Subject: Retrospective: Wizards (1977)

From: [email-masked] (Brian Takeshita)
Date: 1 Oct 1997 00:03:36 GMT

WIZARDS

A Film Review by Brian Takeshita

Rating:  1/2* out of ****

WIZARDS is an animated feature that begins with a narration of epic
proportions.  Over black and white drawings, we are told that the
earth is destroyed in an apocalyptic nuclear exchange, sending the
remnants of humanity through generations of radiation-induced
mutation.  The "original" inhabitants of the earth, fairies and elves,
return to populate the globe, along with their evil, mutant
counterparts.  One day (and I say "one day" not to be trite, but
because that’s exactly how it happened - no advance notice), a fairy
queen gives birth to twins, one good and one evil.  The twins grow up
to be powerful wizards, the good one embracing magic, and the bad one
utilizing technology to attempt to expand his evil empire.  We are
given the notion that an ultimate battle must occur between the forces
of magic and those of technology.

As unoriginal as the premise is, I was still somewhat interested in
how this story would play itself out.  There’s a lot you can do in an
animated fantasy world, after all.  I soon learned, however, that the
fantasy was the expectation of a decent film.  Once the transition was
made from still art to color animation, an entirely different feel
takes precedence.  Rather than the epic saga promised by the
narration, we get a goofy-looking world of a Saturday morning cartoon.
Not just the look, mind you, but all the zany sounds like >honk< and
>boing< when the characters go jumping around like....well, like
cartoon characters.  When we see Blackwolf, the evil twin wizard, he’s
pretty much what we expect.  The good wizard, Avatar, is nothing like
he is depicted in the opening.  Rather than a sagely master, he’s more
like George Burns, complete with stogie in foot.  That’s right, he
holds it between his toes.  He doesn’t even look the like he did in
the black and white drawings.  How disappointing.  Papa Smurf and
Santa Claus are serious wisemen compared to this guy.  I imagine Yoda
picks guys like Avatar out from between his teeth on weekends.

For years, Blackwolf has lost his battles against the magical forces
of good, since his armies of ogres and other mutants would get
dispirited or distracted soon after battle is joined.  However,
Blackwolf now has a secret weapon:  Nazis.  Yup, Adolf Hitler, the
Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht.  Okay, not the real things, but an
archival film his minions dug up.  Projected into the sky for all to
see, it inspires his own army while shocking the enemy into submission
long enough for the ogres to hack them up.  Before you know it, there
are dead elves everywhere.

This is just as well.  The characters are so bad that the viewer
doesn't care about any of them.  They're either silly, sappy, or both.
The dialog gets much of the credit for this.  An example is when
Avatar nonchalantly says, "Well, looks like my brother and I begin our
final battle."  Not very formidable when he's also the guy who says,
"This is the biggest bummer of a trip I've ever been on."  My favorite
line was from a sideline fairy who is asked by her child why good
can't fight back against the Nazi-charged evil.  Her response is,
"They have weapons and technology.  We just have love."  Suffice to
say, the characters are strictly two-dimensional, and we therefore
don't expect anything more than the obvious to happen.  Which it does.
The only unexpected occurrence is the way the final battle between
brothers is played out, which is anticlimactic and disappointing.
Please note that it is the action that is unexpected.  That it is
disappointing is not.

The film couldn't settle on a particular mood.  It seems to move from
dark to light with the cuts from scene to scene and even angle to
angle.  Scenes which are seemingly meant to contain deep meaning are
ruined by acts of levity.  The dramatics, which seem to occur at
random, are overly staged and overly acted, detracting from any kind
of value or even enjoyment which could otherwise be gleaned.

Ralph Bakshi, the director, makes an obvious attempt to get a message
across in this film:  Hitler and the Nazis were bad.  So who doesn't
know this already?  Well, maybe children.  Okay, so you might say that
this is a movie for children.  It's not.  In the scenes where good
fights evil, there's a lot of violence and gore that children should
not be seeing if they're watching a cartoon.  So is the film for
adults?  If so, we probably don't need to be bashed over the head to
get the point.  Why not have the bad guys be symbolic of the Nazis
instead of using old propaganda in a seriously disjointed attempt to
show us something we already know?

WIZARDS gives us a lot of footage of Nazi tanks and airplanes, and
Hitler giving speeches.  However, we don't see any reason why they
should be considered bad.  We see no atrocities being committed, not
even any real battle footage.  There is absolutely no connection made
between the armies of evil and the Third Reich, and we’re not even
given a cursory explanation as to why this stuff is inspiring in the
first place.  This needed to be thought out much more thoroughly if a
point were to be made, since subject matter such as this deserves
better treatment.  I'd like to assume that Bakshi was trying to say
that the same nationalist movement that drove the Nazis could happen
anywhere, at any time, and we must therefore be vigilant.  However,
I'm not sure if I want to give him that much credit.

Review posted September 30, 1997