This presentation is a decent condensed version of the first half of the story, but the 2nd half is missing entirely. The compressed nature of this film leaves out a lot of information, but if you have seen the Peter Jackson films, or read the books, it shouldn’t be too hard to follow; however, as an introduction to the Lord of the Rings, the movie will be very confusing. The nature of the compression is odd too as the early parts are done well, but as the film moves on the holes in the story are bigger and more frequent, making it seem that the film makers ran out of time, or film before the movie could be finished.

Some of the details of this version are also a bit strange. Sauroman is called Auroman, but only sometimes (if this was done to prevent confusion with Sauron, then why only sometimes?). And though he is Sauroman (Auroman) the White, he is inexplicably wearing red. Also strange is that the Gondorians, including Boromir, are presented as Vikings complete with horned helmets. While these artistic choices stand out like sore thumbs, the film does strive to be true to the source material and much of the dialogue is pulled straight from the text.

As is true with many of Ralph Bakshi’s film’s rotoscoping in heavily employed, though this is an example of rotoscoping gone wrong. Many of the characters appear much like the characters in Tron, with animated hair over a sepia toned, live-action face. And during battles, its not easy to tell who is who.

In spite of its shortcomings, Lord of the Rings performed well at the box office. In 1978, this film which cost $4 million, earned back $30 million. Comparing this to the masterful trilogy made by Peter Jackson makes this film seem like an utter failure, but this version preceded Jackson’s by over 20 years, and even had some influence on artistic choices made by Jackson. So, over all, it’s not a complete waste (or at least it wasn’t when it came out) and at least it is not an insult to Tolkein’s works. Still it is hard to overlook the fact that half the story is left untold, and no sequel ever came. Maybe I would feel different if the film was called Lord of the Rings - Part 1 (To be fair, Return of the King was released as a TV semi-follow up to this film, though its presentation was in style of The Hobbit, complete with songs, and much more family friendly). Lord of the Rings fans, or fantasy fans in general should check this out, but its not really worth repeat viewings, and Bakshi fans would be better off sticking with Fire & Ice.

Hmm... the hobbits are too big, Boromir is a Viking, Aragorn looks like freakin' Squanto, I'm not sure what they were trying to pull off with the orcs, don't even get me started on Legolas and Gimli- yeah, I could rant all day. The link on the profile page for " A Critique of Ralph Bakashi's Lord of the Rings" pretty much says it all.

Any animated film that spends the first four odd minutes as a barely disguised live-action piece (with brief animation flashes), and then ends up with a large majority of the film badly rotoscoped is definitely not going to score points. This film also has the main problem that dog other Bakshi films, incoherent narrative. Usually this isn’t the issue, since films like Fritz the Cat are more set-pieces rather than story led, but here the plot-holes it leaves destroy any and all quality.

Character design is overall very poor. The hobbits are quite disinteresting with Bilbo in particular, a kiss of death since he is the most important character in the film. The animated characters clash with the rotoscoped enemies, making the battles laughable at best, cringe-worthy at worse and the use of rotoscoping for medium and far shots of the main cast is inexcusable.

The voice actors seem for the most part disinterested in their roles, with almost all of the important dialogue falling flat, also the mispronunciation of place names and phrases is annoying. The music isn’t memorable in any form, I can’t recall anything of it writing this after having just watched it.

Peter Jackson may have well cut and tinkered with the books, but in doing so he managed to fit them into a format that worked and which didn’t hurt its spirit. In trying to make one and a half of the books into just over two hours, Bakshi has cut a tremendous amount from the book and neutered the story. Although the film may only be two hours, it seems much longer while you’re actually watching it.

As swift as the film is, the majority of it concerns the first of the three books. The part that consists of the second book, The Two Towers, is wedged into the last forty-five minutes of it and suffers even more so. The split thread nature of the second book makes it all the more difficult for the film to cope. The brief time span means that Bakshi just rushes through it in an effort to get to Helm’s Deep for the main battle. All in all The Lord of the Rings is a broken film and one of the worse I’ve ever seen, animated or otherwise.

This movie really does not do the LOTR books justice. The animation isn't too great and the voice actors don't seem to know what their lines are supposed to be about in some scenes.

The movie ends halfway through the trilogy at the point when Theoden rides into battle. A sequel was never made. It's not hard to see why.

Don't waste your money or time on this version.

Trust me, it didn't take Peter Jackson's trilogy to make this film seem boring. It really was boring even when it came out. And incomplete.

Ralph Bakshi, famous for his 'adult' feature length animations of the 70's, such as 'Fritz the Cat', 'Heavy Traffic' and 'Wizards', decided to go mainstream and take on Tolkien.

Unfortunately Bakshi was much better at subversive satire and underground humour. There was enough of this still present in 'Wizards' to make it fun, but when he played it straight with LOTR it was just dead boring. The mainstream audience wasn't going to forgive his cheap animation, and the adult audience who appreciated his early films could find none of the old wit and daring here.

I can't think of a single good reason why you should bother with this movie today. It's turgid, lacks warmth or brains, and marked a catastrophic artistic collapse for Bakshi. He hasn't made a good feature film since (though he's done some decent TV work)

I first saw this film in the theater when I was a Lord-of-the-rings fanatic kid. I loved it at the time. In recent years I came to wonder why so many people were bashing it.

I rewatched it and found out. Too bad you can't go back to your childhood.

There are some beautiful and exciting scenes and effects in the film, but often a sad lack of energy in the characters due to the rotoscoping and lacklustre voice acting (Legolas saying 'Fly, the enemy is upon us' in a disintered* tone, for example)...or misplaced energy. (The rotoscoped actors playing the Orcs jump and wave their arms exaggeratedly as they talk, in a display of poor acting which only a 90's Nickolodeon program could hope to emulate.) And the film covers only the first two books, and that rather haphazardly.

Still, worth seeing for a Lord of the Rings fan. The score is worth hearing, too: a bit dated now, and without quite the broad scope of modern fantasy soundtracks, it still has some enjoyable themes.

* This was originally a typo for 'disinterested' but I like it so much--and it's SO appropriate--that I'm leaving it.

When I first saw this film, I hadn't read "The Lord of the Rings" yet and even with my roommate rapidly filling in the many hundreds of pages the film seems to arbitrarily hack out, I couldn't get into the story. Part of that may have been the fact I kept shouting at the screen "Animate, you lazy buggers!" I hate rotoscoping and the only reason to use that much rotoscoping in a film is if you can't be bothered with real animation. Skip the movie. Watch Peter Jackson's *infinitely* superior version or read the book--because the book's pretty darn good too.