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The Lord of the Rings (1978 film)
Encyclopedia
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a 1978 American fantasy film
directed by Ralph Bakshi
. It contains both animation and live action footage which is rotoscoped to give it a more consistent look throughout the length of the movie. It is an adaptation of the first half of the high fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings
(1954–55) by English novelist J. R. R. Tolkien
. Set in Middle-earth
, the film follows a group of hobbit
s, elves
, men
, dwarves
, and wizards
who form a fellowship. They embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring
made by the Dark Lord Sauron
, and ensure his destruction. The film features the voices of William Squire
, John Hurt
, Michael Graham Cox
, and Anthony Daniels
of Star Wars
fame. The screenplay was written by Peter S. Beagle
, based on an earlier draft by Chris Conkling
.
Director Ralph Bakshi encountered Tolkien's writing early in his career, and had made several attempts to produce The Lord of the Rings as an animated film before being given funding by producer Saul Zaentz
and distributor United Artists
. The film is notable for its extensive use of rotoscoping, a technique in which scenes are first shot in live-action, then traced onto animation cel
s. Although the film was a financial success, it received a mixed reaction from critics. There was no sequel covering the remainder of the story. Nonetheless, the film was an influence on Peter Jackson
, who details his debt in the 'extras' of the Fellowship of the Ring DVD.
of Middle-earth
, elven
smiths forged nine Rings of Power
for mortal men
, seven for the Dwarf-Lords
, and three for the Elf-Kings. At the same time, the Dark Lord Sauron
made the One Ring
to rule them all after learning the secrets of how to forge them from the Elves of Hollin. As the Last Alliance of Elves and Men fell, the Ring fell into the hands of Prince Isildur
from across the sea
, and after Isildur was killed by orcs
, the Ring lay at the bottom of the river Anduin
. Over time, Sauron captured the nine Rings made for men and turned their owners into the Ringwraiths
, terrible beings who roamed the world searching for the One Ring. The Ring was found by a Stoor named Déagol
, whose friend, Sméagol, murdered him and stole it for himself. The Ring warped Sméagol into a twisted, gurgling wretch known only as Gollum
(Peter Woodthorpe
), and he wandered with it to a cave in the Misty Mountains
. Hundreds of years later, the hobbit
Bilbo Baggins
(Norman Bird
) accidentally discovered his "precious" Ring and took it back with him to the Shire
.
Years later, during Bilbo's birthday celebrations in the Shire
, the wizard Gandalf
(William Squire
) tells him to leave the Ring for Frodo Baggins
(Christopher Guard
). Bilbo agrees, and leaves the Shire. Seventeen years pass, during which Gandalf learns that the Shire is in danger: evil forces have discovered that the Ring is in the possession of a Baggins. Gandalf meets with Frodo to explain the Ring's history and the danger it poses to all of Middle-earth. Frodo leaves his home, taking the Ring with him.
He is accompanied by three hobbit friends, Pippin
(Dominic Guard
), Merry
(Simon Chandler
), and Sam (Michael Scholes). After a narrow escape from the Ringwraiths pursuing them, the hobbits eventually come to Bree
, where they meet Aragorn
(John Hurt), who is first introduced to them as Strider, a friend of Gandalf's, who leads them the rest of the way to Rivendell
. Frodo is stabbed atop Weathertop
mountain by the chief of the Ringwraiths
with a knife imbued with evil magic. Part of the knife stays inside him, and he gets sicker as the journey progresses. The Ringwraiths catch up with them shortly after they meet the elf Legolas
(Anthony Daniels
), and at a standoff at the ford of Rivendell, the Ringwraiths are swept away by the enchanted river. At Rivendell, Frodo is healed by its lord, Elrond
. He meets Gandalf again, held captive by his fellow wizard Saruman
(Fraser Kerr), who plans to join with Sauron but also wants the Ring for himself. Bilbo, Gandalf, and the others argue about what should be done with the One Ring, and Frodo volunteers to go to Mordor
, where the Ring can be destroyed. Frodo sets off from Rivendell with eight companions: Gandalf; Aragorn; Boromir
, son of the Steward
of Gondor
(Michael Graham Cox); Legolas; Gimli
the dwarf (David Buck
); and Frodo's original three hobbit companions.
Their attempt to cross the Misty Mountains
is foiled by heavy snow, and they are forced to take a path under the mountains via Moria
. Moria was an ancient dwarf kingdom, but is now full of orcs and other evil creatures, and Gandalf falls into an abyss while battling a balrog
. The remaining eight members of the Fellowship continue through the elf-haven Lothlórien, but Boromir tries to take the Ring from Frodo. Frodo decides to leave the others behind and continue his quest alone, although faithful Sam insists on accompanying him.
Boromir is killed by orcs while trying to defend Merry and Pippin. They are captured by the orcs, who intend to take them to Isengard
through the land of Rohan
. The hobbits escape and flee into Fangorn forest, where they meet Treebeard
(John Westbrook
), a huge tree-like creature
. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas find Merry and Pippin; they find small footprints and follow them into Fangorn Forest. There, they find Gandalf, whom they believed had died in the mines of Moria. The four ride to Rohan's capital, Edoras, where Gandalf persuades King Théoden
(Philip Stone
) that his people are in danger. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas then travel to the defensive fortification Helm's Deep
.
Frodo and Sam, meanwhile, discover Gollum stalking them, and capture him. Frodo pities him, and lets him live in return for guidance to Mount Doom. Gollum promises to lead them to a secret entrance to Mordor. At Helm's Deep, Théoden's forces struggle to resist an onslaught of orcs sent by Saruman. Gandalf arrives the next morning with the Riders of Rohan just in time, destroying the orc army.
was introduced to The Lord of the Rings during the mid-1950s while working as an animator for Terrytoons
. In 1957, the young animator started trying to convince people that the story could be told in animation
. At the time, the film rights to the story were held by Walt Disney
, but in 1968, the rights were passed to United Artists
, where filmmakers Stanley Kubrick
and John Boorman
each tried to adapt the story.
In the mid-1970s, Bakshi, who had since achieved box office success producing adult-oriented animated films such as Fritz the Cat
, learned of UA and Boorman's attempts to adapt the story. He was told that Boorman had planned to produce all three parts of The Lord of the Rings as a single film, and commented, "I thought that was madness, certainly a lack of character on Boorman's part. Why would you want to tamper with anything Tolkien did?" When Boorman's proposed adaptation fell apart, Bakshi approached the studio and proposed that he direct a three-part animated film adaptation of the book:
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
office was located in the same building, and Bakshi spoke to then-president Dan Melnick. "I thought he would understand what The Rings meant, because UA did not." Bakshi and Melnick made a deal with Mike Medavoy at United Artists to buy the Boorman script. "The Boorman script cost $3 million, so Boorman was happy by the pool, screaming and laughing and drinking, 'cause he got $3 million for his script to be thrown out." However, after Melnick was fired from MGM, the deal fell through. Bakshi then contacted Saul Zaentz (who had helped finance Fritz the Cat) to ask him to produce The Lord of the Rings, and Zaentz agreed. Before the production started, the original three-part adaptation was negotiated down to two parts at United Artists, and Bakshi met with Tolkien's daughter Priscilla to discuss how the film would be made. She showed him the room where her father did his writing and drawing. Bakshi says, "My promise to Tolkien's daughter was to be pure to the book. I wasn't going to say, 'Hey, throw out Gollum and change these two characters.' My job was to say, 'This is what the genius said.'"
Ralph Bakshi said that one of the problems with the production was that the film was an epic
, because "epics tend to drag. The biggest challenge was to be true to the book." When asked what he was trying to accomplish with the film, Bakshi stated "The goal was to bring as much quality as possible to the work. I wanted real illustration as opposed to cartoons." Bakshi said that descriptions of the characters were not included because they are seen in the film:
Bakshi's major artistic influences on the film were classical illustrators such as Howard Pyle
and N. C. Wyeth
; he stated that no contemporary illustrators were an influence on the style of the film.
, who told the bulk of the story in flashback, from Merry Brandybuck's point of view. After Bakshi and Zaentz saw Conkling's first draft, fantasy author Peter S. Beagle
was called in for a rewrite. According to the website of publisher Conlan Press, Beagle wrote multiple drafts of the script for only $5,000, on the strength of promises from Saul Zaentz to hire him for other, better-paying projects afterward. Zaentz later reneged on these promises.
The film makes some deviations from the book, but overall follows Tolkien's narrative quite closely. Of the adaptation process, Bakshi stated that elements of the story "had to be left out but nothing in the story was really altered." The film greatly condenses Frodo's journey from Bag End to Bree. Stop-overs at Farmer Maggot
's house, Frodo's home in Buckland, and the house of the mysterious Tom Bombadil
deep in the Old Forest
are omitted. Maggot and his family and Bombadil and his wife Goldberry
are thus all omitted, along with Fatty Bolger
, a hobbit who accompanied Frodo at the beginning. According to Bakshi, the character of Tom Bombadil was "dropped" because "he didn't move the story along."
Some changes were cosmetic in nature. For example, Saruman the White adopts the title "Saruman of Many Colours" as in Tolkien's novel. In it he initially wore white but modified his robe. However, in the film his robes are neither white nor multicoloured, but are in different shades of red. Legolas wears silver and grey clothes whereas in the book he is "clad in green and brown". Aragorn too wore "rusty green and brown" in the book whereas his garments are in different shades of brown in the film. The scene where the Ringwraiths arrive in the hobbits' room and slash at their beds, only to find that they are not there, is not in the book, only the discovery of the aftermath.
The depiction of the battle of Helm's Deep
differs in some details from the book. Notably, the fortress itself is called "Helm's Deep" in the film while in the book it was called the "Hornburg", and "Helm's Deep" is the name of the valley where it is located, or more precisely, the ravine behind the fortress. The explosive-like "blasting-fire", here the "Fire of Isengard," appears as magical projectiles shot from Isengard itself. Éomer is portrayed as a renegade found by Gandalf; together, they save the day at Helm's Deep. In the book, he was present at the battle, and Gandalf arrived with Erkenbrand.
The Animated Movie Guide, reviewer Marea Boylan writes that "up to that point, animated films had not depicted extensive battle scenes with hundreds of characters. By using the rotoscope, Bakshi could trace highly complex scenes from live-action footage and transform them into animation, thereby taking advantage of the complexity live-action film can capture without incurring the exorbitant costs of producing a live-action film."
For the live-action portion of the production, Bakshi and his cast and crew went to Spain, where the rotoscope models acted out their parts in costume. During the middle of a large shoot, union bosses called for a lunch break, and Bakshi secretly shot footage of actors in Orc
costumes moving toward the craft service table, and used the footage in the film. Many of the actors who contributed voices to this production also acted out their parts for rotoscoped scenes. The actions of Bilbo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee were performed by Billy Barty
, while Sharon Baird
served as the performance model for Frodo Baggins. Although some cel animation was produced and shot for the film, very little of it appears in the final film. Most of the film's crowd and battle scenes use a different technique, in which live-action footage is posterized
to produce a more three-dimensional look. In a few shots the two techniques are combined.
Bakshi claimed he "didn't start thinking about shooting the film totally in live action until I saw it really start to work so well. I learned lots of things about the process, like rippling. One scene, some figures were standing on a hill and a big gust of wind came up and the shadows moved back and forth on the clothes and it was unbelievable in animation. I don't think I could get the feeling of cold on the screen without showing snow or an icicle on some guy's nose. The characters have weight and they move correctly." After the Spanish film development lab discovered that telephone lines, helicopters, and cars could be seen in the footage Bakshi had shot, they tried to incinerate the footage, telling Bakshi's first assistant director that "if that kind of sloppy cinematography got out, no one from Hollywood would ever come back to Spain to shoot again."
Following the live-action shoot, each frame of the live footage was printed out, and placed behind an animation cel. The details of each frame were copied and painted onto the cel. Both the live-action and animated sequences were storyboarded. Of the production, Bakshi is quoted as saying,
Although he continued to use rotoscoping in American Pop
, Hey Good Lookin', and Fire and Ice
, Bakshi later regretted his use of rotoscoping, stating that he felt that it was a mistake to trace the source footage rather than using it as a guide.
was composed by Leonard Rosenman
. Bakshi wanted to include music by Led Zeppelin
but producer Saul Zaentz insisted upon an orchestral score because he would not be able to release the band's music on his Fantasy Records
label. Bakshi later stated that he hated Rosenman's score, which he found to be too cliché. In Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context, Ernest Mathijs writes that Rosenman's score "is a middle ground between his more sonorous but dissonant earlier scores and his more traditional (and less challenging) sounding music [...] In the final analysis, Rosenman's score has little that marks it out as distinctively about Middle Earth, relying on traditions of music (including film music) more than any specific attempt to paint a musical picture of the different lands and peoples of Tolkien's imagination." The film's score was issued as a double-LP
soundtrack album
in 1978. A limited collector edition was created by Fantasy Records as a picture disc double LP featuring four scenes: The Hobbits leaving Hobbiton, The Ringwraiths at Bree, Gandalf and the Balrog, Journey with the Orcs. In 2001, the album was reissued on compact disc
, with bonus tracks.
The Film Book of J.R.R. Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings, published by Ballantine Books
on October 12, 1978, still referred to the sequel in the book's inside cover jacket. Bakshi states that he would never have made the film if he had known what would happen during the production. He is quoted as saying that the reason he made the film was "to save it for Tolkien, because I loved the Rings very much."
Bakshi also stated that he felt that the film "took more out of me than I got back."
Eventually, the Rankin-Bass studio, the company behind the 1977 animated adaptation of The Hobbit, released The Return of the King
in 1980 as a sequel to The Hobbit.
The problem of the film being half of the story was resolved during the home video release of The Lord of the Rings with the billing block on the back of its VHS and DVD copies by crediting the novels The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers as the official books on which the film is based.
, based on a $4 million budget.
and Saturn Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation and Best Fantasy Film, respectively. Leonard Rosenman's score was nominated for a Golden Globe
for Best Original Motion Picture Score, and Bakshi won a Golden Gryphon award for the film at the Giffoni Film Festival.
, Frank Barrow wrote that the film was "daring and unusual in concept." Joseph Gelmis of Newsday
wrote that "the film's principal reward is a visual experience unlike anything that other animated features are doing at the moment." Roger Ebert
called Bakshi's effort a "mixed blessing" and "an entirely respectable, occasionally impressive job ... [which] still falls far short of the charm and sweep of the original story." Vincent Canby
of the New York Times called the film "both numbing and impressive." David Denby
of New York
magazine felt that the film would not make sense to viewers who had not previously read the book. Denby wrote that the film was too dark and lacked humor, concluding that "The lurid, meaningless violence of this movie left me exhausted and sickened by the end."
Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes
, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics, gives the film a score of 50%.
Michael Barrier
, an animation historian, described The Lord of The Rings as one of two films that demonstrated "that Bakshi was utterly lacking in the artistic self-discipline that might have permitted him to outgrow his limitations."
's Lord of the Rings film trilogy
. After initially denying having seen Bakshi's film, Jackson admitted to having first encountered The Lord of the Rings via Bakshi's film, stating that the film was a "brave and ambitious attempt." In another interview, Jackson stated that he "enjoyed [the film] and wanted to know more." Bakshi is quoted as saying "Peter Jackson did say that the first film inspired him to go on and do the series, but that happened after I was bitching and moaning to a lot of interviewers that he said at the beginning that he never saw the movie. I thought that was kind of fucked up." Jackson's adaptation borrows from Bakshi's version. On the audio commentary
for the DVD release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson acknowledges one shot, a low angle of a hobbit at Bilbo's birthday party shouting "Proudfeet!", as an intentional homage to Bakshi's film.
Bakshi is quoted as saying that he had "mixed feeling[s]" about Jackson's adaptations, although he had not seen the films. "In some respects I feel good that Peter Jackson continued and went on, and in some respects I feel bad that Saul Zaentz, the producer, and various people never called me, thanked me, or asked my permission to do the movie. [...] [Nor] has anyone sent me a bottle of wine, on the tremendous success. [...] But I have more feelings on the business side of that than I do on the creative side. I'm glad Peter Jackson had a movie to look at—I never did. And certainly there's a lot to learn from watching any movie, both its mistakes and when it works. So he had a little easier time than I did, and a lot better budget."
form with artwork by Spanish artist Luis Bermejo
, under license from Tolkien Enterprises
. Three issues were published for the European market, starting in 1979, and were not published in the United States or translated into English due to copyright problems.
Bakshi's film sparked enough interest in Tolkien's work to provoke not only an animated TV special produced by the Rankin-Bass animation studio based on The Return of the King
, but a complete adaptation of The Lord of the Rings
on BBC Radio
. For this broadcast, Michael Graham Cox and Peter Woodthorpe reprised their roles of Boromir and Gollum, respectively.
Warner Bros.
(the rights holder to the post-1974 Rankin-Bass library and the pre-1990 Saul Zaentz theatrical backlog) has released The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Return of the King
on VHS
and DVD
, both packaged separately and as a boxed-set "trilogy" of films. While the VHS version ends with the narrator saying "Here ends the first part of the history of the War of the Ring.", the DVD version has an alternate narration: "The forces of darkness were driven forever from the face of Middle-Earth by the valiant friends of Frodo. As their gallant battle ended, so, too, ends the first great tale of The Lord of the Rings." The Lord of the Rings was released in a deluxe edition on Blu-ray and DVD on April 6, 2010. The Lord of the Rings was selected as the 36th greatest animated film by Time Out magazine, and ranked as the 90th greatest animated film of all time by the Online Film Critics Society
.
Fantasy film
Fantasy films are films with fantastic themes, usually involving magic, supernatural events, make-believe creatures, or exotic fantasy worlds. The genre is considered to be distinct from science fiction film and horror film, although the genres do overlap...
directed by Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
. It contains both animation and live action footage which is rotoscoped to give it a more consistent look throughout the length of the movie. It is an adaptation of the first half of the high fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
(1954–55) by English novelist J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
. Set in Middle-earth
Middle-earth
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....
, the film follows a group of hobbit
Hobbit
Hobbits are a fictional diminutive race who inhabit the lands of Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction.Hobbits first appeared in the novel The Hobbit, in which the main protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is the titular hobbit...
s, elves
Elf (Middle-earth)
In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Elves are one of the races that inhabit a fictional Earth, often called Middle-earth, and set in the remote past. They appear in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, but their complex history is described more fully in The Silmarillion...
, men
Man (Middle-earth)
The race of Men in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth books, such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, refers to humanity and does not denote gender...
, dwarves
Dwarf (Middle-earth)
In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Dwarves are a race inhabiting the world of Arda, a fictional prehistoric Earth which includes the continent Middle-earth....
, and wizards
Wizard (Middle-earth)
In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Wizards of Middle-earth are a group of beings outwardly resembling Men but possessing much greater physical and mental power. They are also called the Istari by the Elves. The Sindarin word is Ithryn...
who form a fellowship. They embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring
One Ring
The One Ring is a fictional artifact that appears as the central plot element in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy novels. It is described in an earlier story, The Hobbit , as a magic ring of invisibility. The sequel The Lord of the Rings describes its powers as being more encompassing than...
made by the Dark Lord Sauron
Sauron
Sauron is the primary antagonist and titular character of the epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.In the same work, he is revealed to be the same character as "the Necromancer" from Tolkien's earlier novel The Hobbit...
, and ensure his destruction. The film features the voices of William Squire
William Squire
William Squire was a Welsh actor of stage, film and television, born in Neath, South Wales.As a stage actor, Squire performed at Stratford-upon-Avon and at the Old Vic, and notably replaced his fellow-countryman Richard Burton as King Arthur in Camelot at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway.His...
, John Hurt
John Hurt
John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...
, Michael Graham Cox
Michael Graham Cox
Michael Graham Cox was an English actor who voiced Boromir in the 1978 movie The Lord of the Rings, as well as voicing Boromir in the 1981 BBC radio series The Lord of the Rings. He also voiced Bigwig in the feature film Watership Down.Michael had a minor role in Richard Attenborough's A Bridge...
, and Anthony Daniels
Anthony Daniels
Anthony Daniels is an English actor. He is best known for his role as the droid C-3PO in the Star Wars series of films made between 1977 and 2005.-Early life:...
of Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
fame. The screenplay was written by Peter S. Beagle
Peter S. Beagle
Peter Soyer Beagle is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. His most notable works include the novels The Last Unicorn, A Fine and Private Place and Tamsin, and the award-winning story "Two Hearts".-Career:Beagle won early recognition from The Scholastic Art &...
, based on an earlier draft by Chris Conkling
Chris Conkling
Jon Christopher "Chris" Conkling looks like a mix of Fergie and Jesus his abs are as hard as steel and hair is luscious blonde.And was a co-author of the screenplay for the animated version of Lord of the Rings, directed by Ralph Bakshi and produced by Saul Zaentz...
.
Director Ralph Bakshi encountered Tolkien's writing early in his career, and had made several attempts to produce The Lord of the Rings as an animated film before being given funding by producer Saul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz is an American film producer and former record company executive. He has won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and in 1996 was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award....
and distributor United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
. The film is notable for its extensive use of rotoscoping, a technique in which scenes are first shot in live-action, then traced onto animation cel
Cel
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...
s. Although the film was a financial success, it received a mixed reaction from critics. There was no sequel covering the remainder of the story. Nonetheless, the film was an influence on Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy , adapted from the novel by J. R. R...
, who details his debt in the 'extras' of the Fellowship of the Ring DVD.
Plot
Early in the Second AgeSecond Age
The Second Age is a time period from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings. Tolkien intended for the history of Middle-earth to be considered fictionally as a precursor to the history of the real Earth....
of Middle-earth
Middle-earth
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....
, elven
Elf (Middle-earth)
In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Elves are one of the races that inhabit a fictional Earth, often called Middle-earth, and set in the remote past. They appear in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, but their complex history is described more fully in The Silmarillion...
smiths forged nine Rings of Power
Rings of Power
The Rings of Power in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium are magical rings created by Sauron or by the Elves of Eregion under Sauron's tutelage...
for mortal men
Man (Middle-earth)
The race of Men in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth books, such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, refers to humanity and does not denote gender...
, seven for the Dwarf-Lords
Dwarf (Middle-earth)
In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Dwarves are a race inhabiting the world of Arda, a fictional prehistoric Earth which includes the continent Middle-earth....
, and three for the Elf-Kings. At the same time, the Dark Lord Sauron
Sauron
Sauron is the primary antagonist and titular character of the epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.In the same work, he is revealed to be the same character as "the Necromancer" from Tolkien's earlier novel The Hobbit...
made the One Ring
One Ring
The One Ring is a fictional artifact that appears as the central plot element in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy novels. It is described in an earlier story, The Hobbit , as a magic ring of invisibility. The sequel The Lord of the Rings describes its powers as being more encompassing than...
to rule them all after learning the secrets of how to forge them from the Elves of Hollin. As the Last Alliance of Elves and Men fell, the Ring fell into the hands of Prince Isildur
Isildur
Isildur is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He appears in the author's books The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales....
from across the sea
Númenor
Númenor is a fictional place in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings. It was a huge island located in the Sundering Seas to the west of Middle-earth, the main setting of Tolkien's writings, and was known to be the greatest realm of Men...
, and after Isildur was killed by orcs
Orc (Middle-earth)
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings, Orcs or Orks are a race of creatures who are used as soldiers and henchmen by both the greater and lesser villains of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings — Morgoth, Sauron and Saruman...
, the Ring lay at the bottom of the river Anduin
Anduin
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, Anduin is the Sindarin name for the Great River of Wilderland, the longest river in the Third Age . The ancestors of the Rohirrim called it Langflood. It flowed from its source in the Grey and Misty Mountains to the Mouths of Anduin in the Great Sea...
. Over time, Sauron captured the nine Rings made for men and turned their owners into the Ringwraiths
Nazgûl
The Nazgûl are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium...
, terrible beings who roamed the world searching for the One Ring. The Ring was found by a Stoor named Déagol
Déagol
Déagol is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. His story is related in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of three volumes comprising Tolkien's most famous novel, The Lord of the Rings, in the chapter "The Shadow of the Past"....
, whose friend, Sméagol, murdered him and stole it for himself. The Ring warped Sméagol into a twisted, gurgling wretch known only as Gollum
Gollum
Gollum is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He was introduced in the author's fantasy novel The Hobbit, and became an important supporting character in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings....
(Peter Woodthorpe
Peter Woodthorpe
Peter Woodthorpe was an English film, television and voice actor who is best known for supplying the voice of Gollum in the 1978 Bakshi version of The Lord of the Rings and BBC's 1981 radio serial...
), and he wandered with it to a cave in the Misty Mountains
Misty Mountains
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth, the Misty Mountains is a mountain range, running for 795 miles from north to south, between Eriador and the valley of the Great River, Anduin, and...
. Hundreds of years later, the hobbit
Hobbit
Hobbits are a fictional diminutive race who inhabit the lands of Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction.Hobbits first appeared in the novel The Hobbit, in which the main protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is the titular hobbit...
Bilbo Baggins
Bilbo Baggins
Bilbo Baggins is the protagonist and titular character of The Hobbit and a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings, two of the most well-known of J. R. R...
(Norman Bird
Norman Bird
Norman Bird was a British character actor. Often sporting a moustache and an air of worried resignation, he seemed to specialise in downtrodden roles...
) accidentally discovered his "precious" Ring and took it back with him to the Shire
Shire (Middle-earth)
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire refers to an area settled exclusively by Hobbits and largely removed from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is located in the northwest of the continent, in...
.
Years later, during Bilbo's birthday celebrations in the Shire
Shire (Middle-earth)
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire refers to an area settled exclusively by Hobbits and largely removed from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is located in the northwest of the continent, in...
, the wizard Gandalf
Gandalf
Gandalf is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In these stories, Gandalf appears as a wizard, member and later the head of the order known as the Istari, as well as leader of the Fellowship of the Ring and the army of the West...
(William Squire
William Squire
William Squire was a Welsh actor of stage, film and television, born in Neath, South Wales.As a stage actor, Squire performed at Stratford-upon-Avon and at the Old Vic, and notably replaced his fellow-countryman Richard Burton as King Arthur in Camelot at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway.His...
) tells him to leave the Ring for Frodo Baggins
Frodo Baggins
Frodo Baggins is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium.He is the main protagonist of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He was a hobbit of the Shire who inherited Sauron's Ring from Bilbo Baggins and undertook the quest to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom...
(Christopher Guard
Christopher Guard
Christopher Guard is an English actor.Educated at Latymer Upper School, Guard was a member of the National Theatre aged 20. He has appeared in Vienna 1900 , Memoirs of a Survivor and Return to Treasure Island...
). Bilbo agrees, and leaves the Shire. Seventeen years pass, during which Gandalf learns that the Shire is in danger: evil forces have discovered that the Ring is in the possession of a Baggins. Gandalf meets with Frodo to explain the Ring's history and the danger it poses to all of Middle-earth. Frodo leaves his home, taking the Ring with him.
He is accompanied by three hobbit friends, Pippin
Peregrin Took
Peregrin Took, more commonly known as Pippin, is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. Pippin is introduced as a Hobbit who plays a major role as one of the companions of Frodo Baggins, in his quest to destroy the One Ring.Peregrin was the only son of...
(Dominic Guard
Dominic Guard
Dominic Guard is a former English film actor.His most famous role was as a 14-year-old when he played Leo in The Go-Between. He won a BAFTA award in 1972 for his performance...
), Merry
Meriadoc Brandybuck
Meriadoc Brandybuck, usually referred to as Merry, is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, featured throughout his most famous work, The Lord of the Rings....
(Simon Chandler
Simon Chandler
Simon Chandler is an English television actor; his career began in 1976, and more recently he usually plays senior establishment characters such as Members of Parliament or senior civil servants. He has appeared in lead roles in Judge John Deed and other dramas, as well as appearing in theatre...
), and Sam (Michael Scholes). After a narrow escape from the Ringwraiths pursuing them, the hobbits eventually come to Bree
Bree (Middle-earth)
Bree is a fictional village in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, east of the Shire and south of Fornost Erain. It is thought to have been inspired by the Buckinghamshire village of Brill, which Tolkien visited regularly in his early years at Oxford...
, where they meet Aragorn
Aragorn
Aragorn II is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, one of the main protagonists of The Lord of the Rings. He is first introduced by the name Strider, which the hobbits continue to call him...
(John Hurt), who is first introduced to them as Strider, a friend of Gandalf's, who leads them the rest of the way to Rivendell
Rivendell
Rivendell is an Elven outpost in Middle-earth, a fictional realm created by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was established and ruled by Elrond in the Second Age of Middle-earth...
. Frodo is stabbed atop Weathertop
Weathertop
In the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Weathertop is a hill in the Eriador region of Middle-earth, the southernmost and highest summit of the Weather Hills...
mountain by the chief of the Ringwraiths
Witch-king of Angmar
The Witch-king of Angmar, also known as the Lord of the Nazgûl and the Black Captain among other names, is a fictional character and a major antagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings. In Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings, he is the chief of the Nazgûl , the chief servants...
with a knife imbued with evil magic. Part of the knife stays inside him, and he gets sicker as the journey progresses. The Ringwraiths catch up with them shortly after they meet the elf Legolas
Legolas
Legolas is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, featured in The Lord of the Rings. He is an Elf of the Woodland Realm and one of nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring.- Literature :...
(Anthony Daniels
Anthony Daniels
Anthony Daniels is an English actor. He is best known for his role as the droid C-3PO in the Star Wars series of films made between 1977 and 2005.-Early life:...
), and at a standoff at the ford of Rivendell, the Ringwraiths are swept away by the enchanted river. At Rivendell, Frodo is healed by its lord, Elrond
Elrond
Elrond Half-elven is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He is introduced in The Hobbit, and plays a supporting role in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.-Character overview:...
. He meets Gandalf again, held captive by his fellow wizard Saruman
Saruman
Saruman the White is a fictional character and a major antagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. He is leader of the Istari, wizards sent to Middle-earth in human form by the godlike Valar to challenge Sauron, the main antagonist of the tale, but later on aims at gaining...
(Fraser Kerr), who plans to join with Sauron but also wants the Ring for himself. Bilbo, Gandalf, and the others argue about what should be done with the One Ring, and Frodo volunteers to go to Mordor
Mordor
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth, Mordor or Morhdorh was the dwelling place of Sauron, in the southeast of northwestern Middle-earth to the East of Anduin, the great river. Orodruin, a volcano in Mordor, was the destination of the Fellowship of the Ring in the quest to...
, where the Ring can be destroyed. Frodo sets off from Rivendell with eight companions: Gandalf; Aragorn; Boromir
Boromir
Boromir is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He appears in the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings , and is mentioned in the last volume, The Return of the King....
, son of the Steward
Stewards of Gondor
The Stewards of Gondor were rulers from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium of Middle-earth.-Overview:Steward was the traditional title of a chief counsellor to one of the Kings of Gondor. The office of Arandur first came into existence during the reign of King Rómendacil I...
of Gondor
Gondor
Gondor is a fictional kingdom in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, described as the greatest realm of Men in the west of Middle-earth by the end of the Third Age. The third volume of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, is concerned with the events in Gondor during the War of the Ring and with...
(Michael Graham Cox); Legolas; Gimli
Gimli (Middle-earth)
Gimli is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, featured in The Lord of the Rings. A Dwarf warrior, he is the son of Glóin ....
the dwarf (David Buck
David Buck
David Buck was an English actor. His most famous role was in the animated film The Lord of the Rings , for which he provided the voice of Gimli...
); and Frodo's original three hobbit companions.
Their attempt to cross the Misty Mountains
Misty Mountains
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth, the Misty Mountains is a mountain range, running for 795 miles from north to south, between Eriador and the valley of the Great River, Anduin, and...
is foiled by heavy snow, and they are forced to take a path under the mountains via Moria
Moria (Middle-earth)
In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Moria was the name given by the Eldar to an enormous underground complex in north-western Middle-earth, comprising a vast network of tunnels, chambers, mines and huge halls or 'mansions', that ran under and ultimately through the Misty Mountains...
. Moria was an ancient dwarf kingdom, but is now full of orcs and other evil creatures, and Gandalf falls into an abyss while battling a balrog
Balrog
Balrogs are fictional demonic beings who appear in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Such creatures first appeared in print in his novel The Lord of the Rings, though they figured in earlier writings that posthumously appeared in The Silmarillion and other books.Balrogs are described as...
. The remaining eight members of the Fellowship continue through the elf-haven Lothlórien, but Boromir tries to take the Ring from Frodo. Frodo decides to leave the others behind and continue his quest alone, although faithful Sam insists on accompanying him.
Boromir is killed by orcs while trying to defend Merry and Pippin. They are captured by the orcs, who intend to take them to Isengard
Isengard
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth, Isengard , a translation of the Sindarin Angrenost, was a large fortress. Both names mean "Iron fortress" In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth, Isengard , a translation of the Sindarin Angrenost, was a large fortress....
through the land of Rohan
Rohan
Rohan is a realm in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy era of Middle-earth. It is a grassland which lies north of its ally Gondor and north-west of Mordor, the realm of Sauron, their enemy . It is inhabited by the Rohirrim, a people of herdsmen and farmers who are well-known for their horses and cavalry....
. The hobbits escape and flee into Fangorn forest, where they meet Treebeard
Treebeard
Treebeard is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings. The eldest of the species of Ents, he is said to live in the ancient Forest of Fangorn and stands fourteen feet in height and is tree-like in appearance, with leafy hair and a rigid structure. Fangorn Forest...
(John Westbrook
John Westbrook (actor)
John Westbrook was an English actor.Born in Teignmouth, Devon, John Westbrook worked mainly in theatre and in radio. He also made occasional film and television appearances. His most famous role was as Christopher Gough in Roger Corman's The Tomb of Ligeia...
), a huge tree-like creature
Ent
Ents are a race of beings in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world Middle-earth who closely resemble trees. They are similar to the talking trees in folklore around the world. Their name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for giant....
. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas find Merry and Pippin; they find small footprints and follow them into Fangorn Forest. There, they find Gandalf, whom they believed had died in the mines of Moria. The four ride to Rohan's capital, Edoras, where Gandalf persuades King Théoden
Théoden
Théoden is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings. He appears as a major supporting character in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.-Appearances:...
(Philip Stone
Philip Stone
Philip Stone was an English actor.He was born Philip Stones in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Stone appeared in three successive Stanley Kubrick films: playing the central character's "Dad" in A Clockwork Orange , "Graham" in Barry Lyndon and as "Delbert Grady," the original caretaker in The Shining...
) that his people are in danger. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas then travel to the defensive fortification Helm's Deep
Helm's Deep
In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, Helm's Deep was a large valley in the north-western Ered Nimrais .The valley was described as being blocked over its entire width by the natural series of hills called Helm's Dike and behind that lay the fortress of Aglarond or the Hornburg, at the...
.
Frodo and Sam, meanwhile, discover Gollum stalking them, and capture him. Frodo pities him, and lets him live in return for guidance to Mount Doom. Gollum promises to lead them to a secret entrance to Mordor. At Helm's Deep, Théoden's forces struggle to resist an onslaught of orcs sent by Saruman. Gandalf arrives the next morning with the Riders of Rohan just in time, destroying the orc army.
Cast
- Christopher GuardChristopher GuardChristopher Guard is an English actor.Educated at Latymer Upper School, Guard was a member of the National Theatre aged 20. He has appeared in Vienna 1900 , Memoirs of a Survivor and Return to Treasure Island...
as Frodo - William SquireWilliam SquireWilliam Squire was a Welsh actor of stage, film and television, born in Neath, South Wales.As a stage actor, Squire performed at Stratford-upon-Avon and at the Old Vic, and notably replaced his fellow-countryman Richard Burton as King Arthur in Camelot at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway.His...
as Gandalf - Michael Scholes as Sam
- John HurtJohn HurtJohn Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...
as Aragorn - Simon ChandlerSimon ChandlerSimon Chandler is an English television actor; his career began in 1976, and more recently he usually plays senior establishment characters such as Members of Parliament or senior civil servants. He has appeared in lead roles in Judge John Deed and other dramas, as well as appearing in theatre...
as Merry - Dominic GuardDominic GuardDominic Guard is a former English film actor.His most famous role was as a 14-year-old when he played Leo in The Go-Between. He won a BAFTA award in 1972 for his performance...
as Pippin - Norman BirdNorman BirdNorman Bird was a British character actor. Often sporting a moustache and an air of worried resignation, he seemed to specialise in downtrodden roles...
as Bilbo - Michael Graham CoxMichael Graham CoxMichael Graham Cox was an English actor who voiced Boromir in the 1978 movie The Lord of the Rings, as well as voicing Boromir in the 1981 BBC radio series The Lord of the Rings. He also voiced Bigwig in the feature film Watership Down.Michael had a minor role in Richard Attenborough's A Bridge...
as Boromir - Anthony DanielsAnthony DanielsAnthony Daniels is an English actor. He is best known for his role as the droid C-3PO in the Star Wars series of films made between 1977 and 2005.-Early life:...
as Legolas - David BuckDavid BuckDavid Buck was an English actor. His most famous role was in the animated film The Lord of the Rings , for which he provided the voice of Gimli...
as Gimli - Peter WoodthorpePeter WoodthorpePeter Woodthorpe was an English film, television and voice actor who is best known for supplying the voice of Gollum in the 1978 Bakshi version of The Lord of the Rings and BBC's 1981 radio serial...
as Gollum - Fraser Kerr as Saruman
- Philip StonePhilip StonePhilip Stone was an English actor.He was born Philip Stones in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Stone appeared in three successive Stanley Kubrick films: playing the central character's "Dad" in A Clockwork Orange , "Graham" in Barry Lyndon and as "Delbert Grady," the original caretaker in The Shining...
as Theoden - Michael DeaconMichael DeaconMichael Deacon was a Scottish actor.His many stage appearances included roles for venues such as the Hampstead Theatre, The Mercury Theatre, Colchester, Pentameters Theatre and the Finborough Theatre....
as Wormtongue - Andre MorellAndré MorellAndré Morell was a British actor. He appeared frequently in theatre, film and on television from the 1930s to the 1970s...
as Elrond - Alan TilvernAlan TilvernAlan Tilvern was a British film and television actor. He is best known for his role as R.K. Maroon in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.-Television appearances:* Doctor Who serial, Planet of Giants...
as an innkeeper - Annette CrosbieAnnette CrosbieAnnette Crosbie, OBE is a Scottish character actor.-Life and career:Crosbie was born in Gorebridge, Midlothian, Scotland, to Presbyterian parents who disapproved of her becoming an actor. Nevertheless, she joined the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School while still in her teens...
as Galadriel - John WestbrookJohn Westbrook (actor)John Westbrook was an English actor.Born in Teignmouth, Devon, John Westbrook worked mainly in theatre and in radio. He also made occasional film and television appearances. His most famous role was as Christopher Gough in Roger Corman's The Tomb of Ligeia...
as Treebeard
Production
Director Ralph BakshiRalph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
was introduced to The Lord of the Rings during the mid-1950s while working as an animator for Terrytoons
Terrytoons
Terrytoons was an animation studio founded by Paul Terry. The studio, located in suburban New Rochelle, New York, operated from 1929 to 1968. Its most popular characters included Mighty Mouse, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Deputy Dawg, Luno and Heckle and Jeckle; these cartoons and all of its...
. In 1957, the young animator started trying to convince people that the story could be told in animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
. At the time, the film rights to the story were held by Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
, but in 1968, the rights were passed to United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
, where filmmakers Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
and John Boorman
John Boorman
John Boorman is a British filmmaker who is a long time resident of Ireland and is best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Zardoz, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, Hope and Glory, The General and The Tailor of Panama.-Early life:Boorman was born in Shepperton, Surrey,...
each tried to adapt the story.
In the mid-1970s, Bakshi, who had since achieved box office success producing adult-oriented animated films such as Fritz the Cat
Fritz the Cat (film)
Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American animated comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi as his feature film debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States...
, learned of UA and Boorman's attempts to adapt the story. He was told that Boorman had planned to produce all three parts of The Lord of the Rings as a single film, and commented, "I thought that was madness, certainly a lack of character on Boorman's part. Why would you want to tamper with anything Tolkien did?" When Boorman's proposed adaptation fell apart, Bakshi approached the studio and proposed that he direct a three-part animated film adaptation of the book:
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
office was located in the same building, and Bakshi spoke to then-president Dan Melnick. "I thought he would understand what The Rings meant, because UA did not." Bakshi and Melnick made a deal with Mike Medavoy at United Artists to buy the Boorman script. "The Boorman script cost $3 million, so Boorman was happy by the pool, screaming and laughing and drinking, 'cause he got $3 million for his script to be thrown out." However, after Melnick was fired from MGM, the deal fell through. Bakshi then contacted Saul Zaentz (who had helped finance Fritz the Cat) to ask him to produce The Lord of the Rings, and Zaentz agreed. Before the production started, the original three-part adaptation was negotiated down to two parts at United Artists, and Bakshi met with Tolkien's daughter Priscilla to discuss how the film would be made. She showed him the room where her father did his writing and drawing. Bakshi says, "My promise to Tolkien's daughter was to be pure to the book. I wasn't going to say, 'Hey, throw out Gollum and change these two characters.' My job was to say, 'This is what the genius said.'"
Directing
Epic film
An epic is a genre of film that emphasizes human drama on a grand scale. Epics are more ambitious in scope than other film genres, and their ambitious nature helps to differentiate them from similar genres such as the period piece or adventure film...
, because "epics tend to drag. The biggest challenge was to be true to the book." When asked what he was trying to accomplish with the film, Bakshi stated "The goal was to bring as much quality as possible to the work. I wanted real illustration as opposed to cartoons." Bakshi said that descriptions of the characters were not included because they are seen in the film:
Bakshi's major artistic influences on the film were classical illustrators such as Howard Pyle
Howard Pyle
Howard Pyle was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.__FORCETOC__...
and N. C. Wyeth
N. C. Wyeth
Newell Convers Wyeth , known as N.C. Wyeth, was an American artist and illustrator. He was the pupil of artist Howard Pyle and became one of America's greatest illustrators...
; he stated that no contemporary illustrators were an influence on the style of the film.
Screenwriting and development
An early draft of the screenplay was written by Chris ConklingChris Conkling
Jon Christopher "Chris" Conkling looks like a mix of Fergie and Jesus his abs are as hard as steel and hair is luscious blonde.And was a co-author of the screenplay for the animated version of Lord of the Rings, directed by Ralph Bakshi and produced by Saul Zaentz...
, who told the bulk of the story in flashback, from Merry Brandybuck's point of view. After Bakshi and Zaentz saw Conkling's first draft, fantasy author Peter S. Beagle
Peter S. Beagle
Peter Soyer Beagle is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. His most notable works include the novels The Last Unicorn, A Fine and Private Place and Tamsin, and the award-winning story "Two Hearts".-Career:Beagle won early recognition from The Scholastic Art &...
was called in for a rewrite. According to the website of publisher Conlan Press, Beagle wrote multiple drafts of the script for only $5,000, on the strength of promises from Saul Zaentz to hire him for other, better-paying projects afterward. Zaentz later reneged on these promises.
The film makes some deviations from the book, but overall follows Tolkien's narrative quite closely. Of the adaptation process, Bakshi stated that elements of the story "had to be left out but nothing in the story was really altered." The film greatly condenses Frodo's journey from Bag End to Bree. Stop-overs at Farmer Maggot
Farmer Maggot
Farmer Maggot is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth universe, introduced in The Fellowship of the Ring. He lived on a farm called Bamfurlong in the Marish region of the Eastfarthing of the Shire...
's house, Frodo's home in Buckland, and the house of the mysterious Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil is a supporting character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He appears in Tolkien's high fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954 and 1955. In the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo Baggins and company meet Bombadil in the Old Forest...
deep in the Old Forest
Old Forest
In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional universe of Middle-earth, the Old Forest is a small forested area which lies east of the Shire in Buckland....
are omitted. Maggot and his family and Bombadil and his wife Goldberry
Goldberry
Goldberry is a supporting character from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Also known as the "River-woman's daughter," she is the wife of Tom Bombadil...
are thus all omitted, along with Fatty Bolger
Fredegar Bolger
Fredegar "Fatty" Bolger is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings.-Profile:Fredegar was one of the small group of Hobbits who knew that Frodo had the Ring. 'Fatty' was a descendant of Hildibrand Took , one of the many sons of the Old Took...
, a hobbit who accompanied Frodo at the beginning. According to Bakshi, the character of Tom Bombadil was "dropped" because "he didn't move the story along."
Some changes were cosmetic in nature. For example, Saruman the White adopts the title "Saruman of Many Colours" as in Tolkien's novel. In it he initially wore white but modified his robe. However, in the film his robes are neither white nor multicoloured, but are in different shades of red. Legolas wears silver and grey clothes whereas in the book he is "clad in green and brown". Aragorn too wore "rusty green and brown" in the book whereas his garments are in different shades of brown in the film. The scene where the Ringwraiths arrive in the hobbits' room and slash at their beds, only to find that they are not there, is not in the book, only the discovery of the aftermath.
The depiction of the battle of Helm's Deep
Battle of the Hornburg
The Battle of the Hornburg is a fictional battle in J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings. The battle pitted the forces of the Wizard Saruman against the Rohirrim under King Théoden, who had taken refuge in the mountain fortress of the Hornburg at Helm's Deep...
differs in some details from the book. Notably, the fortress itself is called "Helm's Deep" in the film while in the book it was called the "Hornburg", and "Helm's Deep" is the name of the valley where it is located, or more precisely, the ravine behind the fortress. The explosive-like "blasting-fire", here the "Fire of Isengard," appears as magical projectiles shot from Isengard itself. Éomer is portrayed as a renegade found by Gandalf; together, they save the day at Helm's Deep. In the book, he was present at the battle, and Gandalf arrived with Erkenbrand.
Animation
Publicity for the film announced that Bakshi had created "the first movie painting" by utilizing "an entirely new technique in filmmaking." Much of the film used live-action footage which was then rotoscoped to produce an animated look. This saved production costs and gave the animated characters a more realistic look. In animation historian Jerry Beck'sJerry Beck
Jerry Beck is a well-known animation historian, with ten books and numerous articles to his credit. He is also an animation producer, an industry consultant to Warner Bros., and has been an executive with Nickelodeon and Disney....
The Animated Movie Guide, reviewer Marea Boylan writes that "up to that point, animated films had not depicted extensive battle scenes with hundreds of characters. By using the rotoscope, Bakshi could trace highly complex scenes from live-action footage and transform them into animation, thereby taking advantage of the complexity live-action film can capture without incurring the exorbitant costs of producing a live-action film."
For the live-action portion of the production, Bakshi and his cast and crew went to Spain, where the rotoscope models acted out their parts in costume. During the middle of a large shoot, union bosses called for a lunch break, and Bakshi secretly shot footage of actors in Orc
Orc (Middle-earth)
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings, Orcs or Orks are a race of creatures who are used as soldiers and henchmen by both the greater and lesser villains of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings — Morgoth, Sauron and Saruman...
costumes moving toward the craft service table, and used the footage in the film. Many of the actors who contributed voices to this production also acted out their parts for rotoscoped scenes. The actions of Bilbo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee were performed by Billy Barty
Billy Barty
Billy Barty was an American film actor.-Biography:Barty, an Italian American, was born William John Bertanzetti in Millsboro, Pennsylvania...
, while Sharon Baird
Sharon Baird
Sharon Baird is an American actress and dancer who is best known for having been a Mouseketeer.-Early life:Sharon Baird was born in Seattle, Washington to Eldon Baird, an aerospace worker, and Nikki Marcus, a future talent agent. She has one younger brother, Jimmy Baird, also a former child actor...
served as the performance model for Frodo Baggins. Although some cel animation was produced and shot for the film, very little of it appears in the final film. Most of the film's crowd and battle scenes use a different technique, in which live-action footage is posterized
Posterization
Posterization of an image entails conversion of a continuous gradation of tone to several regions of fewer tones, with abrupt changes from one tone to another. This was originally done with photographic processes to create posters...
to produce a more three-dimensional look. In a few shots the two techniques are combined.
Bakshi claimed he "didn't start thinking about shooting the film totally in live action until I saw it really start to work so well. I learned lots of things about the process, like rippling. One scene, some figures were standing on a hill and a big gust of wind came up and the shadows moved back and forth on the clothes and it was unbelievable in animation. I don't think I could get the feeling of cold on the screen without showing snow or an icicle on some guy's nose. The characters have weight and they move correctly." After the Spanish film development lab discovered that telephone lines, helicopters, and cars could be seen in the footage Bakshi had shot, they tried to incinerate the footage, telling Bakshi's first assistant director that "if that kind of sloppy cinematography got out, no one from Hollywood would ever come back to Spain to shoot again."
Following the live-action shoot, each frame of the live footage was printed out, and placed behind an animation cel. The details of each frame were copied and painted onto the cel. Both the live-action and animated sequences were storyboarded. Of the production, Bakshi is quoted as saying,
Although he continued to use rotoscoping in American Pop
American Pop
American Pop is a 1981 American animated musical drama film produced and directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film tells the story of four generations of a Russian Jewish immigrant family of musicians whose careers parallel the history of American popular music....
, Hey Good Lookin', and Fire and Ice
Fire and Ice (1983 film)
Fire and Ice is a 1983 animated film, a collaboration between Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta, distributed by 20th Century Fox, which also distributed Bakshi's 1977 release, Wizards...
, Bakshi later regretted his use of rotoscoping, stating that he felt that it was a mistake to trace the source footage rather than using it as a guide.
Music
The film scoreFilm score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
was composed by Leonard Rosenman
Leonard Rosenman
Leonard Rosenman was an American film, television and concert composer.-Life and career:Leonard Rosenman was born in Brooklyn, New York. After service in the Pacific with the Army Air Forces in World War II, he earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley...
. Bakshi wanted to include music by Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
but producer Saul Zaentz insisted upon an orchestral score because he would not be able to release the band's music on his Fantasy Records
Fantasy Records
Fantasy Records is a United States-based record label that was founded by Max and Sol Weiss in 1949 in San Francisco, California. They had previously operated a record-pressing plant called Circle Record Company before forming the Fantasy label...
label. Bakshi later stated that he hated Rosenman's score, which he found to be too cliché. In Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context, Ernest Mathijs writes that Rosenman's score "is a middle ground between his more sonorous but dissonant earlier scores and his more traditional (and less challenging) sounding music [...] In the final analysis, Rosenman's score has little that marks it out as distinctively about Middle Earth, relying on traditions of music (including film music) more than any specific attempt to paint a musical picture of the different lands and peoples of Tolkien's imagination." The film's score was issued as a double-LP
Double album
A double album is an audio album which spans two units of the primary medium in which it is sold, typically records and compact discs....
soundtrack album
Soundtrack album
A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television program. In some cases, not all the tracks from the movie are included in the album; however there are rare cases of songs in the trailers that do not appear in...
in 1978. A limited collector edition was created by Fantasy Records as a picture disc double LP featuring four scenes: The Hobbits leaving Hobbiton, The Ringwraiths at Bree, Gandalf and the Balrog, Journey with the Orcs. In 2001, the album was reissued on compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
, with bonus tracks.
Sequel
The film was originally intended to be distributed as The Lord of the Rings Part One. According to Bakshi, when he completed the film, United Artists executives told him that they were planning to release the film without indicating that a sequel would follow, because they felt that audiences would not pay to see half of a film:The Film Book of J.R.R. Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings, published by Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann AG in 1998 and remains part of that company today. Ballantine's logo is a...
on October 12, 1978, still referred to the sequel in the book's inside cover jacket. Bakshi states that he would never have made the film if he had known what would happen during the production. He is quoted as saying that the reason he made the film was "to save it for Tolkien, because I loved the Rings very much."
Bakshi also stated that he felt that the film "took more out of me than I got back."
Eventually, the Rankin-Bass studio, the company behind the 1977 animated adaptation of The Hobbit, released The Return of the King
The Return of the King (1980 film)
The Return of the King, also known as The Return of the King: A Story of the Hobbits, is a 1980 animated television special created by Rankin/Bass and Topcraft. The film is an adaptation of the third volume in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R...
in 1980 as a sequel to The Hobbit.
The problem of the film being half of the story was resolved during the home video release of The Lord of the Rings with the billing block on the back of its VHS and DVD copies by crediting the novels The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers as the official books on which the film is based.
Box office
The Lord of the Rings was a financial success. The film grossed $30.5 million at the box officeBox office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
, based on a $4 million budget.
Awards and nominations
The film was nominated for both the HugoHugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
and Saturn Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation and Best Fantasy Film, respectively. Leonard Rosenman's score was nominated for a Golden Globe
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...
for Best Original Motion Picture Score, and Bakshi won a Golden Gryphon award for the film at the Giffoni Film Festival.
Critical response
Critics were generally mixed in their responses to the film, but generally considered it to be a "flawed but inspired interpretation". In The Hollywood ReporterThe Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
, Frank Barrow wrote that the film was "daring and unusual in concept." Joseph Gelmis of Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
wrote that "the film's principal reward is a visual experience unlike anything that other animated features are doing at the moment." Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
called Bakshi's effort a "mixed blessing" and "an entirely respectable, occasionally impressive job ... [which] still falls far short of the charm and sweep of the original story." Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
of the New York Times called the film "both numbing and impressive." David Denby
David Denby (film critic)
David Denby is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.-Background and education:Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B.A...
of New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine felt that the film would not make sense to viewers who had not previously read the book. Denby wrote that the film was too dark and lacked humor, concluding that "The lurid, meaningless violence of this movie left me exhausted and sickened by the end."
Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics, gives the film a score of 50%.
Michael Barrier
Michael Barrier (historian)
Michael Barrier is an American animation historian. Barrier was the founder and editor of Funnyworld, the first magazine exclusively devoted to comics and animation. It began as a contribution to the CAPA-Alpha amateur press association...
, an animation historian, described The Lord of The Rings as one of two films that demonstrated "that Bakshi was utterly lacking in the artistic self-discipline that might have permitted him to outgrow his limitations."
Recognition
The film has been cited as an influence on director Peter JacksonPeter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy , adapted from the novel by J. R. R...
's Lord of the Rings film trilogy
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy
The Lord of the Rings is an epic film trilogy consisting of three fantasy adventure films based on the three-volume book of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are The Fellowship of the Ring , The Two Towers and The Return of the King .The films were directed by Peter...
. After initially denying having seen Bakshi's film, Jackson admitted to having first encountered The Lord of the Rings via Bakshi's film, stating that the film was a "brave and ambitious attempt." In another interview, Jackson stated that he "enjoyed [the film] and wanted to know more." Bakshi is quoted as saying "Peter Jackson did say that the first film inspired him to go on and do the series, but that happened after I was bitching and moaning to a lot of interviewers that he said at the beginning that he never saw the movie. I thought that was kind of fucked up." Jackson's adaptation borrows from Bakshi's version. On the audio commentary
Audio commentary
On disc-based video formats, an audio commentary is an additional audio track consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with video...
for the DVD release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson acknowledges one shot, a low angle of a hobbit at Bilbo's birthday party shouting "Proudfeet!", as an intentional homage to Bakshi's film.
Bakshi is quoted as saying that he had "mixed feeling[s]" about Jackson's adaptations, although he had not seen the films. "In some respects I feel good that Peter Jackson continued and went on, and in some respects I feel bad that Saul Zaentz, the producer, and various people never called me, thanked me, or asked my permission to do the movie. [...] [Nor] has anyone sent me a bottle of wine, on the tremendous success. [...] But I have more feelings on the business side of that than I do on the creative side. I'm glad Peter Jackson had a movie to look at—I never did. And certainly there's a lot to learn from watching any movie, both its mistakes and when it works. So he had a little easier time than I did, and a lot better budget."
Legacy
The film was adapted into comic bookComic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
form with artwork by Spanish artist Luis Bermejo
Luis Bermejo
Luis Bermejo , is a Spanish illustrator and comics artist known for his work published in Spain, Italy, Great Britain, and the United States...
, under license from Tolkien Enterprises
Tolkien Enterprises
Middle-earth Enterprises, formerly known as Tolkien Enterprises, is a trading name for a division of the Saul Zaentz Company based in Berkeley, California which owns the worldwide exclusive rights to certain elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's two most famous literary works; The Lord of the Rings and...
. Three issues were published for the European market, starting in 1979, and were not published in the United States or translated into English due to copyright problems.
Bakshi's film sparked enough interest in Tolkien's work to provoke not only an animated TV special produced by the Rankin-Bass animation studio based on The Return of the King
The Return of the King (1980 film)
The Return of the King, also known as The Return of the King: A Story of the Hobbits, is a 1980 animated television special created by Rankin/Bass and Topcraft. The film is an adaptation of the third volume in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R...
, but a complete adaptation of The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings (1981 radio series)
In 1981 the UK radio station BBC Radio 4 broadcast a dramatisation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in 26 half-hour stereo instalments...
on BBC Radio
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...
. For this broadcast, Michael Graham Cox and Peter Woodthorpe reprised their roles of Boromir and Gollum, respectively.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
(the rights holder to the post-1974 Rankin-Bass library and the pre-1990 Saul Zaentz theatrical backlog) has released The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Return of the King
The Return of the King (1980 film)
The Return of the King, also known as The Return of the King: A Story of the Hobbits, is a 1980 animated television special created by Rankin/Bass and Topcraft. The film is an adaptation of the third volume in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R...
on VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, both packaged separately and as a boxed-set "trilogy" of films. While the VHS version ends with the narrator saying "Here ends the first part of the history of the War of the Ring.", the DVD version has an alternate narration: "The forces of darkness were driven forever from the face of Middle-Earth by the valiant friends of Frodo. As their gallant battle ended, so, too, ends the first great tale of The Lord of the Rings." The Lord of the Rings was released in a deluxe edition on Blu-ray and DVD on April 6, 2010. The Lord of the Rings was selected as the 36th greatest animated film by Time Out magazine, and ranked as the 90th greatest animated film of all time by the Online Film Critics Society
Online Film Critics Society
The Online Film Critics Society is a professional association for film critics who publish their reviews, interviews, and essays on the Internet.The OFCS was founded in 1997...
.
External links
- The Lord of the Rings at the official Ralph BakshiRalph BakshiRalph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
website.