The Lord of the Rings (1978)

Thirty years and two months ago on the release of his animated take on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Ralph Bakshi (Wizards) strove for state-of-the-art honors through the dominant use of rotoscoping (filming live action to limn as cel animation). His efforts proved impressive at the time -- if uneven -- though ultimately his budget betrayed him. (Bakshi ran out of money after filming the equivalent of the first two books of the trilogy, leaving Rankin-Bass an opening to release a hurried animation of The Return of the King in 1980 that was not much better than the firm's mostly cringeworthy animation of The Hobbit in 1977. In the end, Bakshi's American Pop arrived the next year with much better production values.) Bakshi's love for Tolkien's material is evident in his tendency to be faithful to the books and much of his footage remains iconic for the Tolkien aficionado even after the arrival of Peter Jackson's quadruple-length trio of live-action-and-CGI feature films 25 years later. I was just finishing college and starting a lifelong literary devotion to Tolkien when this movie came out, and I saw it several times in the theater. It still holds up well for any Middle-Earth fan, however, you may skip it if you are interested only in "the latest and greatest" -- for example, if you prefer Peter Jackson's King Kong to any previous version. Granted, Bakshi's film has flaws. Tolkien devotees are piqued when the wizard Saruman is referred to more often than not as Aruman (a studio decision made in midstream to differentiate Saruman from Sauron that never got cleaned up) not to mention the mispronunciations of Celeborn, Minas Tirith, and more. Animation fans may wonder if Bakshi was accidentally trying to invent Squigglevision. Minor quibbles with characters exist but, being familiar with the work of perhaps every Tolkien illustrator, I embraced Bakshi's depictions of Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Boromir, Legolas (voiced by Anthony Daniels) and others. The weathered Aragorn (voiced by John Hurt) was even acceptable (since he didn't say Kemo Sabe). Some scenes drag on in a psychedelic limbo, such as the ford of Bruinen, Lord knows why. Jackson's Lord of the Rings is the definitive edition but if you love Tolkien's corpus, see Bakshi's version -- if only to check it off the list. After all, 1978 is the year that gave us Corvette Summer, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, and Heaven Can Wait -- so you know you're already ahead of the game, right? 4 stars.