Genre Guesstimation – The Lord of the Rings (1978)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s Genre was chosen by S.G of Rhyme and Reason and he chose Fantasy/Sci-fi animation (non Disney/PIXAR) Films as the Genre for May.  If you want to still submit a movie, the deadline is 25 May. Just send it to me at animation@movierob.net

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Fantasy/Sci-fi animation (non Disney/PIXAR) movies…

“Woah, Sam Gamgee, your legs are too short, so use your head!” – Sam

Number of Times Seen – 1 (5 May 2015)

Brief Synopsis – Frodo Baggins is charged with the duty of taking the one ring to Mount Doom to destroy it before The Dark Lord can take possession of it

My Take on it –This movie is an adaptation of the first two books of the Tolkien trilogy (Fellowship of the Rings and The Two Towers)

If I had never seen the Peter Jackson versions of the first two movies, I’m not quite sure what I would have thought of this movie.

To scrunch together so much material into just two hours just isn’t enough to make it coherent enough for those unfamiliar with the storyline themselves.

PJ told this story in 7 hours, so obviously there is much missing in the narrative.

This movie uses an interesting form of animation where parts are live action silhouettes which instead of looking fascinating as they had expected it to look, it looks extremely creepy.

Bottom Line – Interesting idea to try and make a film mixing live action silhouettes with animation, but it looks too creepy instead of fascinating as it should have.  The full story is chopped up too much and knowing the story via the Jackson films, helps to fill in the gaps. Watch the Jackson versions

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Director John Boorman originally envisioned making the entire trilogy as a single 100 minute film. Ralph Bakshi heard that he was going to do this, and, as a fan of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and J.R.R. Tolkien, was horrified. When Boorman’s plans to bring Tolkien’s novels to the screen fell apart, Bakshi approached J.R.R. Tolkien’s daughter to do the novels as a trilogy of animated films. Tolkien’s daughter loved Bakshi’s fantasy Wizards (1977), so she gave him the rights to The Lord of the Rings. Bakshi filmed “The Fellowship of the Rings” and “The Two Towers” (which were collapsed into a single two-and-a-half hour film), and had planned to film “The Return of the King”, but the trilogy was never completed. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not at all. The mix of animation and live action silhouettes just comes off too creepy instead of working well.

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

_______________________________________

Check out my *updated* movie stats here

To see my reviews of Oscar Winning Performances check out this link

To see my reviews of all Oscar Best Picture Winners click here (now complete)

Here is a link to my movie index A-Z