There and Back Again: the making of ralph bakshi’s Lord of the Rings By Alexandra West would be a year if this was so hot, Disney would be all over it. And the reason they 1954 that would forever weren’t all over it was because there was no way to do this kind of change the fantasy genre. With story in 2D animation 40 years ago.” the release of J.R.R. Tolkien’s With Sander’s rejection, the project filtered through various novel THE LORD OF THE RINGS, animation studios who, while interested, lacked the manpower, everyone from the literary elite to time, and funding to pull such an audacious project off. “While the voracious readers began to take notice story appeals to a lot of people, it has no real core,” says Sander. of Tolkien’s distinct vision and world. “It’s a marvelous series of images and characters. It’s memorable LORD OF THE RINGS expanded because of its mass, because of the amount of stuff that happens.” upon what was considered the norm While LORD OF THE RINGS is an adventure story, it also deals in modern narrative storytelling, with the complicated themes of morality and identity—themes not creating something on par with the easily brought to life through animation. scope of classical Greek epic poems. It also helped “The fact is that animation is not a subtle medium,” explains to cement the importance of what was begun in THE Sander. “2D animation in particular is not built for these supposed HOBBIT by fleshing out the world of Middle-earth and nuances of the characters. You cannot animate situations where finishing the story of the Ring that would rule them all. you have internal emotion. LORD OF THE RINGS is an odyssey, Shortly thereafter, LORD OF THE RINGS would also become and unless you’re three cute little animals going across the States or hot property in Hollywood, with American film studio United something, it’s not going to work. Animation is the simplification Artists snapping up the merchandising and film rights in 1966. of ideas. Especially in the old days, you couldn’t get into a situation The LOTR film rights would become much like the titular ring, where you have incredible locations which are described endlessly with many hands clambering to take hold of it. The project went and make them work. You could not get background artists with on to change between various directors and producers until Oscar enough time to paint all of that. You would never be able to get the winning producer Saul Zaentz purchased the full rights to LORD three dimensional feeling of that story, because while it was a story OF THE RINGS and partial rights to THE HOBBIT in 1976. of magic, it was also one of reality. To get to a situation where you Zaentz was convinced he would be able to bring the world of these take a complicated situations with a lot of characters and different evocative and challenging novels to the screen with animation. scenery, it stops making sense.” What would follow would be an animated film unlike any other Undeterred by conventional animation standards, Zaentz went produced at that point. Although the animated film never managed ahead with his production, hiring American animator Ralph Bakshi to finish Tolkien’s story, it would live on in the minds of fans and to direct. Bakshi had made a name for himself in 1972 with his filmmakers and would go on to change the industry. debut animated feature FRITZ THE CAT, which was particularly During the intervening years between United Artists initial and notable due to its X rating from the MPAA. Bakshi lobbied to Zaentz’s subsequent purchase, Oscar-nominated animator Peter direct LORD OF THE RINGS after he heard British director John Sander was approached about the project as he was completing Boorman was moving ahead with condensing the three-volume work on YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968). “My first encounter novel into a single film. Bakshi was allowed to direct if he could with LORD OF THE RINGS in its physical shape was when pay off the 3 million dollars United Artists had spent on Boorman’s Al Brodax—producer of the Beatles series and YELLOW script—a fee that Zaentz would cover. Zaentz also provided the 8 SUBMARINE—was looking for a supposed sequel,” says million dollars needed to finance the first film. Initially, Zaentz Sander. “Because there was a buzz going on around LORD OF and Bakshi wanted to do three films, but eventually settled on two THE RINGS, especially in England, Brodax thought it would be feature length animated films. perfect. Of course, he never read anything; he was only going by “It wasn’t until the mid 70s that we started hearing this word on hearsay. He thrust the book at me and said, ‘You’ve got to check the street that Bakshi was going to do LORD OF THE RINGS,” this out—it’s going to be great.’ I got through maybe two chapters. remembers Sander. “Then we started hearing about problems and It was all just too complicated. There was no way 2D animation delays with the production. My understanding was that he’d got could cope with all of the story. I remember thinking at the time, FRITZ THE CAT finished and he’d got a distributor for LORD 32 FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • JAN/FEB 2013.