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Der Herr der Ringe: Filmroman, das Buch zum Film mit 400 Fotos
Frame blowups from the motion picture, The Lord of the Rings
190 pages, Fotoroman
First published April 1, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 12, 2025
Not the greatest attempt to summarize a story this wast as Lord of the Rings. However, the attempt was made and honestly - for the worse. While generally I do not mind the liberties taken here, the art style of the animated movie leaves much to be desired. So when compiled into a photonovel like this it's even less than nothing. At most this is an interesting collectable for Tolkien fans and at worst - a waste of good thirty minutes.
May 10, 2009
love the movie much more...
January 20, 2018
This was the book that led me to J.R.R. Tolkien in my early teens. In retrospect, it's an awful book of an awful movie, but the art was beautiful to me and convinced me to search for the Books (hard to come by in small-town Pennsylvania in 1979). I tracked them down one at a time... my own library only had The Hobbit and The Two Towers, and it took me nearly four years to find them all (I finally got Return of the King when I ordered my own boxed set of the trilogy in paperback).
So while, Yes, this is a book featuring a sub-par effort at bringing Professor Tolkien's work to screen, it was a major influence on how I read in my mid-to-late teens, and as such worth remembering. I don't regret the time I spent with it.
So while, Yes, this is a book featuring a sub-par effort at bringing Professor Tolkien's work to screen, it was a major influence on how I read in my mid-to-late teens, and as such worth remembering. I don't regret the time I spent with it.
April 30, 2019
This adaptation by Peter S Beagel left something to be desired. He should have stuck to Unicorns!!!
September 6, 2021
A solid three. You can’t dispute LOTR’s story but it was understandably simplified and the placement of the text wasn’t always great. I got this secondhand so nothing to lose by reading it.
August 31, 2016
The road travelled by the illustrated story is long and, as it were, goes ever on. Its several origins can be found in ancient Mesopotamia and on Viking gravestones, in Palaeolithic cave paintings and on the Bayeux tapestry, on medieval church walls and in early modern chapbooks. In the 20th century we were introduced to French comics called bandes dessinées and to Japanese manga and the graphic novel, while the addition of photographs gave rise to Italian fumetti and the American photonovel. When Tolkien’s epic fantasy appeared in the middle of the last century it was only a matter of time before the film of the book was produced, leading much more rapidly to … the photonovel of the film of the book.
In 1978 Ralph Bakshi’s animation of the first two parts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy went on general release, which is around the time I first saw it. This was a stunning if occasionally flawed adaptation of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ and ‘The Two Towers’, hugely disappointing because the film stopped at the battle of Helm’s Deep with no indication of a concluding sequel (which in fact never came).
It featured extensive use of rotoscoping — animation based on filmed live action — which gave it a more natural fluidity compared with standard animation until the arrival of Pixar and other computer animation studios changed the rules of the game. Max Fleischer, its originator, used rotoscoping for the figure of Gulliver in his Gulliver’s Travels (1939) as did Disney earlier for parts of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937. The Beatles’ 1968 cartoon Yellow Submarine employed it for some sequences, while A Scanner Darkly (the 2006 adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel) featured it exclusively.
The year after the film’s issue this Fotonovel Publications appeared, utilising frame blowups from the motion picture for its narrative. For those who’ve seen the movie the illustrations are genuine, with nothing redrawn. Rudimentary speech ‘balloons’ (just text with attribution lines to indicate the speaker) have interspersed scroll-like banners to link the action. As a souvenir of the film in the days before videotape, let alone DVDs and streaming, this was the closest most fans could get to repeat viewings.
For us however, sophisticates from a later period when technology has moved on exponentially, it’s not a huge success. How can you summarise even two-thirds of that sprawling canvas of a fantasy in a small paperback of a little over a hundred pages, where most of the space is taken up with images? The text is often hard to read: the font is small and swaps from black to white in an attempt to stand out against a busy colourful background; and paraphrases of Tolkien’s descriptions are clumsy and lack any majesty. The images only give a hint of the impact Bakshi’s original film, itself acknowledged as inspirational by Peter Jackson when he came to made his own version.
My advice is that, unless you’re a completist, you choose to view of the film. Or better still, read or reread the original.
http://wp.me/s2oNj1-bakshi
In 1978 Ralph Bakshi’s animation of the first two parts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy went on general release, which is around the time I first saw it. This was a stunning if occasionally flawed adaptation of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ and ‘The Two Towers’, hugely disappointing because the film stopped at the battle of Helm’s Deep with no indication of a concluding sequel (which in fact never came).
It featured extensive use of rotoscoping — animation based on filmed live action — which gave it a more natural fluidity compared with standard animation until the arrival of Pixar and other computer animation studios changed the rules of the game. Max Fleischer, its originator, used rotoscoping for the figure of Gulliver in his Gulliver’s Travels (1939) as did Disney earlier for parts of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937. The Beatles’ 1968 cartoon Yellow Submarine employed it for some sequences, while A Scanner Darkly (the 2006 adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel) featured it exclusively.
The year after the film’s issue this Fotonovel Publications appeared, utilising frame blowups from the motion picture for its narrative. For those who’ve seen the movie the illustrations are genuine, with nothing redrawn. Rudimentary speech ‘balloons’ (just text with attribution lines to indicate the speaker) have interspersed scroll-like banners to link the action. As a souvenir of the film in the days before videotape, let alone DVDs and streaming, this was the closest most fans could get to repeat viewings.
For us however, sophisticates from a later period when technology has moved on exponentially, it’s not a huge success. How can you summarise even two-thirds of that sprawling canvas of a fantasy in a small paperback of a little over a hundred pages, where most of the space is taken up with images? The text is often hard to read: the font is small and swaps from black to white in an attempt to stand out against a busy colourful background; and paraphrases of Tolkien’s descriptions are clumsy and lack any majesty. The images only give a hint of the impact Bakshi’s original film, itself acknowledged as inspirational by Peter Jackson when he came to made his own version.
My advice is that, unless you’re a completist, you choose to view of the film. Or better still, read or reread the original.
http://wp.me/s2oNj1-bakshi
September 29, 2011
This book was ridiculous and fake. had a crappy story line and created a dumb movie. i dont like any movie/book that fakes situations
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews