The Animated Movie

[barrelrider110]

Well spoken, Laughing woman.

The Hobbit movie first aired in '77 and I was reading the book at the time. I thought it was interesting and entertaining, but I can't say I loved it.

The voices of John Huston as Gandalf and Richard Boone as Smaug were outstanding. I was a folk-music fan from the 60s so I liked the Glen Yarborough songs, but by 1977 the Folk Music genre was old so even then they were dated. The animation of Gollum and the wood-elves were way off. The king of the wood-elves looked like a green pixie, had a kabukie-style head piece and spoke with a thick Austrian accent (the voice of Otto Preminger). One would have thought the animators would have taken a little time to research Tolkien literature first.

Years later, my 8-year old daughter and I watched the Hobbit movie together, and she thought it was cool. So as a children's movie, it served the purpose of telling the story well and introducing kids to Middle Earth. She’s 13 now and read the Hobbit and LoTR twice and she wants to try the Silmarillion. She logs onto the Entmoot as foolofatook11 and I am thankful to the Rankin Bass movie for starting her Tolkien obsession, which is something we share.

As far as the other two animated versions, I thought that Bakshi's version would have been awesome had it been finished. Ralph Bakshi, who made a name for himself by producing a witty, off-beat animated full-length movie called Fritz the Cat, ran out of money and decided to fund the second half of LoTR with profits from the first. One problem--very few people went to see the first half. All the critics panned it. It was a financial disaster and needless to say there were no profits and no second half of LoTR made.

In his version of LoTR, Bakshi tried hard to stay as close to the original story line as possible and his alterations really only were made to save time. The illustrations were better than the Rankin-Bass movie (except that Boromir was pictured as Viking). The ringwraiths were excellent, and Bormir’s death scene was very moving. He used a technique called Rotoscoping that combines live-action footage overlaid with hand-drawn animation. Even though I liked it, more people than not thought it was garbage. I think half of the people in the theatre left well before the movie was finished.

I was unimpressed with the Rankin-Bass treatment of RoTK. That style was much better suited to the children’s story of the Hobbit and the animators continued draw Gollum as a *bleep-bleep* mutant frog.