Channel Awesome
I step into the crazy world of Ralph Bakshi with the 1977 sci-fi/fantasy movie “Wizards”.
Tagged with: 1977 brandon tenold brandon's cult movie reviews wizards
About Brandon_Tenold
Other Posts By the Author:
19 comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Holy Crap, about time someone reviewed this. I love this movie growing up, I thought it was so weird and creative.
I saw this when it came out in theaters. My understanding at the time was that this was a warmup for LOTR.
It’s a FAAAAAAAMLY PITCHA!
Some popularity/fondness of this movie comes from early sci-fi conventions. In the early 80’s there were very few pure fantasy/D+D type movies to show. It was Wizards, a short called the Wizard of Speed and Time, and a few others, but that’s it, so this film became a staple of movie rooms.
Yeh, it is funny that Brandon consider it as original when in 90’s it was easier to find mix of SF and Fantasy then pure Fantasy movies. For example: He Man, Thundercats, Wizardry, Might & Magic, Ultima, Warhammer 40k, etc.
Yeah, it’s so unoriginal of this movie to be like things that came out AFTER it.
Good point. I wasn’t aware that it come out in 70’s.
All of those things you listed are from the 80’s.
I already admitted my mistake.
Cool. The early 80s were a great time for insane fantasy/sci-fi/ dystopian themed action adventure.
Warhammer 40,000 is difficult one because it has taken things from so many sources like Dune, Starship Troopers, Aliens and Eternal Champion book series alongside with things taken from Warhammer Fantasy that itself has taken from several sources as well. So yeah, Warhammer 40,000 is pretty much mixture of several things that were given own take in context of universe that has everything taken to extreme.
Never thought about it, but yeah…Dune is a huge influence over 40k universe.
I remember my brother renting this for me as a kid at a video store, I wanted to get some cartoon for him to rent ande when I showed it to him, he goes “Ewww no, that is stupid, how about I rent you this instead” and he gets me Wizards.
Best older brother ever. 😀
Trivia: Popular sentence “Bakshi Insane” (commonly incorrectly read as “bat shit insane”) come from this director. Because as it isn’t hard to guess plots of his animations are usually downright insane.
Ok, what ever. Another famous term “camo” come from character from Super Sentai (Dairanger) called Kameo. The thing is that he was played by Tomihisa Naruse who previously played Yellow Owl in Jetman. So amongst Snetai fans people start rearing as “making Kameo” to cases when some actor or character make guest appearance in other show. Obviously over time term was adopted as “camo” by broad audience and lost its original meaning.
I saw this for the first time just last year, it is interesting to say the least.
Some of those background paintings are absolutely gorgeous, particularly Blackwolf’s castle. I think they were done by artist Ian Miller.
I love that Avatar saves the day by just shooting Blackwolf. Definitely makes a statement given the context of a family friendly fantasy adventure.
Jokes about PG aside we shouldn’t forget that most animated movies today are by design made for family audience and it isn’t that rating itself much changed. After all in some random cases like Guardians of Ga’Hoole we for example do have Nazis and it is still PG. Just generally most new animations aren’t that exploitative like in the past.
Hang on. Magic and technology, trippy nonsense, and some overly suggestive scenes? It’s Adventure Times Grandpa!
Kinda messed up that the one piece of film stock that survived the nuclear apocalypse and several million years of re-evolution is a WW2 Nazi propaganda film…