Let’s get this bitch to Mount Doom.
The Feature
Long before the Peter Jackson took on the task of bringing Tolkien’s classics to the big screen, Ralph Bakshi brought this epic masterpiece to the masses in animated form. If you haven’t read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, STOP READING THIS REVIEW!!! Go out and buy them, spend two months properly educating yourself and then come back and read this review. Saying you’re a fan of the movies and not having read the books is like saying you’re a fan of wine but only drink Boone’s Farm. With all that said, I’m not going to give a synopsis of the movie and trust that you know what I’m talking about.
The Lord of the Rings Original Animated Classic provides an interesting mix of standard animation as well as rotoscoping, a technique where scenes are shot in live action and then traced onto animated cells. For the most part it works well, but occasionally a scene will bounce between the styles and the animated characters won’t exactly look like their live action counterparts. Regardless, this film was a milestone when it originally released in 1978 and brings back a lot of nostalgia. Cramming 1,008 pages into a two hour movie is incredibly hard, but Bakshi did a great job of it.
Having read the books and seen this along with the recent remakes, I feel that Peter Jackson borrowed more from this film than he did from the books. Some of the scenes are incredibly similar save for some minor details. The early scene with the Ringwraith on the log with the four hobbits hiding underneath is one such case and is equally impressive in this film as it was in Peter Jackson’s version. Boromir’s death, the Balrog, visiting Galdriel and Shelob are all excellent scenes that make this animated classic worth watching.
Video/Audio
Bakshi’s LOTR is present in a 1080p High-def 16X9 1:85:1 widescreen with English 5.1 Dolby True HD and Dolby Digital sound. It also features a French and Spanish audio track as well as subtitles. Despite this being a High-def version of the classic, it feels incredibly dated. The transfer on this Blu-ray is incredibly poor. The picture constantly fades in and out and colors aren’t solid. White spots pop up frequently throughout the film that made me feel like it was copied from an old VHS tape. The animation also feels dated and features a fair amount of frame loss and stuttering.
On the other hand, the sound in this version is solid. The bass really hits on the more tense scenes and the original voice track as well as the score really shines here. This version features a lot more of the songs found in the book and I really enjoyed that. The scene where Frodo sings at the Prancing Pony is one such case and it’s a welcome addition here that didn’t make it into Peter Jackson’s version.
Special Features
The Lord of the Rings Original Animated Classic re-mastered deluxe edition on Blu-ray comes as a combo disc collection with the Blu-ray movie and special features on the first disc and a DVD copy as well as a digital copy on the second disc. The one special feature included is:
– Forging Through the Darkness: The Ralph Bakshi Vision of The Lord of the Rings featurette.
The featurette runs about 30 minutes and is basically an autobiography of Bakshi’s life. It starts way back with his high school shenanigans and goes on to show how he landed the animation director position for The Lord of the Rings. A lot of the stuff in this featurette was made just for this release and contains a lot of interviews with him, his family members and people he’s worked with throughout his career. It’s worth multiple viewings and is the real reason to get this version.
Overall
I had hoped the Blu-ray treatment of this classic would have seen the same kind of love that Disney has been giving its classic animated films, but sadly, it was not. The transfer to Blu-ray is some of the worst I’ve seen and the animation and colors definitely needed some sprucing up. The one special feature is robust and is the best part of this version. It’s a must have for the fans and a worth a rental for everyone else.
ComicsOnline gives The Lord of the Rings Original Animated Classic 3 out of 5 hobbits.
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