The 1978 Lord of the Rings clocks in at 2 hours and 13 minutes. The Fellowship of the Ring takes about 90 of those minutes and the Two Towers comprises the remaining 40, ending just before Frodo and Sam climb the secret stairs and Gandalf concludes the battle of Helm’s Deep. The film compresses these two novels significantly by only focusing on the most critical plot points following only the major characters, setting up moods quickly, letting economical dialogue do the heavy lifting and not lingering too long in any one place so little time is wasted on lengthy battles, travel sequences or side-gags. The tightness is appreciated, but I wouldn’t recommend going into it cold. It’s better if the viewer either read the books and listened to some thematic Led Zeppelin songs beforehand or at least knows the outline of the plot and the background in order to follow along. The film tries to explain what is going on but not thoroughly enough for someone new to the story to fully know about each new character or place and what is going on there.

For those who visualize the Lord of the Rings using Peter Jackson’s live action version, or just grew up in the age of modern CGI, Ralph Bakshi’s animation can be an unexpected and trippy experience. Background paintings are expressive and impressionistic with loose outlines and sometimes bold or muddy colors. The film also blends in live-action elements with animation. The opening narration is told as a shadow play with live action actors. The sequence in the tavern at Bree and various battle sequences with Ring Wraiths and orcs rotoscope live-action actors and then use cel-shading to create a primitive 3D effect in an age before CGI existed. Live-action fog is super-imposed on the animation.The 1970s were a time of experimentation, and some things they did looked cool for the period but were also downright weird.

One of the parts that sticks out the most for me is how celestial Lothlorien looks in paintings, and while Galadriel in the live-action movies seems stoic and cold, in the cartoon she is warm, smiling and looks like she is prancing about in a nightgown. In Fangorn Forest, Treebeard looks like a walking, talking tree. Grima Wormtongue looks like a rat and demonstrates his treachery by stroking Theoden’s long beard. Some viewers might think the cartoon elements might seem a little childish when compared to Peter Jackson, but overall they make the film feel like a fun fantasy and less like an intimidating epic journey that goes on and on and on.