Fire and Ice

This movie really is one of the best animated movies I have ever seen. Most unfortunately, very difficult to get. Even large local videostores can't get any copies here. The highly detailed images reminded me of Heavy Metal, which also is a great work. This movie is a true "must have" and should be available on DVD...

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source: Fire and Ice

Upon seeing this film at a much younger age then my 24 years of life,i then found it to be a dazzling and rather original artistique creation of sword and sorcery fantasy set a time long ago.Ten years down the track,i've not changed my mind but in fact come to praise the film for all of it's merits even more in the wake of all the incredibly weak CGI animated films on release presently. What we have here is not the lame characterised outings of the likes of "Final Fantasy" but a full blooded and extremely energetic tale of good versus evil with some fantastic and outstandingly vivid sequences which blend live action into conceptual animation with much success and awe..The effect of Rotoscope is truly amazing and provides a much more realistic enhancemnet of live film mediums then the likes of what Disney and DreamWorks Studios can Conjure.Rotoscope Technique still stands the test of time today,as the The shadows of human characters moving to a blurred and paint splashed like environment truly outline the images as an artwork in rarest form.A film Critique once noted that Raplh Bakshi's films were Reminisant of a Rembrandt painting in motion..This couldn't be further from the truth. Fire and Ice begins with a narrative of a powerful queen trying to gain allegiance to all regions of the known world with an army and an evil son trained in the black arts to assist in her eventual conquest.She uses kidnapping as a schematic to blackmail a generous King who also shares a throne in the same region.This brings on a war of the two powers..the powers being the realm of fire and the kingdom of ice. This film is a true gem and not for a second will i ever believe that Ralph Bakshi was or ever has been an ailing film animator and director, Everything about this is just pure class,The heroes,villians,the astonishing action scenes,the settings,the animation(How many times do you want me to mention it?) The perhaps clieched,but nonetheless exciting Storyline and the actual in depth character development of our heroes and villians paves the way for an eye popping ninety minutes in front of the screen..Do yourself a favour if you've not seen this film,discard the likes of Bugs Life,Shrek and all the other Pixar related fanfare and revisit (if you have already seen)the pure genius that is Fire and Ice,Or enjoy for the first time a neat little film that was devised by a much underrated and gloriously imaginative director..The one and only Ralph Bakshi.. Just one gripe,a DVD of this film with Directors Commentary and storyboards would certainly not go astray...a rendition and resurfacing of an unfortunately forgotten masterpiece.

Don't get fooled by the lower rating of this animated movie. This is one of the most under rated animated movies I have seen so far. Just by seeing screen shots, I decided to watch the movie. I thought its rating would be more than 8 and I was quite shocked to see the lower rating here. This movie is totally as I thought it would be. Its a battle between fire and ice, love and hatred, peace and chaos. I like all the main characters including negative character 'Nekron'. All the characters were portrayed beautifully and carefully. The movie was interesting enough to watch in one go without being bored for a moment. It was dramatic, it was romantic, it was passionate and also sometimes violent and cruel; It was epic. Above all, this movie also provides good lesson. I will always remember it as an exceptional great animated movie.

The title of my review says it all. I saw the movie yesterday and I enjoyed it but... BUT... The movie was - in fact - extremely stupid. And by saying "extremely stupid" I am actually being nice. I mean, it looks like a great fantasy adventure, it is very well animated, the action scenes are absolutely great... Sadly, the screenplay is absolutely horrible. It really is. 'Fire and Ice' is probably the most terribly written animated movie that I have ever seen, and I have sen a lot. The dialogue is just horrible. I saw the movie like 13 hours ago and I can barely remember what the characters were saying, and what I do remember is a few lines that sounded like they came straight out of some gamebook like the "Fighting Fantasy" books written by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. The characterization... Well... There is just no such thing here. All characters depend on the way they were drawn, not on the way they were written. The "I Am Blonde And Brave" hero, the "I Am Here Just Because I Am Naked" princess, the "I Have Covered My Face With A Mask For No Reason At All And I Have An Ax" masked man with the ax, the "Look How Evil I Am MUHAHAHA" villain... You would know pretty much everything about every single character in the movie as soon as you saw them. The setting certainly looks nice. Everything is perfectly drawn. BUT... Well, if you are less than 14 years old boy you are probably going to love it. There are DINOSAURS! There is A KRAKEN! There are ORCS! There are AZTEC BUILDINGS!!! What is not to like? Well... It is just absurd. It looks nice but these things just don't go well together. Actually I would love it if it was relevant to the story but it just wasn't. The kraken, for example, appeared for less than a minute and it didn't add anything to the story. The Aztec buildings were there just because they look beautiful and for no other reason at all - no one event entered any of them. Etc. Now... I am going to stop with the criticisms and I am going to write what I liked about the movie. There is really a lot to be liked, especially when it comes to the quality of the animation. At that time there was no CGI-magic and everything had to be drawn by hand. Yet the characters are very detailed and their moves are extremely smooth. One can rarely see so well animated sword battles even in the finest Japanese anime movies. They move like real, living people, and by saying that I am not exaggerating at all. The fights are masterfully choreographed, the stunts are just stunning, and combined with the beautifully looking set designs the effect is just breathtaking. If that is what you like, see the movie. But if you want good characters, story and dialogue, look somewhere else. Really.

This animation has a very simple and straightforward good vs. evil plot and is all about action. What sets it apart from other animation is how well the human movements are animated. It was really beautiful seeing the fleeing woman running around on the screen from left to right and look around, her movements were done so well. Why don't they use this rotoscopic technique more these days? It's quite effective. Fire and Ice, in it's prehistoric setting and scarcely dressed women, was clearly devoted to showing the beautiful damsel in distress in various sexy ways, her voluptuous body serving as pure eyecandy. Some may hate this and regard it as yet another moronic male sexual fantasy, others (including plenty of women) will adore it's esthetic quality. I for sure did not mind! Bakshi just loves animating lushious, voluptuous babes, as can also be seen in Cool World, and I don't think he has to apoligize since it's pretty much animation for adults. But I had also enjoyed this animation as a child and I never forgot it. This one was just special, so different from the standard Disney or Anime fare, and for that reason alone well worth the watch since it's possibly Bakshi's finest. For those who like animations with lushious women: try Space Adventure Cobra as well. I give Fire and Ice 8 out of 10.

Let me say something first: The world of animation owes a great deal to Ralph Bakshi. He was one of those who constantly fought against the limitations of the medium; maybe some kind of anti-Disney. Animation as we know it today would be a lot poorer without Bakshi (without Disney too, of course). Now, as important as Bakshi is for the medium, the sad thing about his career is that nearly all of his projects seem half-finished at best; even if they made it to the big screen many of his films are uneven rides. The one exception (in my opinion) is "Fire and Ice", a fantasy flick with some really good animation and high quality from start to finish. The character designs are based on Frazetta (good choice) and the animation often rotoscoped, therefor realistic. Now - why then do I give it only 4 out of 10?! Answer: The story is so weak you basically have to turn off the speakers to enjoy the pictures. They took some Frazetta drawings and put them on film without filling them with character or life. Then they wrote a story so these cardboard "characters" had to move around so they could show off some cool animation. It's truly mind-boggling how much work they put into this, instead of filming something like, say, a "Dragonriders of Pern"-story. Recommended for animation nuts (like myself)

Honestly I can't understand why this movie rates so well here, nor why Bakshi himself thought it was his finest film. I'm a huge fan of Bakshi's earlier work - particularly 'Heavy Traffic' and 'Wizards', but frankly 'Wizards' (1977) was the last good film he made. After that he turned to the mainstream, beginning with the diabolical 'Lord of the Rings' and then knuckling down with sword and sorcery heavyweight Frank Frazetta, for 'Fire and Ice'. What can I say? The story is puerile, the animation is TV quality - I insist that it's considerably worse than his 70's stuff - and whereas 'Wizards' had real imagination, quirkiness, some gorgeous background art, and an underground, adult sensibility, 'Fire and Ice' is just designed for 14 year old boys, and has the intellectual clout of Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Yes, if you liked the Gor books, you might like this. In my view though, this was just another blip in the slide in quality after 'Wizards' from which Bakshi never recovered (though he's done some decent TV stuff fairly recently) 4.5 out of 10

Fire and Ice is Ralph Bakshi's animated vision of Frank Frazetta's fantasy world (who even assisted in the making of this feature). The story is your basic tale of good verse evil; a ruthless sorcerer and his mother are intent on taking over the world, using their power to spawn ice glaciers to achieve this goal. Their last resistance is Fire Keep, a city built around a volcano. Really, the story and characters are kept simple while the showcase of this movie is the animation and action. Bakshi uses a process known as rotoscoping in this film (not his first time though). Rotoscoping is when actors are shot in live action and then later drawn over and added into the backgrounds. Nowadays, you might call it a form of motion capture. Anyway, the effect is actually pretty cool, bringing a certain realism to the characters that is absent from traditional animation. Keeping this in mind, we now come to the action in this movie, of which there is plenty. The movie only takes breaks to set up the next scene of combat for our two warrior heroes. It's often rather brutal, involving swords, spears, axes, and arrows. Aside from taking on gangs of Subhumans (the evil foot soldiers), there are also a few mythical-type creatures to deal with. Fire and Ice is the third Bakshi production I've seen and at that, the best. While I think it could've been better, it's still a fairly fun and entertaining fantasy picture, and I believe that's all it's meant to be. The Limited Edition DVD from Blue Underground does the movie justice with a decent transfer (the video shows some age but the audio is fine) and a few featurettes. There's also a sufficient commentary with Lance Laspina and Bakshi, who comes off as a bit of a jerk. Finally, the set includes Laspina's documentary, Frazetta: Painting with Fire. By the way, for those in the know, John would love Princess Teegra, a voluptuous, scantly-clad lady right out of one of Frazetta's pictures!