1978 was an amazing year for films — especially horror movies. I’m stoked about posting a whole plethora of monstrous missives in October’s lead-up to Halloween. But tonight I’m in the mood for fantasy and I wanted to share this kick ass mash-up I recently added to my YouTube channel.

While you’re likely at least familiar with Peter Jackson’s live action Lord of the Rings trilogy, you might not realize that the first LOTR feature was a masterpiece of strange animation created by cartooning bad boy Ralph Bakshi way back in 1978. It’s worth familiarizing yourself with the latter as many people say it was the blueprint for the former.

The LOTR Wiki comes to the rescue…

Peter Jackson first encountered The Lord of the Rings via Bakshi’s film, and some shots in his live-action trilogy appear to have been influenced by it:

One such shot features Frodo and the other hobbits hiding from a Black Rider under a big tree root, while the Black Rider stalks above them. In his version of the sequence, Jackson uses a similar shot — although he films it from a different angle (in the book, Frodo hid separately from the other hobbits).
A second sequence features the camera slowly revolving around Strider and the hobbits, who stand in a circle as the Black Riders approach them on Weathertop. In his staging, Jackson also uses a similar shot — although his camera is much faster, and Strider is not among the hobbits.

A third similarity is the depiction of Gollum losing the ring in the prologue: both films show very similar events but the book had no such prologue and indeed it runs directly counter to Tolkien’s scheme for the storyline.

Another similarly staged scene is Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn’s discovery of Gandalf the White.
On the DVD commentary of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson acknowledges one shot, a low angle of a hobbit at Bilbo’s birthday party shouting “Proudfeet!”, as an intentional homage to Bakshi’s film.

By far the biggest “lift,” however, is the scene of the Nazgûl appearing in the hobbits’ room at the Prancing Pony and slashing the beds to ribbons thinking the shapes under the sheets to be the hobbits (but are actually pillows). This is almost identical to Bakshi’s version, which is significant, as the scene is not depicted in the book; a passage does appear that states that hobbit beds wind up slashed during the night, but the townsfolk of Bree are the perpetrators, not the Nazgûl.
Some of Sam’s interjections are also sourced from Bakshi rather than Tolkien.

Another idea used in both films is to depict Éomer as a late arrival at the Battle of the Hornburg, rather than the book’s Erkenbrand.
Indeed, the whole stricture of the first two installments is but Bakshi’s movie script plight in two and a little expanded with some episodes (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ends exactly where Bakshi’s movie ends: the end of the Battle of Hornburg and Gollum leading Frodo and Sam to Shelob – the Black Gate is presumably cut, since Gollum talks about his “secret way”, and Faramir could be as well, since the Hobbits are journeying through the Mountains of Shadow).

See for yourself right here…

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While the second installment of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy has brought the J.R.R. Tolkien universe back into the pop culture spotlight, this treasure I just discovered is a crazy/beautiful Arkenstone of its own.

Made with no license from the Tolkien estate, this 1985, Soviet era, Russian language film of The Hobbit is as bizarre as it is beautiful. There are no subtitles here, but anyone interested in a Tolkien post must know the story well enough to follow along. This is a condensed telling of the tale that omits key characters like Beorn and beloved sequences like the dwarf company’s encounter with the trolls.

In the Peter Jackson films, his ability to bring the creatures and atmosphere of Middle Earth to life are part of the draw. Ironically, this film’s terrible effects and makeup are just as endearing for all the opposite reasons — they pulse with handmade charm and DIY resourcefulness, expressing an unfettered love for Tolkien’s great adventure book.

You may not be up to following this for over an hour, but hit play and skip around — the spider sequence is mind blowing and Smaug the dragon has to be seen to be believed.

Here is The Fairytale Journey of Mr. Bilbo Baggins, the Hobbit.

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Artist Aaron Diaz’ Dresden Codak comic offers-up stories filled with science, philosophy and psychology that have won him the Web Cartoonist’s Choice Awards for Outstanding Use of Color and Outstanding Use of The Medium. The Dresden Codak site has been down all day, but the Diaz’ latest tweets assure his followers that he’s getting the bug sorted. There’s a good chance that the address is simply being overwhelmed due to a post at io9 that’s garnering the artist a lot of attention.

It seems Diaz is also a fan of the J.R.R. Tolkien universe and his interpretations of chapters, characters and creatures from the author’s The Silmarillion — a dizzying, mythopoetic compilation of Middle Earth legends, stories and histories — is something to behold.

Here’s i09‘s take:

While Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth may be the dominant one right now, artists have long put their own spin on J.R.R. Tolkien’s world. Dresden Codak cartoonist Aaron Diaz shares his own visual interpretation of Tolkien by illustrating each character of The Silmarillion, as well the book’s characters and creatures.

Diaz explains on The Silmarillion Project blog that he decided to undertake this illustration project in part because, lovely as they are, Jackson’s movies have so overwhelmed the popular vision of Middle Earth and Diaz wants to encourage a diversity of artistic interpretations…

Check these out…

Find out more at Diaz’ The Silmarillion Project blog.

Here’s the AMC folks on YouTube talking about The Silmarillion and the likelihood of another Peter Jackson trilogy:

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Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Art posts.