Fire And Ice (1983)

I saw this in the "Newly Added' list on Amazon Prime and it immediately spoke to me. I HAD to give this a second glance. Why? Because I gave it a positive review when I reviewed the DVD on my Live-Journal. And the clips I saw here looked awful. I got this sixth sense I totally got things wrong back then and that demanded I rereview it.

First off, rereading that review, which is still somewhere on my Dreamwidth Journal, it deeply embarrasses me. I would like to shamedly say I had lower standards back then, but rereading the review, as dumb as the opinions are, I know why I had them. The movie still struck me as a novelty ten or fifteen years ago when I last saw it. I seem to recall me giving positive reviews to South Park back then too for the same reason. A couple of people who follow my reviews have tried to trip me up and claim that what I'm saying in a current review doesn't match a previous review. That's actually common and I make no apologies for it. My opinions on various projects change over time and distance. I would say usually for the worse. So if you are trying to play "Gotcha!" with review discrepancies I'm telling you me having evolving thoughts about a given project is normal for me, and I would think it SHOULD be a normal practice for most critics too.

Why don't I like it this time out? In the first review I mentioned when I first saw this as a teenager I was sick as a dog and therefore couldn't enjoy it. So maybe that also gave it some extra bonus points in the last review it didn't deserve. But the thing about the review I most notice that I don't agree with now is my praising the rotoscope and saying Bakshi had perfected the technique after The Lord Of The Rings looked like utter crap when using it. And I don't believe that anymore. I think what the film has done is made it so the rotoscoping FITS, and doesn't stick out. But man, that just makes the animation boring to me. Frazetta, man. He was famous for these iconic character paintings of muscle-bounded barbarians and busty damsels in skimpy / nonexistent costumes. The rippling muscles had rippling muscles and the shading and details were such that I would consider the artwork quite stirring, and even erotic. While some of the painted backgrounds in the movie offer some detail, the characters themselves are only a couple of steps above the Herculoids. And that includes the monsters too. I get he designed the characters and co-created the story with director Ralph Bakshi, but while I feel Bakshi's fingerprints all over the film, I don't feel Frazetta's influence ever translated into the animation itself.

I also took special notice of the prologue, and how inferior it was to Bakshi's previous epic Wizards. That prologue, also narrated by Susan Tyrell was amazing, and you'd never figure exposition could be so riveting, and via the images onscreen, captivating. This is just... nothing compared to that.

I mentioned in the first review how impressed I was Darkwolf saved the day, being the grizzled veteran instead of the young hero. I gave the movie far too much credit there. Why? So in the film's supplementary material Bakshi and Frazetta both say that Darkwolf was envisioned to be Nekron's father. And this is NEVER revealed in dialogue itself, which is narrative malpractice considering Darkwolf actually kills their son in front of his mother. Is Bakshi allergic to great iconic dramatic moments? Did he WANT the movie to be this boring with audiences? It boggles the mind the screenplay didn't choose to push those specific buttons or explore that specific controversy.

I mentioned in the old review that Bakshi treats women terribly, and that's still true. What I've changed my mind about it the subtext to the savages. I felt back them their portrayal was probably racially insensitive on Bakshi's end. I think me thinking that is assuming Bakshi put more thought into those characters than he did. After rewatching Hey Good Lookin' and Fritz The Cat in the meantime, I believe if Bakshi WAS using the savages to make a bad statement about black people it would be far more explicit. Bakshi never feared doing horribly racist stuff under the guise that he supposedly loved black culture. Some of the things he's done are outright malicious in hindsight. If Bakshi were truly using the savages to make a racial statement, they would actually be a LOT worse than they actually are.

There is a compliment due the movie from me, which is entirely absent from my first review, and positively shows that I lacked wisdom enough to appreciate this cool and unusual thing. But the movie may be dull. The movie may be badly animated. But the unusual thing I notice now is that there is a startling lack of dialogue during many of the action and dramatic scenes. This is unheard of for a Western animated film, and still majorly unusual for actions cartoons being made today. Even the smartest animation has dialogue between the heroes and villains to sort of let the audience know exactly what's happening. A big complaint about action cartoons in the 1980's is that everything is so badly animated that the characters have to describe what is occurring onscreen for the viewer to recognize what the animation is showing. A big complaint about cartoons back then is that they were so talky, and SO overexplained stuff that couldn't be told in crappy animation, you could listen to the cartoon on the radio and nothing would be lost in translation. And the truth is with a few exceptions like Samurai Jack and Primal, I find that's still mostly true of most current action cartoons, especially those geared towards children. The audience is not trusted to follow what is going on, and cartoon producers half believe the kids in the audience will get quickly bored and change the channel if the characters aren't speaking. In this film, for a large part of it, the characters' actions and animation do the heavy lifting. Considering how crappy I find the animation, it is not a perfect execution at all. But I recognize how damned unusual this was back in 1983 for sure. Even today it mostly doesn't fly unless you are Genddy Tartakovsky.

I have a feeling NOW was the right time to rereview it and I was right. And it was fun trying to recognize my forgiving and easy to please self from 15 years ago with The Last Angry Fanboy I've turned into in the meantime. It was sort of fun to do that (even if that early review now embarrasses me). **1 removed link