For several years, I had heard Ralph Bakshi’s name thrown around in reference to American animation, but had never seen any of his work. I was intrigued by descriptions of the work, which ranged from “adult, in the sense of possessing sophistication and intelligence,” to “adult, in the sense that it is at war with the Disney notion of how animation should be done and who it should be done for, and in fact tackles subjects and themes Disney would probably prefer to forget even exist”. He also created a doomed animated adaptation of the first half of Lord of the Rings, which, now that I think about it, may be how I heard of him in the first place.
I’ve been hesitant to explore any of Bakshi’s works. This is mostly owing to the reading I’ve done about him and the animation he has produced. The idea I get, reading about him, is that the quality of his output seems to be about as irregular as the ECG readout of a heart arrhythmia patient. At the same time, I’ve been fascinated by the skill he puts into his animation. So, finally, I broke down and watched Fire and Ice.
I don’t know why I chose this movie specifically, except perhaps that I knew if I picked up his version of Lord of the Rings, I would be incapable of giving it a fair chance. I would be disappointed from the word go. And there’s a part of me that is somewhat attracted to sword-and-sorcery, or “low” fantasy; it’s why I own copies of all the original Kull and Conan stories. And God knows there are times when Fire and Ice feels like a lost Robert E. Howard story.
Apparently, this movie was a collaboration between Bakshi and fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. If you don’t know who Frazetta is, just imagine every generic fantasy painting you’ve ever seen where the woman is wearing a chainmail bikini and the man is wearing nothing more than a loincloth and a helmet, and brandishing his muscles as much as his sword or axe. If the painting you’re thinking of wasn’t created by Frazetta, then it was created by someone who was inspired by him.
The story of Fire and Ice opens with a woman narrating, in the finest William Shatner style, the central dilemma. There was an evil sorceress named Juliana who had a son, Nekron, and she tutored him in all of her dark arts. They live far to the north, in a place called Icepeak, and from there they are using their dark magic to push a massive glacier ever southward, with the end goal of covering the world in ice and then ruling it.
Nekron seems to be satisfied with alternately lounging or brooding on his throne, moving the glacier occasionally and calling it a day, but his mother has somewhat grander designs. Under the guise of sending an envoy to King Jarol of Firekeep (who appears to be the only leader left in the world capable enough or willing enough to put up any useful resistance to Nekron) in order negotiate a truce, she has her minions kidnap his daughter Teegra.
Teegra’s curvaceous physique is drawn with loving detail. Anyone could make her costume; all you need is some string, a single handkerchief and a pair of scissors — and you’ll have some of the handkerchief left over when you’re done, believe me. It would seem sexist, except the men are just as scantily clad, and just as much attention is paid to the muscles of our heroes as is paid to the ample bosom and well-rounded hips of our heroine. It’s equal-opportunity objectification, is what I’m saying.
Teegra, however, is actually more intelligent and less useless than the average bikini-clad fantasy princess, in that she has both the wits and the drive to escape her captors on multiple occasions. Sure, she’s a damsel who quite frequently finds herself in distress (at one point, she briefly winds up in the clutches of a lesbian sorceress), but thankfully she believes that her options for dealing with said distress should involve more than “wait for rescue”.
Our hero, though, is Larn, a tall, scarcely clad warrior from a village recently decimated by Nekron and his sub-human minions (no, really, they’re seriously called sub-humans). He manages to escape the destruction of his village and is heading south when he runs into Teegra in an ancient and abandoned temple complex. The two spend an indeterminate period of time there together, presumably falling in love, until an unfortunate accident causes Larn to be separated from Teegra and nearly eaten by what seems to be a freshwater kraken. Teegra, mourning his apparent loss, is recaptured by the sub-humans and eventually carried off to Nekron and his mother.
Larn follows her, always just a few steps behind, and falls in with the mysterious warrior Darkwolf, who looks for all the world like some terrifying cross between Conan the barbarian and the goddamned Batman. Darkwolf seems to have devoted his life to the wholesale slaughter of Nekron’s minions (and, ideally, Nekron himself), and it is obliquely hinted that he may be something other than strictly human.
The rest of the movie concerns itself with Larn’s attempts to rescue Teegra, Teegra’s attempts to escape Nekron, and Darkwolf's habit of murdering every sub-human he happens across.
The movie has little in the way of plot. Most of the events of the story are simply random tribulations that occur as the characters are on the way to some other goal or objective. It’s mostly entertaining to watch, but serves no purpose in terms of actually telling us anything about the story or characters. As odd as it is to say about a movie that clocks in at just under an hour and a half, most of Fire and Ice is fluff.
Granted, it is gorgeously animated fluff. Bakshi employed a technique called rotoscoping, which is sort of the hand-drawn equivalent to motion-capture in three-dimensional CG animation like that seen in Avatar or 2007’s Beowulf. Basically, Bakshi filmed live actors performing all the action in the movie, and then had his animators draw over it to create some of the most fluid, realistic animation you will ever see.
The action, then, winds up being fairly realistic, and oddly subdued at points. Early on, when Larn is attempting to escape through the trees from his sub-human pursuers, the chase is not the sort of high-speed pursuit you might expect. Rather than dazzle the audience with a speedy chase, Bakshi gives us a much more deliberately paced escape which heightens Larn’s growing sense of worry and alarm as his pursuers, who seem far more nimble, close in.
Likewise, the fighting is usually quick and the moves employed by the characters are sharp and utilitarian. The only long, drawn-out duel is between Larn and Nekron, and it manages to be a tense affair mainly because of how obvious it is that Nekron is toying with Larn.
Where the movie falls apart is with its characters, who are barely developed, if at all. Nekron is a completely stereotypical megalomaniacal sorcerer with (mostly justified) supreme confidence in his powers and the inevitability of his conquest. Except for when he strips down and takes up a sword to spar with Larn, he never deviates from this one-note presentation. Larn himself is never much more than a resourceful barbarian whose primary motivation is to retrieve his love interest, and Teegra is just as bad. In fact, no one in this cast undergoes any actual character development.
Hell, there’s not even much in the way of dialogue. This is mostly because the mere handful of named characters are often alone, wandering the wilderness with only the violent sub-humans to interact with. And by “interact with,” I mean “slaughter”. The sub-humans certainly don’t talk. They sort of hoot and mutter and gibber indistinctly. Occasionally they yell. But there is no real dialogue for these characters, and in fact, half the time their vocalizations don’t even seem to quite match up to the on-screen actions. Given their dark skin and vaguely ape-like features, there are some unfortunate implications here.
Is Fire and Ice good? It’s hard to say. It goes nowhere, but it provides an acceptably enjoyable ride getting there. The plot seems to have no real logical problems or plot holes, or other similar troubles, but it’s also dead simple. If you aim low and hit your target, that isn’t skill so much as it is taking the easy way out. The animation is, again, stunning. But the lack of character development means Fire and Ice isn’t something I’ll be going back to very much. There’s nothing to dissect, nothing even to think about after the credits roll.
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