Ralph Bakshi

You’re probably wondering about that title, right? Yeah, I knew you were. I’m sitting here watching the old 70s LOTR cartoon movie, and right before it started I the name Ralph Bakshi flashed on screen. Kind of a funny name, I thought. Turns out he’s the director. The movie is strange, dark, and at times oddly psychadelic, so I bet he was out there. I’m actually pretty curious about his life. I wonder what he’s up to now….

The movie is animated, but contains these random moments of half animation/half live action that I’ve never seen anywhere else. And it doesn’t merely tackle The Fellowship of the Ring, it actually ends halfway through The Two Towers, with Gandalf’s surprise arrival at Helm’s Deep. I guess the plan was to make a sequel that covered the remaining book-and-a-half, but it never happened. It’s a shame too, because I really like this movie.

The more well known Tolkien cartoon movie, of course, is the animated version of The Hobbit, with Leonard Nimoy as Gandalf. I bet a lot of you have seen that at one point or another in your life. It was made by different people, and retains a much more light, child-friendly vibe. It came out 1 year before The LOTR cartoon, and is also a 70s masterpiece in my humble opinion. It’s got a great soundtrack, headlined by Glenn Yarbrough’s The Greatest Adventure. Check it out, its a hit.

You might htink we’re done discussing 70s Tolkien cartoons, but you’re wrong. You see, the same group that did The Hobbit made another movie, The Return of the King, 1 year after the LOTR cartoon. Three years, three movies. That must’ve been a great time to be alive. Although, to be fair, the ROTK movie is terrible, and so inaccurate I find it hard to believe it was made by someone with even a passing knowledge of LOTR. It’s also beyond weird that the Hobbit group skipped straight to Return of the King. Why would they do that? Could they have been piggybacking off the LOTR cartoon? Unlikely. The ROTK cartoon came out a mere year later, so they couldn’t have known Warner Brothers would fail to provide a sequel. This is one mystery that is just gonna have to remain unsolved. Unless……is Unsolved Mysteries still on the air?

OK folks, thats it for today. Boring topic I know (unless you’re Sweetums), but I’m gonna try to keep posts shorter and tackle only one topic at a time. This will hopefullly lead to increased posting, maybe 2 or 3 per week instead of just 1. That’s preferable, right?