Ranking Every Single Middle-Earth Movie From Worst To Best

This original attempt at bringing the trilogy to life has a poor reputation, and although a lot of it is merited, there is still a tonne of charm to this title that audiences tend to ignore.

Ralph Bakshi is an amazing animator, and his focus on creating adult-centric cartoons has given viewers plenty of strange and outlandish movies. When it came to adapting the Lord of the Rings, he tried to do something entirely new, by using rotoscoping to make the characters move with a sense of realism and the battles feel more chaotic.

A lot is achieved in this film, enough to even have Peter Jackson call it a major inspiration for him. If it didn't exist, we probably wouldn't have the Lord of the Rings trilogy. With that being said, there are some dire problems with it, such as the general rotoscoping animation looking rather poor, and the awful presentation of some of the characters - especially Sam who is an incredibly irritating presence.

Another issue that this film faced was the fact that it wasn't advertised as a two-part film, despite it being one, and as such audiences were frustrated when they realised they wouldn't be getting the whole story. This became even worse when the planned sequel was cancelled.

The Lord of the Rings 1978 is the blueprint to the Jackson trilogy just not ironed out enough yet.