Review of The Lord of the Rings (1978) by Justin O — 27 Oct 2012

I watched this again recently expecting it to be as bad as it seemed when I was a child. It wasn't nearly as bad as I remember it, though it certainly wasn't great. My main complaint then was that it didn't look much like the Hobbit movie and the characters bled and everything (I was afraid of sharp things). Well, that and that the plot was just incoherent, which is still true.

This is one of those films where the problems and successes can be easily separated.

Pros:

I really liked some of the characters, particularly Frodo and Aragorn. Frodo is more proactive than he was in the PJ version, which is the one thing I disliked about their portrayal of him in that. Aragorn is very different, but still cool as he has the incomparable John Hurt playing him. He never looks quite right, but that's a separate issue. Gandalf is also good, although he's the least memorable incarnation of him that I can remember. And Galadriel actually manages to be close to how she was portrayed in the book. Very nice.

While the plot is a mess, it does generally stick closer to the book than PJ's version. So that's something I guess.

Cons:

I really hated some of the characters. Sam is just a low-class, ugly mess. He has zero dignity and he seems to be playing a caricature of the stupid sidekick. God did I hate this guy. Sam failed characterwise and designwise, but most of the rest of the bad characters came from a design standpoint. Treebeard for example sounds perfect but looks like a giant, angry turnip. Ugg. Sauron has giant horns and looks ridiculous, the elves look just like people (except Legolas), and the black riders are just rotoscoped men in cheap Halloween costumes.

The animation is overdone. The Rankin/Bass Hobbit was underanimated due to budget constraints, but they made up for it with a strong plot and unique designs. This film is overanimated with every character twitching like a marionette on strings. Why do that? I can only assume that they were trying really hard to match the movements to those of the actors frame-by-frame and failing. The background plates are similarly wretched. They're little more than monochromatic backdrops with no life to them at all.

The plot is all over the place and stops making sense after the first hour or so. This movie is so compressed that they rush through all of the important exposition. And they do this by removing lines, not abridging their content. As they get towards the end of the film this becomes more and more apparent. All of the second book stuffed is into the last quarter of the movie. They show up at Helm's Deep (which is where?) for no adequately defined reason only to have a very poor rotoscoped battle for again no reason. And then the film ends. No conclusion really, no climactic battle with Sauron's forces. The ring is still en route to Mordor. Nothing is resolved. Ick.

Bit of Both:

The music. I like the music but it really seems out of place in the film. It seems so out of keeping with the action and setting of the film that I can't help but wonder if they even had a rough cut ready when they recorded it or if they just edited prerecorded tracks in wherever they felt they needed them.