Review of The Lord of the Rings (1978) by Monika W — 08 Jun 2010

Animator/Director Ralph Bakshi's animation career is an interesting one, as he managed to create some hard-hitting, extremely entertaining cartoons that were ahead of their time, but when the time came, his works became very retro and vintage.

Such can be said with his animated retelling of J.R.R. Tolkien's immortal Lord of the Rings story, which packed a lot of punch in it's time and MORE than helped to lay the necessary ground work for Peter Jackson to take the infamous story to the next level with his groundbreaking live-action trilogy.

A lot of his thanks should be directed towards Bakshi, who really helped to first deliver the story of the one ring that winds up in the hangs of Bilbo Baggins, who passes it on the Frodo who must make the journey to Mordour to destroy the ring once and for all before Middle Earth is overtaken by darkness.

If you're an avid movie fan, than surely you'll recognize some of the voices, such as the great John Hurt (Alien, Hellboy, etc) as the voice of Aragon, or even Anthony Daniels (the infamous C-3PO) as Legolas.

No surprise, The Lord of the Rings is too epic of a story for even Bakshi to condense into one film, thus leading towards this film to have a big cliffhanger ending. The bad news...Bakshi never got the funding for another film, so fans were shamefully left hanging for many, many years until having to succumb to Peter Jackson's films for the full story to be fleshed out on screen.

It's a definite bummer the film was never concluded, but Bakshi's Lord of the Rings is a great testament to a visionary and his animation. It's definitely dark and brooding for its time, with a great element of action and adventure, subtly mixed with live action if you look close enough.

Great film.