Reviews of the Bosch

So Ralph Bakshi’s film ended on a quick semi-resolution, but the ring was not destroyed and the journey not over. Somebody needed to finish the job. So Rankin/Bass hastily took up the task of adapting The Return of the King in 1980. However this wasn’t just a transition of artist and style, but also format. Bakshi’s movie had been a feature film, but Rankin/Bass was going the route of their Hobbit and doing it as a TV special, meaning it would be much shorter, cheaper, and more condensed. Also, since Rankin/Bass had nothing to do with Bakshi’s film, they picked up the story, but as a sequel to their Hobbit ; making for a very weird presentation that follows up essentially where The Lord of the Rings left off, but without acknowledging its specific continuity and darker tone. It’d be like if Jackson quit after The Two Towers  and the story was picked up by Wes Anderson as a sequel to Leonard Nimoy’s “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”. As you may be able to guess from all this, The Ret...

          Let’s talk about Ralph Bakshi. He’s essentially the father of American animation for adults, beginning his career by making movies like Fritz the Cat , Heavy Traffic , and Coonskin , all raunchy politically incorrect urban satires. Nevertheless, these movies were fairly well-received for their surreality and unconventional boldness, if vulgar subject matter and unappealing animation. After transitioning to the fantasy genre through an incredibly weird film called Wizards , Bakshi became intent on making an animated film out of one of his favourite books, The Lord of the Rings . The issue being, “a” film singular. Though Bakshi initially wanted to make at least two films, the second never came to fruition, and so he frustratingly wound up adapting The Fellowship of the Ring and half of The Two Towers , without getting to finish the series.           But he completed the film regardless, and in 1978 one of Tolkien’s stories ...

          Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is my second-favourite movie ever made (yes I count them as one, much like Tolkien’s original book was a single novel in three volumes). I also like The Hobbit movies fine, more than most. But in light of how popular these films are, how acclaimed, it makes you forget they weren’t the first adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic fantasy novels. Three animated movies, one theatrical, two for television, were made in the late 1970s that adapted both great stories. So I’ve decided to see them and discover how they compare to Jackson’s versions, and whether there’s anything they do better even on a much smaller production scale and shorter run-time.           We begin with Rankin/Bass, the studio most famous for their stop-motion Christmas specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer , The Little Drummer Boy , Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town , Jack Frost , and the traditionally animat...