Review of The Lord of the Rings (1978) by Louis P — 24 Nov 2018

Ralph Bakshi did his best with the resources available to him in the late '70s, the background animation is good and there are a couple of good scenes. Plus, without this movie we likely wouldn't have gotten Peter Jackson's classic live-action trilogy and this movie had the better Frodo because I felt that Elijah Wood's Frodo was a bit too vulnerable.

Wish those damn executives left poor Bakshi alone. Why, you ask? The character animation is incomplete, inconsistent and nightmarish to look at. Eww, their faces. The music blares loudly throughout most of the movie.

The battle sequences are so confusing it's hard to tell or care who's winning this battle. There are some questionable character designs. Why is Boromir a Viking? John Hurt Aragorn, where are your pants? (speaking of pantsless rotoscoped Bakshi fantasy animation, there's an erectifying movie called Fire & Ice and yes, they remain like that throughout the entire movie since that's standard animation stuff) And last but not least, if you haven't read the books or seen the Jackson trilogy, the movie's confusing as hell.

You'd think they'd give us time to get to know these characters a bit more, given the uncharacteristically long runtime for an animated film of over 2 hours. LotR 1978 gets points for effort but my God, is it weak in comparison to the Jackson movies.