What can we learn today from Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards?

Four decades since Ralph Bakshi’s typ­i­cal­ly anom­alous, post-apoc­a­lyp­tic ani­mat­ed fea­ture Wiz­ards pre­miered in the US, it’s time to take a clos­er look at what this film was try­ing to say – espe­cial­ly now that it means so much.

Bak­shi is best known for his idio­syn­crat­ic, con­tro­ver­sial ani­mat­ed films, start­ing with 1972’s Fritz the Cat, the first ever ani­mat­ed film to receive an ​‘X’ cer­tifi­cate in the States. He main­tained a loy­al cult fol­low­ing with lat­er films like Coon­skin and Heavy Traf­fic while also gain­ing a wider appeal with slight­ly less risqué movies like The Lord of the Rings from 1978.

He almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly brought adult ani­ma­tion into main­stream focus, and he remains arguably its most influ­en­tial prac­ti­tion­er. But regard­less of whether you regard him as a true mav­er­ick or just plain irrev­er­ent, it’s nev­er been more impor­tant to con­sid­er the real­i­ty of Wiz­ards, as much as that sounds like an oxymoron.

Wiz­ards was Bakshi’s first fan­ta­sy film. As is the case with all his work, it is dis­tinc­tive­ly and stun­ning­ly ani­mat­ed, based off of orig­i­nal sketch­es Bak­shi drew while he was still in high school. Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, British illus­tra­tor Ian Miller and com­ic book artist Mike Ploog were brought in to con­tribute designs and back­drops. Inter­est­ing­ly, Bak­shi sep­a­rat­ed Miller and Ploog, with the pair work­ing on spe­cif­ic groups of char­ac­ters and set­tings due to their indi­vid­ual styles.

The film’s basic premise is an ancient war between Indus­tri­al Tech­nol­o­gy (the evil side) and Mag­ic (the good guys). While the two sides are pre­sent­ed in fair­ly black-and-white terms, with the bad­dies paint­ed quite lit­er­al­ly as bum­bling Nazis and the heroes con­sist­ing pri­mar­i­ly of cheeky fairies and noble knights, this some­what crude metaphor and does not dilute the film’s weird­ness. It is a com­plex work that con­tains many messages.

Bak­shi used tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion tech­niques, often incor­po­rat­ing repug­nant images, to cre­ate intrigu­ing tales that require us to real­ly think about what we’re see­ing on screen. In the case of Wiz­ards, this was Bakshi’s cre­ative way of deal­ing with a very real dis­as­ter which he saw unfold­ing. This is a film that could just as eas­i­ly have been set in our own world, with live action stars and a more direct style. Grant­ed, it wouldn’t be near­ly as cap­ti­vat­ing or fun to watch, but Bakshi’s cen­tral idea – the sense of anx­i­ety at the core of the film – would remain.

That in itself makes Wiz­ards all the more fas­ci­nat­ing when viewed today – espe­cial­ly for younger view­ers whose seem­ing lack of inter­est in hand-drawn fan­ta­sy sto­ries (and the peo­ple telling them) reflects the real­i­ty of Bakshi’s not entire­ly imag­i­nary war.

CGI can be a won­der­ful thing in the right hands, but it’s a shame that tra­di­tion­al 2D ani­ma­tion has fall­en so far out of favour since the advent of com­put­er-ani­mat­ed fea­ture film­mak­ing. The prob­lem rests not with the tech­nol­o­gy itself but in the marked shift away from cre­at­ing sto­ries that stim­u­late and stretch our belief in mag­ic and alter­nate realities.

It’s not that we’re los­ing Baksi’s war – in fact, we’re win­ning. We’re just fight­ing on the wrong side. And we can’t lose, because we have almost entire­ly stopped believ­ing in our mag­i­cal opponents.

Bak­shi saw this com­ing 40 years ago, and nobody real­ly took notice. In an age of cyn­i­cism, pro­pa­gan­da and fake news, it seems as if the more we buy into the notion that every­thing is com­ing undone, the more it will prove true. Because when peo­ple feel defeat­ed, they stop fight­ing. Right now, cre­ativ­i­ty and imag­i­na­tion are the most pow­er­ful weapons we have. We’ve sim­ply for­got­ten how to use them.