scratching their heads because Bakshi cut off the action after Helm's Deep. Of course, the film was not a box office success and Bakshi never made his sequel.

There were things in the movie I did like: Bakshi's portrayal of Galadriel (I honestly liked it better than PJ's!) and the quality of the animation for the first hour. But overall the movie did not do a good job. However, I would not say I "hated" it. "Disappointed" would be a more accurate term.

It's funny -- this film came out in 1978, and so did Tolkien's Letters about the same time. I remember reading the part in the Letters where Tolkien said he didn't think his book could ever be successfully adapted into a film. After seeing Bakshi, I started to wonder if JRRT was right!

As flawed as Bakshi's film was, it was stellar when compared with the made for TV adaption of the Return of the King. That was the movie I most disliked. This was a Rankin-Bass production. Rankin-Bass had also come out with a Hobbit movie for children. The Hobbit was, in my opinion, a decent movie and had touches of charm. Moreover, more than all the other Tolkien adaptations (including PJ), the Hobbit was very faithful to the storyline.

RotK turned out, however, to be exceedingly bad -- far worse than the Hobbit or Bakshi's film. They absolutely killed the story, sticking in all kinds of weird things and "dumbing down" the plot. There are a few lovely landscapes depicted in the film, but other than this it is really bad!

But let's just be glad for these earlier movies. Tolkien sold the movie rights to LotR only about a year after the book was finished. If he didn't do that, I highly doubt that Christopher Tolkien and the Estate would have been willing to see any movie made. That could have effectively squashed PJ's project. There's all kind of interesting stuff about the rights to these early movies -- the ones that got made as well as the ones that didn't. (The latter include the Beatles' adaptation, the first one by Ackerman that Tolkien discusses in his Letters, and the one by John Boorman.)

I would like to have seen Boorman do something with LotR. His movie Excalibur was definitely interesting, and gives us an idea how he would have approached LotR. I read somewhere that Boorman actually talked to JRRT, and Tolkien told him that he preferred to see his book made into a live action film, rather than an animated one. However, once Bakshi's adaptation came out, Boorman dropped the project.

For an interesting discussion of these early film adaptations, see this link: here

[Essex]

Corin, we had this discussion in another thread a few weeks back. I can't remember what it was but will try to find it.

just suffice to say, the ralph bashki version of lord of the rings is far closer to the books than jackson's version is.

for what it was, it was a good introduction to me of tolkien's work when I was a kid, and drove me to read the books, as is jackson's version for the children of THIS generation.

so don't knock it too much. remember it's just a cartoon, mainly aimed at children.

(added)

Corin, by the wonders of modern science, the post I referred to is now above this one on the thread listing.

[Essex]

just posting a note so Corin can see this thread at the top of the list.

[The Saucepan Man]

Thank you, Essex for pointing out that this topic has been covered in a recent thread. I have merged the two to avoid too much duplication.

There is also an earlier thread comparing the cartoon with the Jackson films here:

Cartoon vs. Movie

I said my piece in the thread linked to above. But I will reiterate one point. The Bakshi cartoon was made over 20 years ago, when today's technical wizardry was simply not available. It may seem laughable now but it was all that we had back then. Certainly, when I saw it at the cinema aged 12 (when it was first released), I enjoyed it and I still have fond memories of it. Even if, looking back, I do find certain aspects of it strange and amusing now.

I, personally, do not like the cartoons. They are horrible things, but they are something to pull out and laugh at. Plus, you can annoy people with the songs.
I don't care what is said; they make Sam a bumbling fool in the cartoons, and on top of that, he looks like a woman. They make Merry a red-head, and they start saying 'God' in ROTK. -sigh- They didn't even get Gollum right; he looked like a child's plush toy.
But they were more faithful to the story line than PJ's.

[The Only Real Estel]

Yeah they did give me a good laugh.

Reall? It sounded more like you were mad about them in your first post. Maybe I need to get better at judging people's tones... .

[Kitanna]

Ok I've seen the Hobbit and I think it's good for little kids. My mom had read us the Hobbit when I was little and then I saw the movie and as a six year old I thought it was great. And then there's the LOTR cartoon. Half animation/half live action. The bain of my exsistence.
My dad made me watch it when I was four, five, six something like that and it scared the crap out of me. I scare pretty easily and I cover my eyes in PG-13 war movies, it's kinda sad, but it happens. Anyways so this cartoon scared me and I refused to have anything to do with LOTR unless it was the Hobbit.
So right before the FOTR came into theaters (my parents were forcing me to go) I watched it again and laughed 'til I cried. Horribly stupid cartoon I spent ten years being scared of.
So what my point is is that the cartoons are horrible and very stupid, but they keep the main idea to the books. They're not the best, but I think if you're a little kid watching them won't totally ruin your views of LOTR books.

[Vuelve]

I first saw the LotR cartoons a couple days ago on t.v.,........O My!!

That was very interesting to say the least, although I missed the Hobbit and ROTK comes on next weekend I think.It was very scary.

3 - The S in Saruman. Who on Arda is Aruman?

I was wondering about that too. At first I thought maybe I had just heard it wrong,but unfortunately I Didn't.And his whole red-robe-thing he had going on just didn't work for me.They could've at least drawn him wearing a tye-dye robe.That would have been closer to the book than that.

or maybe it was pantless Aragorn?

Okay this scared me very, VERY much.I thought for a minute that they were tan tights.

Looking back, Red Indian Aragorn, Viking Boromir, Farmer Gimli and Clarence the cross-eyed Legolas are rather amusing

So you mean I wasn't the only one who thought Aragorn looked like an Indian?

I was kind of excited when it got to the part where Frodo got stabbed and they were heading to Rivendell, I thought I was finally going to see someones inteurpetation of Glorfindel.I was wrong.I was like alright I finally get to see Glor............Legolas??What??This isn't supposed to happen.This wasn't in the book.Apparently it was in the script though.
I also thought Gollum and Sam were both very tragic. Gollum's voice drove me nuts the whole time, and I never pictured Sam as a Half-Wit.
Treebeard was rather tragic too.That was bad.

I feel much relieved after letting that out.Over all I thought the film was very entertaining though.I plan on buying it sometime.

Feels good to post on the Downs after such a long leave,
Vuelve

[Gorwingel]

Gosh, I finally saw this version on Cartoon Network last Monday, and all I have to say is thank gosh I didn't have to waste my money to rent it!

It was horrible, just plain dreadful, and awful (ok, maybe it wasn't that bad, but I am just letting my emotions spill out)

Now I had heard about it being bad, and the beginning started out okay (I thought Hobbiton, and Frodo looked fine), but once they introduced Sam (aka the Hunchback of Notre Dame in my opinion) I knew it wasn't going to be good. The main thing about this version (as many others have said) is the way the characters are shown on screen. I thought Aragorn looked like a mix between Robin Hood, and Conan the Barbarian (And I kept thinking that he needed a shirt), when I first saw Boromir I said "who's the Viking" (I didn't know that it was Boromir at the time), and then Legolas looked like the Prince from Swan Lake. I also thought that the Film's Elrond was terrible too, and Isengard... All I can say is "ugh".

I actually gave up on the film halfway through, but it was quite funny at times (the orcs! and Ringwraiths).

[Kitanna]

The funny thing is the guy who played Legolas's voice was the same guy who was C-3PO in Star Wars, oh the work he's found since then. When I watched it with my friends last summer we started referring to Aragorn as Chief Joseph. Then we muted it and put in our own voice overs. It was really quite amusing.
The funniest thing is my dad owns that cartoon.

[Lathriel]

I kinda liked the hobbit because I thought it was cute.

As for the Bhakshi version I remembered that the opening was okay but then it went rapidly downhill. I don't remember Sam though because everyone mentions it I can feel the image returning. *Shudder*

As for the orcs, they seemed very heavy considering the food they got couldn't make them that fat!

I remember watching the part where they cross the ford and the elf was riding towards them and i thought "Yeah Glorfindel!" I Couldn't have been more wrong, it was Legolas, what???? At least this prpaired me for PJ's version when it was Arwen who came.

So I do not want to watch it again, EVER!!!!

[Elentári_O_Most_Mighty_1]

they make Sam a bumbling fool in the cartoons, and on top of that, he looks like a woman

Pardon?! What an insult!!!

Anyway...I am proud to say that I finally managed to get all the way through watching the cartoon!!! *Curtseys*
Mind you, it was in German...my German teacher gives me LOTR stuff to bribe me to actually do German work in lessons- she's given me about 3 posters, a German LOTR sticker book thing and lent me the video of the cartoon in German. Couldn't understand much though- about one word in three actually... ...but I think the added novelty of not being able to understand a word was what managed to pull me through. So there you have it. I couldn't stand it in English, but I could cope with it in German...

I quite liked Galadriel as well...but I liked the way she changed in PJ's film more- might not have been too realistic, but then, ME is an imaginary place- and it worked better dramatically, IMO.

Oh, and it's nice to be back- I'm on study leave! Wahay! Downside- I had an English Literature exam today- ouch. My arm still aches!

[Arathiriel]

The cartoon is so bad that if anyone thinks PJ messed up LOTR then they need to watch the cartoon version as it is HORRID!!!

[Enorëiel]

I was flipping through the tv channels the other day and came upon it. I started laughing hysterically and sat down to watch it. Needless to say I was laughing a lot. The first time I saw Aragorn I had to do a double take - it looked like he wasn't wearing clothes! IT was only then that I noticed he had on a REALLY short tunic - type cloth. Legolas reminded me of a girl and Gimli was almost as tall as Aragorn and Legolas (wasn't he supposed to be short...). I only caught the last hour but that was enough. I'd really like to finish it just so I could have some more laughs. It really made me angry when they showed Sam. I nearly screamed - Sam is not a bumbling idiot people! What the heck!

Originally Posted by Essex

Jackson himself must have liked the film as he copied a number of things from it, including the shot of the ring bouncing down the rocks in Moria and the shot of Proudfoot sitting at the party with his legs on a chair. And, of course, a direct copy of the Nazgul in the hobbits' bedroom in Bree.

I think this point needs further research. I watched the beginning of the cartoon on TCN recently, and I noticed this too. It seemed that a lot of shot sequences from the cartoon were stolen/used by Jackson in the movie. It would be interesting to find out Jackson's thoughts on the cartoon, because it is too big of a coincidence for him not to have seen the cartoon.

And the person that said "The Battle of the Hornburg was apparently made by Sam Peckinpah" is right on!

[Ainaserkewen]

All I have to say is that I didn't know that orcs were such good singers.

Oh and...

Gosh, I finally saw this version on Cartoon Network last Monday, and all I have to say is thank gosh I didn't have to waste my money to rent it!

I got mine from the library. Apparently you can get almost any movie from there FREE!

[PaleStar]

Oh good grief...anyone who hasn't seen the cartoons are in for a laugh.
While Rankin/Bass didn't do well with either the Hobbit or Return of the King, they still did better than Bakishi.
After all, Sam was turned into a blithering idiot. I believe an icon I saw recently sums it up; "Potato+Hunchback of notre dome= Bakishi Sam"
Oh, the 'Frodo Of The Nine Fingers'...*growls* I do not like it, not at all. Still, sometimes I find myself singing it for a laugh; the original sounds like the guy singing it is a goat.
Let's not forget Bakishi's Gandalf chasing Frodo across the room with his finger.

[Essex]

frodo of the nine fingers song was not in bashkie's LOTR. It was, I believe, in Rankin/Bass Return of the King.

I believe the REAL Sam is a mixture of the 'bumbling idiot' as you call him in bashki's version, and the TOO clever/wise Peter Jackson version we get.

Sam does start the books as a sort of, how can I put it, not too bright sort of character. The point of this is that he grows into a more 'greater' character as the books progress. I don't think Jackson's version shows this change quite enough.

[PaleStar]

Is that really how you feel, Essex? Granted, Jackson's Sam is not exactly as described, but that's closer than you'll find in any of the cartoons.
Of course the 'Nine Fingers' song is in the R/B version...everyone sings in that...

[The Only Real Estel]

Sam does start the books as a sort of, how can I put it, not too bright sort of character. The point of this is that he grows into a more 'greater' character as the books progress. I don't think Jackson's version shows this change quite enough.

I think we got Sam's 'not so brightness' in the movie from the frightened nonsense he railed off when Gandalf pulled him in through the movie, & we got some of his simple, inexpierenced character from the 'farthest outside the Shire' bit. I thought PJ's Sam was pretty much right-on, a little brighter than the books perhaps, but there really was more about Book Sam than there seemed to be at first glance also...but I think I'm a little of topic .

[Aredhel]

You've got it all right. I agree with you 100% on everything that you said about the movie as well as the cartoons.

My favorite thing about Bakshi's work was the voice of Aragorn, played by (the british) John Hurt. His growling low voice was so wonderful, plus- his accent is genuine! I am a fan of Sir Robert Stephens, who did the voice of Aragorn in the BBC radio plays. Once again, it is his low, warbling, noble-sounding voice and accent that made the character one of my favorites. At least in the Bakshi version, Aragorn's lines are not changed so significantly as to detract from the character's good and noble heart.
One can see that Bakshi's Aragorn might even have been modeled on Sir Stephen's face - perhaps he was whom Bakshi wanted originally. But that's okay.
You know, I wasn't phased by the shortness of Aragorn's tunic, either. I did, however, wonder how he kept the bugs from sneaking up his crotch!

I do believe that Jackson's films would not be nearly so good without Bakshi's contribution to the visualization of Middle Earth. Thank goodness for his work, else I probably would not have liked the film one bit. In this, Bakshi won....even though his animated film was a bit of a dud. Thanks, Bakshi!

[The Only Real Estel]

You've got it all right. I agree with you 100% on everything that you said about the movie as well as the cartoons.

a perfect 3-for-3? That's pretty rare for me

[Encaitare]

I watched the LotR cartoon just out of curiosity and thought it to be terrible but entertaining (and this from a chick who has "Plan 9 from Outer Space", dubbed the worst movie ever made, on DVD, so perhaps my opinion is not valid )

But yes, Pantless Aragorn, Viking Boromir, and "Aruman" were all just too much to handle. BTW, they called him "Aruman" because Bakshi thought Sauron and Saruman sounded too much alike and it would confuse people.

[InklingElf]

Originally Posted by Encaitare

I watched the LotR cartoon just out of curiosity and thought it to be terrible but entertaining (and this from a chick who has "Plan 9 from Outer Space", dubbed the worst movie ever made, on DVD, so perhaps my opinion is not valid )

But yes, Pantless Aragorn, Viking Boromir, and "Aruman" were all just too much to handle. BTW, they called him "Aruman" because Bakshi thought Sauron and Saruman sounded too much alike and it would confuse people.

Oh it's dizzying. I agree with you Encaitare And the fact that they used a bit of real people for the fighting scenes and the works is really disturbing.

[Bungo Baggins]

I liked the cartoon as a kid, but I can only laugh when I watch it now, especially their portrayal of Sam. I do have to ay though, that were it not for the cartoon, I would have never been interested in Tolkien's world.

[Morsul the Dark]

that movie was very very horrible I'm gladI didn't watch it until after I read the trilogy because I would never had read LOTR had I seen it before reading the book

[The Only Real Estel]

I'm gladI didn't watch it until after I read the trilogy because I would never had read LOTR had I seen it before reading the book

Are you sure about that? If you hadn't read the trilogy first, you'd never have known how far off the cartoon was, so it wouldn't have annoyed you half as much. I haven't actually seen the movie, though (heard plenty, not sure I want to see it, so it could possibly be bad enough to scare people off just by taking a mere glance at it ! Still, I think it's more possible than not that if I were in your place, I'd have gone ahead & read the trilogy anyway ...

[Morsul the Dark]

Well I saw PJ's FOTR first then read the trilogy then saw TTT then watched the cartoon so it was going against both the book and PJ's adaptation so perhaps I should give it some slack but the troll was merely a big football player and Saruman was wearing a red cloak oddly

[Morgul Queen]

Does anyone else want to MST this?

I've been meaning to do it for nearly 6 months now, just never managed to get 'round to it.

BTW, if some of you are confuddled by the term 'MST' go here.

[Essex]

Estel. re your point:

If you hadn't read the trilogy first, you'd never have known how far off the cartoon was, so it wouldn't have annoyed you half as much.

If the bakshi movie is ONE thing, then it is actually quite faitful to the story line of lotr/tt. It is FAR more faithful an adaptation than PJs versions. I've already gone through my reasons on this on one of the other threads we've had recently on this topic.

I haven't actually seen the movie, though

if you get a chance, take a look at it. I personally don't think it's a bad movie as it is at least pretty faithful to the books, and was a good introduction to Tolkien to me, and made me actually read the books, as it did for Bungo Baggins above.

PS Jackson must of liked it as he knicked quite a few 'shots' from this film and used them in his own movie. (1/ ring falling down the rocks in the prolouge, 2/ shot of proudfoot sitting with his feet up at the party 3/ nazgul attack on the hobbits' bedroom in Bree)

[gorthaur_cruel]

This is a good review of Bakshi's cartoon.

[Reg Pither]

Essex, I'm with you on this one!

However ungainly and disappointing the film is as a whole, it does have John Hurt's Aragorn, some very atmospheric sequences and above all, accuracy in its favour. I saw it as a valiant but ultimately doomed first attempt at commiting LotR to film, and all we needed was for the technology to improve enough for all the fantastic races, creatures and places to be portrayed effectively.

This does then lead me slightly off-topic to say that ever since Bakshi (and before, in fact) I'd always assumed that the only real stumbling block to filming the trilogy was the visual realization of Middle Earth. So when the technology finally did catch up and PJ's films brilliantly portrayed Tolkien's world, I was so disappointed, confused and baffled that so much of the story was changed. It was as if PJ had done all the difficult stuff, but then inexplicably altered what didn't need altering.

[Essex]

Gorthar, re

This is a good review of Bakshi's cartoon.

No it's not!

But it IS funny (but at the author's expense, not because he writes anything humourous in itself)

God knows what his review of the jackson movies must be like regarding some of his bones of contention he has with bakshi's e.g. the elves 'glow' - watch out Arwen! or sam hiding in a bush instead of outside the window? - wow, yes, that mistake renders the film useless on it's own!

and the wizards have too much hair!!! oh my god, my dvd copy of the film is going straight in the bin. How could I have been so stupid?

[Encaitare]

If the bakshi movie is ONE thing, then it is actually quite faitful to the story line of lotr/tt. It is FAR more faithful an adaptation than PJs versions.

--Essex

Yes, they're much more faithful to the story, but just not as good. Oh well, we can't have everything