Before The Lord of the Rings went fully live action, it took a darker animated form. The Lord of the Rings (1978) was directed by Ralph Bakshi and marked the first feature length film adaptation of Tolkien’s world. Bakshi combined traditional hand drawn animation with rotoscoping, tracing over live action performances to give characters a heavier, more grounded movement that felt unusually real for fantasy at the time. The film adapts The Fellowship of the Ring and part of The Two Towers, ending