The Big Picture
- Wizards is a bizarre animated movie that takes viewers on a fascinating journey through the fantastical world of Ralph Bakshi’s mind.
- Ralph Bakshi, known for his adult-oriented animated features, first ventured into fantasy movies with Wizards, paving the way for his later influential works.
- While Wizards is visually stunning and has a unique tone, it suffers from over-sexualized female characters and a slow pace that can test viewers’ patience.
Let me just lay it out for you, Wizards is one of the most bizarre animated movies ever made. It’s a fantasy epic from Ralph Bakshi, the same filmmaker behind the original animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. But before Bakshi could touch Middle Earth, he had to carve out his own fantastical world of mutants and sorcerers… I mean, wizards. This film toggles between being incredible and also incredibly tough to sit through, but is so fascinating that you can’t help but continue watching. Wizards is like listening to a prog rock band who happened to have a few sweet riffs and interesting musical ideas up their sleeves, but they recorded their record on a garbage cassette tape, and no one is really that great at playing their instrument. This movie is so cool, despite all of its warts and grit, and does everything that it can to take you to the most bizarre corner of Ralph Bakshi’s mind, a place that has inspired more corners of animation than you might realize.
Ralph Bakshi had been in the animation game for some time leading up to Wizards. His career began as he helped make some of the programs at Terrytoons, where he most importantly helped make the show Mighty Mouse, and eventually, moved on to the 60s Spider-Man cartoon. Bakshi wanted to pave a new way in animation though, and eventually developed raunchy animated features that were aimed at adult audiences. These movies were filled with drugs, swearing, social commentary, sex, and all kinds of other wild things that you wouldn’t see in the animated movies being made over at Walt Disney Studios. Bakshi’s solo efforts led to movies like his debut, the forever-controversial Fritz the Cat, as well as the (more) grounded tales Heavy Traffic and Coonskin. Bakshi made his animated movies on a low budget and had no particular in-house style. These were meant to be pieces of art, not made on a factory line.
‘Wizards’ Was Ralph Bakshi’s First Attempt at Fantasy
Eventually, Bakshi would make a huge shift over to fantasy movies. Of course, this led to his highly influential Lord of the Rings movie, as well as his cult-classic Fire and Ice, but before either of those could be made, Bakshi would deliver Wizards to audiences first. You wouldn’t believe it after watching it, but this was his first attempt at a kid-friendly movie. Now that’s not to say that he was necessarily trying to make a “kids movie” or anything, but you could sit an older kid in front of the TV and show them Wizards. It would be an odd choice, and you should really wait until they’re in late middle school or early high school (thanks to one consistently annoying Bakshi-ism), but this movie isn’t trying to depict any sort of real-world issues like Heavy Traffic or even Fritz does. Well, that is until the Hitler shows up.
What in the World Is ‘Wizards’ About?
Okay, so none of this really sounds all that kid-friendly, does it? Well, first, we ought to go over what this movie is about. Wizards is set millions of years from now in a post-apocalyptic landscape, where the surviving humans have either reverted to being elves and fairies, or have become vile, decrepit mutants. On these opposing sides are two wizard brothers, the good being Avatar (Bob Holt) and the evil being Blackwolf (Steve Gravers). Avatar lives a quiet life in the beautiful land of Montagar; meanwhile, Blackwolf abandons his home kingdom and sets out to rally up an army of mutants to take back over the land that he came from.
How does he plan on doing this? With old Nazi vehicles, swastika banners, and propaganda films that his goons dug up, of course — couldn’t you have predicted that? And this footage isn’t animated footage of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis — it’s not even rotoscoped. This is just real, live-action footage that’s presented right alongside the animation. Yes —this movie is strange. It’s like if Sauron’s biggest influence in Lord of the Rings was Joseph Stalin. This movie mostly abandons the real worlds of Bakshi’s earlier movies, but the baffling choice for the Nazis to inspire the villains is what ties this movie into his controversial filmography more than anything. It wouldn’t be a Ralph Bakshi movie if you didn’t walk away, at the very least, on the border of being offended.
When Wizards isn’t busy setting up the weirdest inspiration for a fantasy villain ever, it’s either one of two things — the coolest animated movie ever, or a total slog. The post-apocalyptic world of Wizards, mixed with its raw, scrappy, low-budget cartoony style makes for one of the coolest-looking animated movies ever. There is something very primal about how everything in this movie fits with its narrative so well. Bakshi largely relies on hand-drawn animation throughout, but the movie also uses some live-action footage occasionally (sometimes using animation and live-action in the same shot), and also marks the first film that the filmmaker ever used rotoscoping on. This mostly helped with animating the large battle at the end of the movie, both in efficiency and budgetary standpoints. You know a fantasy movie that’s backed by a funk score is bound to be the coolest movie ever, too. With the budgetary constraints that he was facing, it seems as if Bakshi had to stick with what he knew best and just let the funk ride all the way through Wizards. This makes for a truly odd tone, but one that works so much more than it should.
Almost every character in Wizards is wonderfully designed, with Necron 99 (David Proval) being the obvious standout. That image of him on his horse-like creature makes for one of the greatest movie posters ever made. His goofy, lanky robot body covered head-to-toe in red, with those yellow glowing eyes humming through his helmet is such a great look. He’s a total Boba Fett type of character — he looks so badass, and you want the whole movie to be about him, but in the end, he doesn’t really do much. Avatar is like a fun little cartoon gnome, while Blackwolf seems to pre-date all kinds of designs for animated fantasy villains of the 80s like Skeletor. Then there’s Weehawk (Richard Romanus), who, like his name, only looks half-cool. He just looks like a basic, tough little fantasy elf. Who could ever be cool with a name like Weehawk? Drop the “Wee,” you lame little elf!
‘Wizards’ Biggest Problems Are Its Treatment of Female Characters and Its Pace
All of that being said, in typical Bakshi fashion, all the female characters are over-sexualized and totally ditzy. This is literally the consistent shortcoming of every one of his movies. How Bakshi thought he could aim to make a “kid-friendly” movie and still choose to do this with his female characters, we’ll never know. It’s baffling. Elinore (Jesse Welles) isn’t even given anything meaningful to do — she just follows Avatar everywhere he goes while he ogles over her. Not exactly “kid-friendly.”
That leads to Wizards’ other biggest issue — its pace. If you’re a fantasy fan, you’ll think that this is the kind of movie that you could fire up and watch forever. Then, just when you think you’re about an hour in and the movie has to be wrapping up pretty soon, you’ll check your watch and realize you’re only 30 minutes deep. The movie still has 50 minutes to go. As interesting as Ralph Bakshi’s movies can be, he’s at his worst when he’s letting his characters goof around for too long, just to help him buy his way to 80 minutes. It’s not to say that his movies aren’t interesting, but nothing ever moves faster than one mile per hour in a Ralph Bakshi movie. If you’re firing one of his films up, you’re in it for the long haul, and the same goes for Wizards. Avatar is either rambling on about not knowing what his next plan is, a couple of characters are busy spanking each other with giant planks of wood, or two armies charge at each other for three minutes. By the end of the movie, your arm will be worn out from checking your watch so many times.
The Influence of ‘Wizards’
Wizards would be released in the spring of 1977, not to a smash success, but it was a success, nonetheless. The film banked $9 million at the box office, and proved that Bakshi could also make movies for mainstream audiences. This paved the way for his career to continue for years and years, and eventually led him back to Mighty Mouse with Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Not only did Bakshi finally get to come back to the character that helped solidify his animation career, he also helped usher in a whole new wave of influential animators like Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series), Jim Reardon (The Simpsons), and John Kricfalusi (The Ren & Stimpy Show).( And hey, speaking of ushering in new talent, Wizards has Mark Hamill’s first voice-acting role!)
Wizards might have helped Bakshi immediately shepherd new animators into the medium, but the film itself also clearly inspired many future films and TV shows. You can feel the DNA of Wizards in plenty of Genndy Tartakovsky‘s animated works, between the sci-fi fantasy worlds of Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars, as well as the adventure and brutal violence in Primal. Wizards’ influence even goes so far as to stretch into shows like Adventure Time, and clearly paved the way for dark animated fantasy movies in general, ranging from kid’s movies like The Black Cauldron to other Bakshi-esque adult-leaning fare like Heavy Metal. Wizards’ influence reaches far and wide.
We take it for granted today, but it cannot be overstated how abnormal it was for animation directors to take big swings like Ralph Bakshi did with Wizards, and do so all the way. This was a movie made by a filmmaker who knew exactly what he wanted to make, and he was going to make it that way. That meant making it with all of his strange ideas, new animation techniques, and even a funk soundtrack — because why not? — all of which was done on a low budget. What we got in return was one of the most highly influential animated movies ever made, one that we’re still feeling the ramifications of to this day. More artists need to take swings like Ralph Bakshi — they might just end up changing an art form forever.
