"Fire and Ice," one of the most astonishing masterpieces of rotoscoped animation in film history.
This is one of those short-list films (like TRON for example) in which traditional movie critics were heavily-confused by in the early 80's, and therefore received a muted response. (well, that's my common take, anyway)
Yet this remains a Swords & Sorcery, roto-scoped, towering accomplishment for the ages, with great scene-flow, super-good voice-work, and one of the most satisfying plots you'll ever see in movies, without any cheap plot points to grease the wheels, so to speak.
This is an absurdly good film to be free to watch, and there it is... arguably Ralph Bakshi's mega-masterpiece, along with his other mega-masterpiece, American Pop .
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I adore Bakshi's rotoscoped animation style, but I could never really enjoy Fire & Ice beyond its visuals, personally. I found the plot to be rather generic and bland, and the characters are completely undeveloped beyond their basic archetypes to be interesting. It is truly a faithful recreation of a typical 1940's fantasy pulp story, but at least for me, that makes it far less enjoyable than it could've been.
Most of Bakshi's films are pretty heavily flawed, IMO, despite loving the animation itself. Folding Ideas did a great video on Bakshi's LOTR that goes into that.
I think it's still worth watching at least once for the animation alone, but I'd recommend going into it with low expectations.
I think that's a perfectly fair comment, and indeed, Bakshi's unfinished LOTR was a towering mess IMO.
As for the critiques, this isn't a film trying to reinvent all four wheels. The animation itself is an amazing achievement, arguably the best he ever did, and IMO Bakshi got lots & lots of things right about this film-- the voice-work, the flow of the story, the choice of character archetypes, the lushness of the settings, the various build-up of tensions, all culminating in that great ending.
Personally, I don't mind in the slightest that the characters and plot weren't groundbreaking in any way, because that was never the point of the film. And perhaps it's true that this is a movie that shouldn't be viewed from too critical a perspective, but rather from an experiential POV, which is moreso how audiences prefer to do. And as for 40's fantasy pulp in terms of screen & TV, I'm not averse, and enjoy getting some chuckles from such fare, but otherwise that media is comparatively dogshit set against F&I. I'd rather watch equivalent stuff that at least had a sense of cheekiness, like Jay Ward's cartoons.
Another way to consider this film is that it's very much in the vein of ERB, and is probably best enjoyed that way. But I'd also argue that it's pretty top-tier in that class, easily bettering films like the recent John Carter of Mars and many of the Tarzan productions.
I do agree it's one of Bakshi's better films, and perhaps I'm being a little too harsh on it, but despite some good aspects, after the end credits rolled it could only evoke a 'eh, that was alright' from me.
I've only read the first book of the John Carter series, and that story resonated with me far more than F&I, and seemed to have more intrigue and originality going on, IMHO.
And you be you, mssr... far be it for me to mess with that unique, sacred space!
"Princess of Mars" to me is the kind of little masterpiece that actually awakens latent aspects of our male heroic properties, or something like that. Point is-- it makes us jump out of our seats the like that few other pulp-fare do.
“The uploader has not made this video available in your country.”
It's on the YT Movies channel, so right -- US only and includes ads, if you don't block them. As @[email protected] said, VPNs can help with the first thing, in most cases.
Firefox and Opera browsers both have VPN's built-in. Maybe try one of those?