What do you think of the Bakshi cartoon?

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

Bakshi used a stable of artists who employed a technique called rotoscoping. A live film was shot of actors playing parts and then artists drew over it to produce animated characters. It was hardly new or state of the art. It dates back to 1915 and was developed by Max Fleishcher. Bakshi was merely trying to produce something cheaply and quickly instead of doing traditional Disney animation with 24 hand drawn frames per second.

Rotoscoping is certainly an old technique; however, this was the first entirely rotoscoped animated feature and utterly alien to many viewers. Traditional cel animation was planned for the film, and some was actually shot, but severe budget constraints canned the idea. It was perhaps the uniqueness of the filming that alienated many viewers used to Disney animation (I will say in Bakshi's defense that Disneys animation in the 70's was, in contrast, even more deplorable, not anything like masterpieces such as Bambi, Pinocchio and Fantasia).

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

I would not call Boromir as a Viking or Aragorn as more or less a Native American tracker as faithful to the JRRT text. They were both ridiculous.

You are, of course, correct about Sven 'Forkbeard' Boromir; however, the rugged, tanned and weatherbeaten features of Bakshi's Boromir evoked Tolkien more closely than Viggo's poster-pinup image, appearing foul but ultimately fair (Viggo looks ready for a second career as a rock singer). Aragorn was, after all, a ranger who spent many decades in the wild. It's rather like T.H. White representation of Lancelot as somewhat ugly but noble, rather than the epitome of a handsome preux chevalier.

It would have been interesting to see what Bakshi could have produced if he had Jackson's deep financial backing.