PRODUCTION
Ralph
Bakshi had long had an interest in
fantasy, and had been drawing fantasy
artwork as far back as 1955, while he
was still in high school.
Wizards originated in the concept
for Tee-Witt,
an unproduced television series Bakshi
developed and pitched to CBS in 1967. In
1976, Bakshi pitched War
Wizards to 20th Century
Fox. Returning to the fantasy drawings he
had created in high school for
inspiration, Bakshi intended to prove that
he could produce a "family picture" that
had the same impact as his adult-oriented
films.
The film is an allegorical
comment on the moral neutrality of
technology and the potentially destructive
powers of propaganda.
Blackwolf's secret weapon is propaganda,
used to incite and motivate his legions
and terrorize the good fairy folk of
Montagar. However, in the end, it is
Avatar's willingness to use a technological
tool which saves them
all.
Bakshi also states that Wizards
was about, "the creation of the
state of Israel and the Holocaust, about
the Jews looking for a homeland, and about
the fact that fascism was on the rise
again."
British illustrator Ian
Miller and comic book
artist Mike Ploog
were hired to contribute backgrounds and
designs. The crew included Vita, Turek, Sparey, Vitello,
and Spence,
who had become comfortable to Bakshi's
limited storyboarding and lack of pencil
tests.
Artist Alex
Niño signed a contract
with Bakshi to work on the film, and was
granted a work visa, but was unable to
gain permission from the Philippine
government in order to leave for the
United States until two months afterward,
and later found that by the time he had
arrived in the U.S., not only had the
film's animation had been completed, but
Niño's visa did not allow him to
submit freelance work on any other
projects.
The film's main cast includes Bob
Holt, Jesse
Welles, Richard
Romanus, David
Proval, and Steve
Gravers. Bakshi cast Holt
based on his ability to imitate the voice
of actor Peter Falk,
of whom Bakshi is a fan.
Welles, Romanus and Proval had
previously worked with Bakshi on Hey
Good Lookin', where Romanus and
Proval provided the voices of Vinnie and
Crazy Shapiro, respectively. Actress Tina
Bowman, who plays a small
role in Wizards, has a larger role in Hey
Good Lookin'.
Actor Mark
Hamill auditioned for and
received a voice role in the film. Bakshi
states that "He needed a job, and he came
to me, and I thought he was great, and
Lucas thought he should do it, and he got
not only Wizards, he got Star Wars."
Bakshi had wanted a female
narrator for his film, and he loved Susan
Tyrrell's acting. Tyrrell
performed the narration for the film, but
Bakshi was told that he couldn't credit
her for her narration. Years later,
Tyrrell told Bakshi that she got most of
her work from her narration on the film,
and that she wished she had allowed him to
put her name on it.
John Grant
writes in his book Masters
of Animation that "the overall
affect of the animation is akin to that of
the great anime creators " one has to keep
reminding oneself that Wizards predates
Miyazaki's The Castle of Cagliostro
(1979), not the other way round.
The
backgrounds are especially lovely, even
the simplest of them, and in general the
movie has a strong visual brio despite
occasional technical hurriedness."
Notable artists involved in the
production of Wizards include Ian Miller,
who produced the gloomy backgrounds of
Scortch, and Mike Ploog, who contributed
likewise for the more arcadian landscapes
of Montagar.
Bakshi was unable to complete the
battle sequences with the budget Fox had
given him. When he asked them for a budget
increase, they refused (during the same
meeting, director George Lucas had asked
for a budget increase for Star Wars and
was also refused).
As a result, Bakshi finished his
film by paying out of his own pocket and
using rotoscoping for the unfinished
battle sequences. According to Bakshi, "I thought that if we
dropped all the detail, it would look
very artistic, and very beautiful, and I
felt, why bother animating all of this ?
I'm looking for a way to get realism
into my film and get real emotion."
In his audio commentary for the
film's release, Bakshi states that, "There's no question that
it was an easier way to get these
gigantic scenes that I wanted. It also
was the way that showed me how to do
Lord of the Rings, so it worked two
ways."
In addition to stock footage, the
film used battle sequences from films such
as Zulu, El Cid, Battle of the Bulge and Alexander
Nevsky for rotoscoping.
Live-action sequences from Patton were
also featured.
Vaughn Bode's
work has been credited as an influence on
Wizards. Quentin Tarantino
describes Avatar as "a cross between
Tolkien's Hobbit, Mel Brooks' 2000 Year
Old Man, and Marvel Comics' Howard the
Duck" and Blackwolf as being physically
similar to Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the
Terrible.
In Jerry Beck's
Animated Movie Guide, Andrew
Leal writes that "The
central figure, Avatar sounds a great deal
like Peter Falk, and clearly owes much to
cartoonist Vaughn Bodé's Cheech
Wizard character."
As War Wizards neared completion,
Lucas requested that Bakshi change the
title of his film to Wizards in
order to avoid conflict with Star Wars,
and Bakshi agreed because Lucas had
allowed Mark Hamill to take time off from
Star Wars in order to record a voice for
the production.
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