May Movie Month Talkback: The Lord of the Rings (Spoilers)

[Killtacular]

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The Lord of the Rings
Airs 7 P.M. (et/pt) on May 23, 2004


A not so classic adaption of a classic novel by the ever controversial Ralph Bakshi. This movie has so many traced drawings that it puts Scott Kurtz's PVP to shame. See what Hollywood thought of the Tolkien novels BEFORE Peter Jackson reinvented the fantasy film.

[Obi]

I think the only animation I've seen in this movie so far was the fish in the water and the ring falling down from Smeagol's hands...

Edit: Well, nevermind that.

[Delthayre]

I remember renting this a few years ago and being bemused and amused by how poorly done it was, laughing heartily at the piteous representations of the Ringwraiths and battle of Helm's Deep, and that it ended without resolution, because of budget issues, or a direct sequel (the Rankin-Bass RotK notwithstanding)



This movie has so many traced drawings that it puts Scott Kurtz's PVP to shame.Eh? I know it was largely rotoscoped, but on the other issue I'm pitifully ignorant of such things, as usual, so do tell more, if you don't mind terribly.

[Killtacular]

The very process of rotoscoping is to trace over live-action footage.

[Delthayre]

Aragorn almost looks like the crying indian from those old anti-littering commercials.

The very process of rotoscoping is to trace over live-action footage.Oh, yes I know what that is, I inquired into shortly after I finished coping with the fact that I paid $1.50 to rent this. I was more curious about the more unineteresting and tangental topic ofPVP being heavily traced. Of course I feel so much shame at having inquired on a tangent like that that I might as well have never asked and should just go simper quietly under a rock (for the dense, yes that is a psuedo-comic exagerration of habitual self-deprecation).

[Youko Recca]

I take it that horse got...whatevered?

[Mystic Shadow]

So far, I haven't enjoyed it one bit. In fact it makes me ashamed that I like cartoons and that I like the Lord of the Rings. Discraceful. Trash. Terrible.

[Delthayre]

So far, I haven't enjoyed it one bit. In fact it makes me ashamed that I like cartoons and that I like the Lord of the Rings. Discraceful. Trash. Terrible.
Just wait for next week's airing of The Return of the King. Not only is it a dodgy adaptation, IT'S A MUSICAL TOO!

[Obi]

So am I the only one who's kind of...enjoying this?

[Artimus Gigan]

Are these available on DVD?
They seem an interesting in a disscussion sense

I've heard of the LOTR movie that had no resolution because of budget issues, but I thought it was live action, not animated...I guess I learned somthing new...

[kaine23]

Some the "animation" here looks live-action.
Isn't the Drawf a bit...tall??

[Obi]

Some the "animation" here looks live-action.

Rotoscoping.

[kaine23]

Aragorn almost looks like the crying indian from those old anti-littering commercials.

Oh, yes I know what that is, I inquired into shortly after I finished coping with the fact that I paid $1.50 to rent this. I was more curious about the more unineteresting and tangental topic ofPVP being heavily traced. Of course I feel so much shame at having inquired on a tangent like that that I might as well have never asked and should just go simper quietly under a rock (for the dense, yes that is a psuedo-comic exagerration of habitual self-deprecation).
PvP's traced??

[Obi]

Wow. That WAS an abrupt ending. o.O;

[Artimus Gigan]

The Canadamation mixed with the rotoscoping....

it makes you appreciate on how far animation has come...

[kaine23]

Gollum looked...horrid, Aragon did look like a crying Indian and the drawf was too tall.

[Youko Recca]

Hell yeah! I'm laughing my butt off. Oh...the dwarf was just right to me....

[Sheamon]

I've heard this movie bashed for years and I've finally gotten the chance to view it for the first time tonight (saw the other 2 movies when I was a little kid, they're what got me into LOTR infact). And I can see why so many are critical of it. Although to be fair, I thought some parts were done well, like the new trilogy I was happy to see many lines taken straight from the book and was glad it didn't go too far into inventing new items like Arwen at Rivendell (although poor Glorfindel has seemed to have been axed in both versions!) Other things that stand out:

The Good:
-Voice Acting was pretty good for the most part. John Hurt(Aragorn) is a very good actor probably most well known for the guy who the alien comes out of in the original Alien. He was the best, the others were pretty good for the most part too although I didn't care for Gandalf. And was that Christopher Lee as Treebeard? Sure sounded like him.

The Bad:
-Just ending in the middle of nowhere bugged me to death. From what I've read up on, a sequel was supposed to finish up The Two Towers and do Return of the King, but it was never made and so this is all we have.
-The Animation was quite poor and oh so inconsistent. One second you have cleanly animated characters, the next they're just real people traced over. And man, those orcs sure looked bad.
-I thought Dwarves were short? Gimli was as tall as Legolas.
-Who the hell is Aruman?

My grade: D+ Glad Return of the King's up next week, while the singing drives me insane I think they did Gollum really well in that movie and the voice acting was quite well done too, from what I remember.

[Charlie]

Those Ring Wraiths sound like they're going through puberty with laryngitis.

[Arxane]

This movie was laughably bad. It's the kind of movie you watch out of curiosity and nothing more if only to get a chuckle at how horrid it is. Since I'm not in the mood to write a complete review, I'll just list some points:

- The voice acting was good at times, bad at other times. An example of a time when it sounded ridiculous was during Gandalf's confronting of the Balrog. After you've heard Sir Ian McKellen, listening to that unenthusiastic delivery makes it all the worse. And Gollum sounded like an English aristocrat with a forced lisp, which was...weird, to say the least.

- Speaking of the Balrog...holy crap, it looked like a caveman with bat wings. That was the fearsome creature of legend? Blech. And the rotoscoped orcs could've looked cool, but they didn't. They looked stupid.

- Such an abrupt ending.

- Gimli was too tall, Boromir looked like a Nordic barbarian, Legolas looked like a pretty-boy lounge singer, and the hobbits' hairy feet were too exaggerated.

...

You know what? That's about all I can say because...this film is just too forgettable. All I could think about while watching it was realizing that some of the voice actors were also in Watership Down. If Cartoon Network wants to show a good movie, they should show that movie instead.

[A.Magik]

I like this film. I love the voice acting of the professional british actors like John Hurt (Aragorn), Annette Crosbie (Galadriel), and Peter Woodthrope (as Gollum, a role he would later reprise for the BBC Radio adaptation of LOTR- the most ambitious Pre-Jackson adaptation of the trilogy). And despite a lot of awkward scenes, Bakshi does deliver some striking moments, such as the prologue, the Orc rush with Merry and Pipin, and everything between Theoden and Aragorn's desperate charge, and Gandalf's cavalry to the rescue (which I feel was superior to Jackson's rendition). What really steals the film is Leonard Rosenmann's epic score (which was obviously a model for his score for Star Trek IV). Obviously no match for Jackson's work (except Rosenmann beats Shore in music), I think this LOTR adaptation is flawed but has merit.

BTW: I found it peculiar that the CN censors managed to keep all the bloody content for this showing. I guess its probably because its considered decent to show inhuman creatures getting killed in all their g(l)ory, but censorable if it happens to a humanoid character.

Okay, throw your stones.

A.Magik

[Skeeter]

Just wait for next week's airing of The Return of the King. Not only is it a dodgy adaptation, IT'S A MUSICAL TOO!
Hey, I like Rankin/Bass' RoTK. Roddy McDowall is my favorite Samwise (but then, I may be biased), and despite all the editing the book went through the art is just gorgeous.

[Artimus Gigan]

I wonder, those rotoscopped costumes were really bad they couldn't have cost 20 bucks at most each to assemble...many of those masks were just things you could find at a Joke Shop or somthing...so I wonder how they had budget problems...


prehaps they spent the money on beer and were all drunk when they made this...

I still want these movies on DVD however, are they out?
and if they are, where can I get them and are they hard to find?

[Skeeter]

I still want these movies on DVD however, are they out?
and if they are, where can I get them and are they hard to find?
I don't know about Bakeshi's version, but the Rankin/Bass versions of The Hobbit and RoTK should be out on DVD and video. You can find them at places like Sam Goody, Suncoast or Media Play.

[Aquadementia]

I think the idea behind rotoscoping was they were looking for greater realism, and more realism means being taken more seriously. WRONG. I think as computer animation has advanced to near photo realism, hand drawn animation has gained more acceptance as art.

The facial expressions and the constant fidgeting are nauseating. Everything about the orcs and Ring Wraiths were bad.
It's a cartoon, they should be able to show anything they can imagine. Instead we get Ring Wraiths crossing the river really slow like their being told to wait for the smack-down. And the Belrog, one of the coolest monsters in all literature, looks like a man in a lion/butterfly costume on a wire harness. At least it looked kind of cool when Gandalf retold the tail of how he defeated it.

The one area that was well done were the back grounds. It's too bad they didn't trust those artist to do all the animation.

They kept close enough to the story, but it lacked suspense and it was just a well meaning attempt that fell flat.
This is the perfect cartoon for an animated MST3K.

Oh, and the one thing I would like to see some day is for somebody to cover the part with Tom Bombadill.

[Random]

I've got this game "The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1" around here somewhere. A CD game from way back when. I never finished it (always quit in Moria) but it had these cut scenes which were well done. Now I know they were taken from this film. Apparantly there were the only well done bits. Most of them were from the beginning scene.

But thankfully it's not unwatchably bad but laughably bad. This sounds like a job for Joel, Tom and Crow!

[shogunthethird]

the only thing that bugs me about this version is that Return of the King is basically the last two books compressed together, that alone has kept me from watching it....I'm even less inclined now that I've seen Peter Jackson's masterpiece

[Tash]

when is this coming on again? I missed it.

[Beat]

That was horrible...

Maybe Peter Jackson has spoiled me, but jeez...

That was Gimli?! And that's Aragorn?!

I'm going to watch the Fellowship and Two Towers. Repeatedly.

[Redi]

...now that I have seen this I can delete it from my memory.

*click and drags*

[Lord Dalek]

Some the "animation" here looks live-action.Bakshi's known to occasionaly thrown in some non-rotoscoped liveaction footage. Example: the projector sequences in Wizards.

[Elf]

That was horrible...

Maybe Peter Jackson has spoiled me, but jeez...

That was Gimli?! And that's Aragorn?!

I'm going to watch the Fellowship and Two Towers. Repeatedly.
Same here.

[Juu-kuchi]

Jeez, what was up with Bakshi when he made this? It was just... so weird.

Gandalf came off as rather spastic and of course everything else just really didn't feel right or something.