Cheap The Lord of the Rings [Region 2] (DVD) (Ralph Bakshi) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Lord of the Rings [Region 2]

A pretty good attempt at bringingTolkien to film audiences.
I saw this movie in 1978 when I was a kid, and just discovering Tolkien and the world of heroic fantasy, and I absolutely LOVED it. I didn't get to see it again for about ten years, and by then I was a much more critical audience. I still found it good, but by then I was well able to notice the flaws. <
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>Looking at it today, I still like it, but it could have been so much better. Prior to CGI effects, there simply wouldn't have been any way to bring Tolkien's Middle Earth to the screen in a live action version. The huge battles, and some of the more fantastic creatures couldn't have been done with the special effects of the time, not very well anyway. Unfortunately, it has to be said that Bakshi didn't do any better answering some of those same challenges. The rotoscoped live actors of the battle scenes just don't fit in with the rest of the animation, and are too obviously guys in rubber masks. The Balrog, as it appears in this film, is also quite obviously just a rotoscoped guy in a very cheesy-looking suit. Disney animators (whatever else they might have done, for good or ill) would have made the Balrog as spectacular and frightening as one could have wished for. The only animation that really looks good in this movie is that of the main characters (and even there, Aragorn looks a little too much like an Apache for my taste). <
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>But in truth, the problems with this film are mostly of the technical sort. The voice acting is really quite good, and both the action and the characterization are actually far more faithful to Tolkien's novels than in the Peter Jackson movies. In the scenes in the Shire, in the Inn in Bree, the Council of Elrond, and all throughout the film, Bakshi used Tolkien's dialogue almost unaltered (parts were edited out to keep the film's run time from being overlong, but what was used is pretty much just as Tolkien wrote it), whereas Peter Jackson and co. rewrote almost every line of dialogue spoken by every character. Bakshi portrayed Pippin and Merry just as Tolkien had portrayed them: as trusty, stalwart companions, whereas Jackson turned them into a couple of half-witted buffoons played for comic relief, and even a bit of bathroom humor in one scene. Bakshi made Theoden a valiant warrior king (after being healed by Gandalf), whereas Jackson made him weak-willed and indecisive at Helm's Deep. Bakshi made Aragorn the hardy, wayworn ranger, fulfilling his destiny just as Tolkien had shown him doing, whereas Jackson portrayed hims as running from his responsibilities until his hand was forced. Bakshi, in portraying the scenes at the Prancing Pony inn at Bree, the Council of Elrond, Boromir's final battle, and other scenes, played out the action just as it was in the books, whereas Jackson made considerable changes. <
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>And Jackson made more and more changes to Tolkien's narrative with each film. As the great reviews poured in following Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring", the second and third films showed progressively more tendency on the part of Peter Jackson to put his own stamp on the saga, featuring increasingly severe deviations from the original story in the books. I don't insist that every novel brought to film be made absolutely 100% faithful to the original story -- indeed, oftentimes that's not possible, as film is a very different medium. But most of the changes Jackson made were simply not improvements to Tolkien's original story, and there's no reason why the original could not have been filmed closer to the way it was written. After all, Bakshi did it more than twenty years earlier, and those were the parts of his film that worked the best. The flaws in the animated version come from elsewhere. <
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>So I still appreciate this movie as a partly successful attempt to bring Tolkien's magnificent epic to filmgoing audiences. Bakshi's faithfulness to the original story is what makes this film watchable. The animation is very hit-and-miss, and there are legions of things one can see that could have and should have been done better, but fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's work should appreciate what's here for the good that's in it. Peter Jackson's treatment is far more famous and successful, and deservingly so, by and large, for it is a great work, which I enjoyed immensely. Nevertheless, there are aspects of the story that Bakshi told better, and viewers ought to recognize that.

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Good, but not good enough
I really like this animated version of lord of the rings. <
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>However, I have a slight problem with the ending. This movie represents only Book 1 and 2 (Book 3 is completely missing) and the ending of the movie is just ???, even for somebody who read all the books a couple times. Frodo just disappeared from the story during the last 15-20 minutes of the movie and the defeat of Saruman is suddenly the final victory of the good (what were the terrible stories about Sauron at the beginning of the movie all about? asks the critical viewer.). <
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>The rest of the movie (except the ending) was pretty well done for a try to make a film version out of the books. I think the latest approach (Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)) to bring the book to the theatres did a better job. <
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>(Original review January 1, 2002)

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One of those "intolerant fans" of the books
What the Amazon reviewer fails to note is that Bakshi's film only loosely approximates the general plot of the Lord of the Rings. He presents what is basically a hurried synopsis, while devoting plenty of time to his repetitious, looping rotoscope nightmares. Then he ends when he runs out of money, one supposes, some where about two thirds of the way through the story. The end. Huh?