|
|
 Peter Jackson vs. Ralph Bakshi
In 1978, I went to Bakshi's movie with an open mind. It was well that I did, and also well that my mind, at that age, was still mostly empty...
Analysis by Greg Wright
|
THE FELLOWSHIP
OF THE RING
MONTHLY FEATURE: AUGUST 2002
Peter Jackson vs. Ralph Bakshi
This
page was created on August 8, 2002
This page was last updated on May 31, 2005
|
|
Peter Jackson vs. Ralph Bakshi
|
 The Blessing...
1978 was a most excellent year in Seattle. The Seahawks, new to the NFL in 1976, were one of the most exciting teams in football, the Sonics were well on the way to becoming a championship caliber team under the coaching of Lenny Wilkins, I was entering my final year of High School, and I had fully immersed myself in Middle-earth. I think it's safe to say that, by the time I was 14 or 15, I was a bona-fide Tolkien fanatic. It still being the pre-internet years, I was definitely not as well-informed as the average fan is today; in fact, even while in college at the University of Washington from 1979-1984, I don't think I ran into anyone who was more "into" Tolkien than I was. And I was an English Lit AND Computer Science major! But by modern standards, my fandom was pretty infantile.
|
Still, the announcement that my final year of adolescent "youth" would be graced by the release of an animated treatment of The Lord of the Rings was almost more than I could bear. Earlier the previous year, I had finished the months-long, literally "pains-taking" process of hand-copying enlarged versions of Tolkien's maps onto parchment, using remorselessly unforgiving India ink. If learning to deal with a young male's hormones hadn't already been enough stress in my life, I'm sure that working on those maps would have sent me over the edge. And the prospect of seeing the geography of Middle-earth, now so well fixed in my head, on the big screen of Seattle's theatres was thrilling.
|
 I was a bit perplexed, however, to learn that the animation was being directed by Ralph Bakshi. I had seen Fritz the Cat emblazoned on the marquee at the 3000-seat Lewis and Clark Theatre some years before; and remembered that it was one of those controversial X-rated movies. Why wasn't Disney handling something as important as the artistic representation of Middle-earth? For years, the Hildebrandts had already been publishing artwork that would be a tough act to follow. Did United Artists think that the story needed a little more spice than brought to the table by the Hildebrandts' chivalric ladies? Were Bakshi's Goldberry and Galadriel going to be buck-nekkid? Intriguing as the thought might have been to a teen-age male, there were still, at this point in my life, some things that were sacred. And The Lord of the Rings was one of them. Nobody had best tamper with the chaste virtue of Tolkien's women!
|
So it was with some trepidation that I ventured to the theatre. There was enough advance word, though (through conventional press coverage), to inform me and other Tolkien fans that Bakshi's team had indeed taken some liberties with the story line; and, contrary to the historical revisionism of some latter-day critics, it was well known that this 240-minute-or-so film would cover only half of Tolkien's three-volume novel. My mind was open. It was not disappointed. The movie was serious, dark and violent. And I was aware that I was watching an art form—film animation—that I really didn't understand. Bakshi's use of "rotoscoping," somewhat new at the time, was very startling and (at times) extremely satisfying. Sequences such as the Prancing Pony at Bree left me feeling that Bakshi had really gotten a handle on how to film Tolkien, since live-action cinematography simply wasn't yet an option.
|
 There was so much to enjoy about the film, in fact, that I saw it more than once, dragging friends with me on later visits. I particularly enjoyed the thrilling mayhem of Moria and Helm's Deep. I hunted for the soundtrack album, without success. I bought the 1979 Tolkien calendar featuring artwork from the movie (only marginally disappointed that Ballantine had failed to publish a Hildebrandt calendar that year). I bought copies of the movie posters (both versions) and placed them with pride on my walls, alongside my precious parchment maps. I was, in short, a geek.
|
...And the Curse
I mentioned earlier that I went to see Bakshi's movie with an open mind. It was well that I did, and also well that my mind, at that age, was still mostly empty. Having just completed another viewing of the film, nearly 25 years later, I honestly wonder what I was thinking then. Writing the above paragraphs was very difficult, as I now have almost no recollection of what it was I originally enjoyed about the movie, those many long years ago. Perhaps it was my youthful enthusiasm. Perhaps it was my youthful idealism. Perhaps it was my youthful naivete. Perhaps it was some mysterious brain tumor from which I have miraculously recovered.
The fact of the matter is that Bakshi's film is not a very good one. After decades of listening to film scores by Morricone, Williams, Elfman, Shore, Knopfler, Copeland, and countless others, Leonard Rosenman's music starts things badly through its lack of subtlety and, dare I say it, musicality. And most tellingly, Bakshi's animation has not held up well at all. While the human movements in The Lord of the Rings are still more realistic than many contemporary efforts (most shockingly bad in Ice Age), the animation is terribly inconsistent. The principal characters are saddled with conventionally cartoonish visages (where did Legolas get that nose?) while background characters get the full roto-scope treatment.
But the real problem with filming actors and then transferring their performances to animated cels (in essence, the process of rotoscoping) is with the actors themselves. All of United Artists' money was spent on animators, and not on actors. While the vocal characterizations themselves are fine (the acting budget being spent most lavishly in this area) it almost seems that the actors playing minor roles (all of the orcs, and the folks and the Prancing Pony, in particular) were recruited from some amateur three-ring circus. Bad performances cannot be improved by animating them. In fact, it might even be a worse choice, as a good animator can create a fairly decent performance from scratch.
|
Bakshi's Real Shortsightedness
These minor issues aside, Bakshi's real failure is his treatment of the character of Sam Gamgee. Bakshi seems to think that Sam is along for comic relief only; and that the best form of comic relief is Down Syndrome. Bakshi's Sam isn't even really a Hobbit at all, when compared to his fellow Hobbits Frodo, Merry and Pippin. He's just a goofball.
I think this reflects a philosophical shortcoming in Bakshi, and highlights Peter Jackson's perceptiveness. Bakshi seems to be too easily persuaded that Aragorn and Frodo—heroic characters, true enough—are the heart of Tolkien's story. They are not. Aragorn, made in the classic heroic mode, is merely a standard by which other heroes in the story may be compared. He's a hero who was born for heroism, bred for heroism, destined for heroism. Frodo, by contrast, is a hero in more of the modern sense: one who, like the British soldier Tolkien himself was, answers the call of duty with determination and faithfulness; but one who also returns from the battle somehow not really having been up to the challenge, and broken because of it.
Bakshi mostly gets these two characters right. But he totally misses the simple heroism of Samwise Gamgee, who exhibits the best of the strengths of the common person, the heroism of dealing with everyday life: of being faithful through thick and thin, of rising to great challenges when needed; and of contentedly, if somewhat sadly, carrying on after the great events of life have passed, knowing that all which follows is likely to be somehow anti-climactic.
This is a pathos that Jackson, and Sean Astin, have allowed room for in their Sam Gamgee. It is a level of being that Bakshi's Sam, in all his glorious two-dimensionality, could never have approached even if Bakshi had raised financing for a sequel. It's just as well that Rankin/Bass picked up the story where Bakshi left off.
|
So How Do Jackson and Bakshi Compare?
This is an Apples-to-Apples comparison which Jackson wins almost without a fight. To Bakshi's credit, I find the confidence and grim determination of his Aragorn at the Prancing Pony preferable to Viggo Mortensen's angst-ridden hero-to-be. And Bakshi's Elves (Elrond and Galadriel in particular) are as a whole less dour and unwashed than Jackson's. For Bakshi, the episode with the Mirror of Galadriel is an opportunity to show the lightness of mind which a 5000-year-old lady might bring to the temptation of the Ring; but Cate Blanchett's Galadriel is all imperiousness and dark night.
Still, in spite of failing to correct many of the narrative weaknesses of the earlier screenplay, and while introducing some new ones, Jackson gives us a film that is satisfying as film, and as art. Bakshi's effort is, sadly, hard to appreciate as either.
|
| LOTR Coverage Index here
E-mail Greg Wright here
|
OFFICIAL
SITE
The Lord of the Rings © 1999-2004 New Line Cinema. All Rights Reserved.
|
| |
|
|
