Watched this at a friend's house, on a sorta-date with this girl. When it got to the line, "They have guns and technology, all we have is love," she snorted and said, "You're fucked." Been married for 30 years.
I had never considered how Ralph Bakshi grew up on WWII propaganda, and now I feel like his filmmaking choices make a lot more sense. The level of heavy-handedness in some of his movies really is similar to wartime messaging. Absolutely unambiguous, and on-the-nose on multiple levels.
"The 70s produced a lot of weird shit" That's why we love it. It was a time of rampant creativity. To quote Michael Moorcock, "when you go into the studio and you know what's going to come out, the rock n roll dies"
I'm of the opinion that studio time is expensive, and you'd better have your shit nailed down good and proper before paying for studio time. The time for creativity comes before that.
I remember watching this one as a kid, renting it from Blockbuster alongside 80s comedies and old scifi Anime, it was both alluring and utterly frightening for my younger self. Having watched again recently I'm struck by how goofy it is, something that is missing from my memories of it. It's always stuck with me for its brutality, even now on occasion those feelings, the scattered glimpses of it from my childhood still bubble up, the violence and eroticism congealing with Conan and old cover art from scifi novels to occupy a certain...aesthetic? Well, the one thing I can say for certain is that Bakshi knows how to leave his mark on you.
20 years ago, with the success of the Wizards SE DVD release, Bakshi was working on a sequel to Wizards centered on the child of Black wolf with the dark elf princess. who escaped. Bakshi said that the Wizards 2 would be a reflecton on the times which was the war on terror. and the child of Blackwolf would be like Osama Bin Ladin to the new world order imposed by the Elves and Faerie victors. a Wizards comic anthology was also planned but all this was shelved due to lack of funding and the major studios not wanting to take on the project. as Bakshi focused on his film Last Days of Coney Island.
It's a good thing he never made it then, Bakshi had a laughably childish understanding of reality on several levels and one can assume that he would have been just as pathetic with his extremely pedestrian understanding of the GwoT
It's interesting that the farther we get from WWII the more taboo the German iconography from that war gets. You would think it would be the opposite as the memories and wounds (physical and emotional) would be fresher closer to the war and as we move further in time away the symbols would lose power but it almost feels the opposite. These things were very open in films from the 70s. units in Vietnam even openly displayed these symbols in some cases or gave names to their vehicles such as "der fuhrer" etc. 80's bands trying to be extra edgy would use them and even video games into the 90s such as Wolfenstein used these symbols heavily. now, even in historical context, these things are generally viewed as a very bad no-no, beyond simply being "edgy" and removed from video games in certain releases and censored in many cases, etc.
As it's moved away from historical fact, it's become closer to religious symbolism specifically, in our modern obsession with race and identity politics, the swastika has become the new pentagram or inverted cross
I do think that's a funny and maybe deliberate point - given the history of the weapon as a nazi icon, it kinda implies Avatar just picked it up from one of the troops or off a table, and sure, it's no philosophical win. But when it comes to certain aspects of evil, you kind of just have to do what works, and the dead baddies don't really get to laugh about how you compromised your morals and they won the argument... they're just dead, and Avatar tosses the gun after and presumably goes for a smoke. It's not a grand damning operatic gesture, just kind of a mundane affair and moving on.
Wizards sometimes feels like a string of sketches. Like they are just figuring out how to make a feature length movie, and it tips somewhere between sketches and episodic adventure.
Dude seems skeptical that factory work is inhumane or industry destroyed the environment. I suppose a few years are left before global warming has our planet cooked. I only have trace amounts of 3M chemicals in my blood. However, he has some solid insights into WIZARDS and it’s context. Such good reviews help an audience be in the right frame of mind to get the most out of watching a far-out movie like this.
I remember in the audio commentary in the wizards DVD, bakshi commented said in a German TV interview, he was asked why he used nazi symbols in the movie, Bakshi replied, well for him, nazism and germany = war, hahah, it offended the German interviewer. The movie was popular when it first came out but was dethroned with the release of star wars, in fact, while wizards was being made, star wars was being made in a neighbouring studio lot and Mark Hamill taking a break from star wars came over and was fascinated with wizards so much bakshi gave him a role as a fairie knight who gets shot by a assasin. . Also wizards and I believe there was a law suit between Vaughn Bode the creator of Cobalt 60 comics accusing Bakshi of stealing his ideas, but later Bakshi admitted that he was inspired by the Cobalt 60 comic and interestingly Wizards inspired Vaugn Bode to expand on his Cobalt 60 comic a decade later.
Avatar was a lot like Cheech Wizard, Necron 99 resembled Cobalt 60, and Eleanor was a DEFINITE Bode' Broad! Bode made Wizards as practice for his planned Lord of the Rings Wizards was good. LOTR was a stinker
Wizards was a success at the time. Just a slightly lesser success than Star Wars. Bakshi would get a free hand with other movies following this rotoscope success.
@@SusCalvin yep I remember it earned good bucks at the opening. but rapidly fell of the charts when Star wars debuted. Yah true with Bakshi, he made good with rotoscoping with American Pop and Lord of the Rings. watched Wizards in the cinema back in 78, Lord of the rings cinema back in 79 and American pop in a Hong kong late night midnight movie on the ATV world channel in the mid 80s.
@@mikegrossberg8624 Bakshi's LOTR was, in certain respects, closer to the actual text of Tolkien than the live-action trilogy. It's too bad that Bakshi didn't get the chance to make a Part 2, since his film is an edited-down version of the first half of LOTR.
I found it rather amusing to play "identify the movie that rotoscoped clip came from" I got "Patton", "Zulu", "Battle of the Bulge", and "Alexander Nevsky" Did anyone spot OTHER films?
yah remember watching this in 1978 in a Manila cinema and as a 11 year old, I was blown away by it, loved it. probably some of the most unique movies of the 1970s. and watched it many a time since then. and its funny back in the day it was considered a PG movie , a kiddie movie if this movie was made now this would be considered a R, and I doubt it if Wizards can even be made in today's political climate,
This was my favorite movie when I was little, its fascinating to think how few got to experience this movie for my generation, (im only 23) the message is simple with a fun story and an awesome score that inspires my art and music to this day. This is in my opinion Ralph bakshi's best work with lord of the rings as a close second, anyways everybody should watch this movie because its just plain fun.
_”[Nazi echo], the idea that the war had such a great impact that it reverberates across the culture through generations…_ _’Wizards’ is part of the first echo”_ Cool delivery
I randomly saw this at a friend's place as a teenager in the mid 80's. At the time it seemed really weird but cool. Would love to watch it again now in my fifties.
I really do hate how some many of the nazi symbols are treated, as you said, like talismans or magical things that can steal your soul. It gives them far too much credit
Finally found Rorschach's youtube channel. It's very different thematically but Bakshi's ending to Wizards reminded me a little of Yojimbo where one of the antagonists whips a gun out of his Kimono which seems so crazy when you're watching a samurai sword movie.
In the Wizards RPG, they explained that dead dictators of the past were bound as demons in Scorch. So you could fight a high fantasy demon version of Idi Amin, Gobbels and Pol Pot.
@Lord_Victis By Whit Publications in 92-93. This was one of their games next to Mutazoids. They published a core book, a Montegar book and char sheets. This largely seems to lacks input from Bakshi and co.
about 20 years ago , I remember writing a setting piece to modify the wizards setting to an rpg game system(Tw2000 2nd ed). and I remember extrapolating on how the Scortch society and armies were organized. So the mutants are divided by various tribes of varying degrees of power , organization etc. while Blackwolf may be the most powerful figure there are also others who dont follow his banner and even oppose him. Blackwolf's armies are not mechanized as a whole, in fact, i would say 90 percent of his troops are medieval, made of tribal levies ten percent of that are made up of his best troops which are equipped 1943 Wehrmacht style . whch are made up of demons, and some mutants. in fact, his generals officers advsiros are mostly demons. Mutants most of them never make officers just enlisted men and cannon fodder. also magic here varies with the hermetic magical arts prevailent in Black wolf and in the good lands. with Faerie arts in the good lands and Shamanistic and psionics prevailent in the mutant lands.
@@CloseingStraw97 yah that was 35 years ago. So basic TW2000 2nd ed. rules. but with a pts based magic system. Yah three kinds of magic, Hermetic, fae and Shamanistic. Hermetic is very much formulaic structured magic , fae is wild magic, and Shamanistic is spirit magic where the spirits teach you spells, Scorch wizards equivalent of Mordor encompasses a major portion of North America where the USA and portions of Northern Mexico. While Blackwolf has declared himself leader of all of Scorch he does not control it. and his power is contested by various mutant tribes who are more or less allied with him but have independence. Blackwolf has managed to civilize a few parts of Scorch like 10 percent with him establishing a few cities which resemble a mix of medieval central european and American mid 20th century living. Blackwolf's army 90 percent are made up of levies from barbaric allied mutant tribes iron age armies which are mostly equipped with sword and spear with a few mid 20th century type fire arms. They are used as cannon fodder. 10 percent if Blackwolf's elite which are made up of mutants equpped and trained like German ww2 troops complete with tanks and aircraft. and backed up by demons.
@@CloseingStraw97 basic system is TW2000 2nd ed. however the magic system uses TW2000 2nd ed. skill system but its called ability , the system is the same but just geared to casting spells rituals etc. also a spell caster has mana where he expends to cast spells and do rituals. 3 main systems of magic are Hermetic, Shamanistic and Psionics. Hermetic is more structured magic where your magic depends on your will , using your knowledge to do your magic, shamanistic is magic derived from spirits, using powers taught to you by spirits or using the spirits themselves to do your magic. and Psionics is magic of the mind. while a lot less versatile than the other two magics, it can be powerful. and psionics are mostly born with the gift people can be awakened with this power or artificially induced. through genetic manipulation. hermetic and shamanistic magic do not cross over. while psionics can also use hermetic and shamanistic magic.
Much of the 'look' of WIZARDS is due to the artist Mike Ploog, who was a comicbook artist for Marvel -- their PLANET OF THE APES magazine, and the comics WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER. He also did the art-style of the HEAVY METAL movie's B-17 scene (one of the few scenes in that movie that wasn't based on a story from the HEAVY METAL magazine).
What a strange adult animated film. Doubt it'd be made today. Then the 1980s happened and we got animated films from both the West and Japan like The Secret of NIMH or Akira. Good times.
I watched this at age 10/11 and was completely immersed The weaker wizard shooting the more powerful wizard with a gun is the one thing I'd always remembered It's one of the best 'surprise tropes ' in fantasy history. Ever. Everyone is preparing for some major magic battle and the guy just pulls a gun ;)
Like Indiana Jones simply pulling his pistol and shooting the Arab swordsman instead of engaging in what looked to be a pending sword-battle royale ...
I like how you interpret how the authors saw themselves and the world at the time through their media on a deeper level. What would this type of analysis be called? Is it Historicism? I would like to read more on this type of analysis
Wizards is so good! I was lucky enough that my parents let me watch it when I was like five or six and it was definitely a game changer going from watching He-Man to a Ralph Bakshi film 😂
My complaint was this: In 10 million years, nobody was ever worse than the Austrian corporal? That asks too much suspension of disbelief. I did adore this movie, however. It was just weird enough to tickle my sci fi loving brain.
and also I remember in the early 1980s I saw a lot of ads in Dragon magazine for this RPG called Fireland supposed to be published by the K Society out of Tulsa OKH. but nothing came out of it. and the blurbs were very much a total copy of Wizards. and the official Wizards rpg was published in 1992, setting good RPG systems suck balls,
This stuff comes from Stanford. Changing Inages of Man book. You see it in the 80s at full octane. The purpose to program the youth to accept big changes.
I came of age in the 70s but didn't actually watch this film until I was in my late 40s. I wasn't particularly impressed, and considered it to be a poorly made film by an undisciplined director. For me, the climax, where Avatar shot the villain with a Luger felt empty. Maybe Bakshi thought he was subverting the expectation that Avatar would use magic. Frankly I had mentally and emotionally checked out of the film by the first half hour.
I think these weapons have the same problem a lot of steampunk has. No doubt the fictional technology is inferior to what it reasonable should exist along side.
Some of my friends like this one, but I sure didn't. It came off as basically hippy propaganda to me, presenting as idyllic the idea that people would just frolic out in the fields and have sex constantly, while being so anti-technology that something as simple as a record player is banned, and this is put forward as a positive. Though if that wasn't enough, the hero of the story is a complete hypocrite who still owns some of the banned technology, and he even uses an example of it to win in the end before tossing it aside distastefully. I also thought the rotoscoping and just straight up including WWII footage was lame, but then I find the short hand of just having slapping the swastika on the bad guys or otherwise to just make the bad guys be nazis to be a tired old trope. About the only positives are the examples you brought up as some of the goblins not being uniformly evil.
I think this was a premise of the movie. The fairy lands don't understand the threat, they think evil will get tired and go home after a token scrap, because that's what the mutants have always done. Towards the end we see a bunch of the remnant elf army, like some sort of partisan Polish Home Army dudes. And they sure have a mix of guns with them. And a wizard with a luger is how we have kept portraying wizards in our game ever since.
This was such an odd movie the first time I saw it. We were expecting it to build to this big magical face-off between the brothers. Suddenly the gnome pulls out the luger, and it's like WTF, didn't see that coming. Don't know if a film like that would get as broad of an audience today with all the propaganda symbols.
yeah people pretend that the word holocaust can only mean one thing. Its rather odd. Not to mention the mythology behind it. How long into the future will we have to go to be honest about it?
Thankfully, organizations like the Committee for Open Debate On the 'Hollow Cost' started diligently gathering and publishing the facts in the 80s. Just last year, they published The 'Hollow Cost' Encyclopedia Uncensored and unconstrained. I think recent events are making it more and more acceptable to be honest about it
1980, end of year at school, we assembled in the main hall at school for an end of year film double bill, Born Free, about lions, conversation etc. and this film, a 12 year old me considered this the most self indulgent jism of a Nazi/Tolkien obsessed early teen could come up with, 6th form Fanw*ank if you will. And I had read some of the promo stuff in the UK edition of Heavy Metal a friend of my Mum had laying about at their place and was intrigued. All in all, a great disappointment. I have considered it the both the worst movie I had ever watched and the most squandered opportunity of great concept art and an overlong shaggy dog story! years later I see more in it now but that initial impression still stands if a bit wobbly on its feet and needing a cane.
Ralph Bashki is one of those filmmakers that pretentious types watch to make themselves feel superior to others. They'll just tell you that you "don't get it."
@@TrafficPartyHatTest Because, unless you have been living under a rock these last ten years or, are yourself a hater of Jews; we Jews have seen a HUGE resurgence of antisemitism the world over, including in the free-est and most tolerant country in the world, the USA. Additionally, we Jews, while miniscule in number are responsible for the majority of accomplishments, awards and advancements in the field of entertainment, in front of the camera and behind it. I could go on and on, of course...
@@TrafficPartyHatTestSome people think there’s a “secret” reason people don’t admit there’s a Jewish conspiracy behind everything. We usually ignore these people and their dumbass cause.
@@cyberninjazero5659 Your username should read: "Cyberninjaknowszero", because "zero" is what you know of history. Suggest you get over to Prager University and unscrew your head out of your ass, one five-minute video at a time....
Watched this at a friend's house, on a sorta-date with this girl. When it got to the line, "They have guns and technology, all we have is love," she snorted and said, "You're fucked."
Been married for 30 years.
At that moment you knew she is keeping you😅.
My man didn't miss the signs
To your friend?
That's gay
@@noahdoyle6780 dude if you didn't put a ring on that, I would have. And you can tell her I said that
This is my new favorite channel
I had never considered how Ralph Bakshi grew up on WWII propaganda, and now I feel like his filmmaking choices make a lot more sense. The level of heavy-handedness in some of his movies really is similar to wartime messaging. Absolutely unambiguous, and on-the-nose on multiple levels.
Fritz will never be forgotten.
Look how they massacred my boy.
They killed fritz! They killed fritz!
its ok he was reborn as a cat
Those dirty, stinkin' yellow fairies
Poor guy got shot by his own buddy by accident. Effectively the sinking of the USS Maine.
"The 70s produced a lot of weird shit"
That's why we love it. It was a time of rampant creativity. To quote Michael Moorcock, "when you go into the studio and you know what's going to come out, the rock n roll dies"
That’s how I feel about most scripted content and “media review” on RUclips. Not feral historian though.
I'm of the opinion that studio time is expensive, and you'd better have your shit nailed down good and proper before paying for studio time. The time for creativity comes before that.
I remember watching this one as a kid, renting it from Blockbuster alongside 80s comedies and old scifi Anime, it was both alluring and utterly frightening for my younger self. Having watched again recently I'm struck by how goofy it is, something that is missing from my memories of it. It's always stuck with me for its brutality, even now on occasion those feelings, the scattered glimpses of it from my childhood still bubble up, the violence and eroticism congealing with Conan and old cover art from scifi novels to occupy a certain...aesthetic?
Well, the one thing I can say for certain is that Bakshi knows how to leave his mark on you.
You perfectly described the man. Brutality meets looney tunes
@@AllanTidgwell I'm old enough to have seen this movie in the theater and your description is spot on!
20 years ago, with the success of the Wizards SE DVD release, Bakshi was working on a sequel to Wizards centered on the child of Black wolf with the dark elf princess. who escaped. Bakshi said that the Wizards 2 would be a reflecton on the times which was the war on terror. and the child of Blackwolf would be like Osama Bin Ladin to the new world order imposed by the Elves and Faerie victors. a Wizards comic anthology was also planned but all this was shelved due to lack of funding and the major studios not wanting to take on the project. as Bakshi focused on his film Last Days of Coney Island.
It's a good thing he never made it then, Bakshi had a laughably childish understanding of reality on several levels and one can assume that he would have been just as pathetic with his extremely pedestrian understanding of the GwoT
A feature length animated movie set up around one punch-line. Wonderful!
It's interesting that the farther we get from WWII the more taboo the German iconography from that war gets. You would think it would be the opposite as the memories and wounds (physical and emotional) would be fresher closer to the war and as we move further in time away the symbols would lose power but it almost feels the opposite. These things were very open in films from the 70s. units in Vietnam even openly displayed these symbols in some cases or gave names to their vehicles such as "der fuhrer" etc. 80's bands trying to be extra edgy would use them and even video games into the 90s such as Wolfenstein used these symbols heavily. now, even in historical context, these things are generally viewed as a very bad no-no, beyond simply being "edgy" and removed from video games in certain releases and censored in many cases, etc.
Only in the media as many people are seeing a trend
Ww3 seems like it might happen with the internet and what not
Yes it’s very weird: German ww2 plastic models have their swastika markings deleted now as if they might turn a person into a Nazi
As it's moved away from historical fact, it's become closer to religious symbolism specifically, in our modern obsession with race and identity politics, the swastika has become the new pentagram or inverted cross
@ to certain susceptible people yeah maybe not all.
We’re just glazing over the fact that the epic climax wizard battle is just the good wizard pulling out a surprise gun and shooting the bad wizard?
It may have taken me some time to get over my initial reaction of "What?! He pulls a fucking Luger and that's it!"
Let me show you a trick mom showed me when you weren't around...
Muh Two World Wars.
I'm just saying if it beats a Nazi...
I do think that's a funny and maybe deliberate point - given the history of the weapon as a nazi icon, it kinda implies Avatar just picked it up from one of the troops or off a table, and sure, it's no philosophical win.
But when it comes to certain aspects of evil, you kind of just have to do what works, and the dead baddies don't really get to laugh about how you compromised your morals and they won the argument... they're just dead, and Avatar tosses the gun after and presumably goes for a smoke.
It's not a grand damning operatic gesture, just kind of a mundane affair and moving on.
bro, you literally cover all the movies I grew up watching, its so funny to see for me
Wizards sometimes feels like a string of sketches. Like they are just figuring out how to make a feature length movie, and it tips somewhere between sketches and episodic adventure.
I just discovered this channel, and sometimes, I don't like what he has to say. That's good. Makes me think. Bravo!
Dude seems skeptical that factory work is inhumane or industry destroyed the environment. I suppose a few years are left before global warming has our planet cooked. I only have trace amounts of 3M chemicals in my blood. However, he has some solid insights into WIZARDS and it’s context. Such good reviews help an audience be in the right frame of mind to get the most out of watching a far-out movie like this.
I remember in the audio commentary in the wizards DVD, bakshi commented said in a German TV interview, he was asked why he used nazi symbols in the movie, Bakshi replied, well for him, nazism and germany = war, hahah, it offended the German interviewer. The movie was popular when it first came out but was dethroned with the release of star wars, in fact, while wizards was being made, star wars was being made in a neighbouring studio lot and Mark Hamill taking a break from star wars came over and was fascinated with wizards so much bakshi gave him a role as a fairie knight who gets shot by a assasin. . Also wizards and I believe there was a law suit between Vaughn Bode the creator of Cobalt 60 comics accusing Bakshi of stealing his ideas, but later Bakshi admitted that he was inspired by the Cobalt 60 comic and interestingly Wizards inspired Vaugn Bode to expand on his Cobalt 60 comic a decade later.
Avatar was a lot like Cheech Wizard, Necron 99 resembled Cobalt 60, and Eleanor was a DEFINITE Bode' Broad!
Bode made Wizards as practice for his planned Lord of the Rings
Wizards was good. LOTR was a stinker
Wizards was a success at the time. Just a slightly lesser success than Star Wars. Bakshi would get a free hand with other movies following this rotoscope success.
@@SusCalvin yep I remember it earned good bucks at the opening. but rapidly fell of the charts when Star wars debuted. Yah true with Bakshi, he made good with rotoscoping with American Pop and Lord of the Rings. watched Wizards in the cinema back in 78, Lord of the rings cinema back in 79 and American pop in a Hong kong late night midnight movie on the ATV world channel in the mid 80s.
@@mikegrossberg8624 Bakshi's LOTR was, in certain respects, closer to the actual text of Tolkien than the live-action trilogy. It's too bad that Bakshi didn't get the chance to make a Part 2, since his film is an edited-down version of the first half of LOTR.
I found it rather amusing to play "identify the movie that rotoscoped clip came from"
I got "Patton", "Zulu", "Battle of the Bulge", and "Alexander Nevsky"
Did anyone spot OTHER films?
A lot of weird shit came out of the 70’s
Best opening line ever
As 'opening lines' go, that was a great one.
yah remember watching this in 1978 in a Manila cinema and as a 11 year old, I was blown away by it, loved it. probably some of the most unique movies of the 1970s. and watched it many a time since then. and its funny back in the day it was considered a PG movie , a kiddie movie if this movie was made now this would be considered a R, and I doubt it if Wizards can even be made in today's political climate,
This was my favorite movie when I was little, its fascinating to think how few got to experience this movie for my generation, (im only 23) the message is simple with a fun story and an awesome score that inspires my art and music to this day. This is in my opinion Ralph bakshi's best work with lord of the rings as a close second, anyways everybody should watch this movie because its just plain fun.
_”[Nazi echo], the idea that the war had such a great impact that it reverberates across the culture through generations…_
_’Wizards’ is part of the first echo”_
Cool delivery
I randomly saw this at a friend's place as a teenager in the mid 80's. At the time it seemed really weird but cool. Would love to watch it again now in my fifties.
The voice actor performance of the opening narration 🤌🤌
This movie is still one of my absolute favorites.
I am just here to say I love your videos, dude. Thanx for the good time I am having watching them 👍
I love Wizards. It is such a classic.
Excellent review
I really do hate how some many of the nazi symbols are treated, as you said, like talismans or magical things that can steal your soul.
It gives them far too much credit
@@ZeSgtSchultz I thought it was the art of war propaganda and fascist ideology he found.
Finally found Rorschach's youtube channel. It's very different thematically but Bakshi's ending to Wizards reminded me a little of Yojimbo where one of the antagonists whips a gun out of his Kimono which seems so crazy when you're watching a samurai sword movie.
In the Wizards RPG, they explained that dead dictators of the past were bound as demons in Scorch. So you could fight a high fantasy demon version of Idi Amin, Gobbels and Pol Pot.
Wait...there's a rpg?!?
@Lord_Victis By Whit Publications in 92-93. This was one of their games next to Mutazoids. They published a core book, a Montegar book and char sheets. This largely seems to lacks input from Bakshi and co.
@SusCalvin thanks! I'll have to look into it! I love old single run ttrpgs!
@@Lord_Victis Reviews I have read state that they filled out the world and additional art themselves. I have read a digital copy some years ago.
@@SusCalvin oh.
Nice analysis, good video
In high school, we had movie days in the final weeks, and I brought this movie.
People were fascinated by it.
about 20 years ago , I remember writing a setting piece to modify the wizards setting to an rpg game system(Tw2000 2nd ed). and I remember extrapolating on how the Scortch society and armies were organized. So the mutants are divided by various tribes of varying degrees of power , organization etc. while Blackwolf may be the most powerful figure there are also others who dont follow his banner and even oppose him. Blackwolf's armies are not mechanized as a whole, in fact, i would say 90 percent of his troops are medieval, made of tribal levies ten percent of that are made up of his best troops which are equipped 1943 Wehrmacht style . whch are made up of demons, and some mutants. in fact, his generals officers advsiros are mostly demons. Mutants most of them never make officers just enlisted men and cannon fodder. also magic here varies with the hermetic magical arts prevailent in Black wolf and in the good lands. with Faerie arts in the good lands and Shamanistic and psionics prevailent in the mutant lands.
I owned the wizards rpg. Never played it.
@@macmcleod1188 Yah same here owned the official Wizards RPG , well it sucked bad.
God damn you turned Twilight 2000 2ed into a fantasy game? I need to here more about this.
@@CloseingStraw97 yah that was 35 years ago. So basic TW2000 2nd ed. rules. but with a pts based magic system.
Yah three kinds of magic, Hermetic, fae and Shamanistic. Hermetic is very much formulaic structured magic , fae is wild magic, and Shamanistic is spirit magic where the spirits teach you spells,
Scorch wizards equivalent of Mordor encompasses a major portion of North America where the USA and portions of Northern Mexico. While Blackwolf has declared himself leader of all of Scorch he does not control it. and his power is contested by various mutant tribes who are more or less allied with him but have independence.
Blackwolf has managed to civilize a few parts of Scorch like 10 percent with him establishing a few cities which resemble a mix of medieval central european and American mid 20th century living.
Blackwolf's army 90 percent are made up of levies from barbaric allied mutant tribes iron age armies which are mostly equipped with sword and spear with a few mid 20th century type fire arms. They are used as cannon fodder. 10 percent if Blackwolf's elite which are made up of mutants equpped and trained like German ww2 troops complete with tanks and aircraft. and backed up by demons.
@@CloseingStraw97 basic system is TW2000 2nd ed. however the magic system uses TW2000 2nd ed. skill system but its called ability , the system is the same but just geared to casting spells rituals etc. also a spell caster has mana where he expends to cast spells and do rituals. 3 main systems of magic are Hermetic, Shamanistic and Psionics. Hermetic is more structured magic where your magic depends on your will , using your knowledge to do your magic, shamanistic is magic derived from spirits, using powers taught to you by spirits or using the spirits themselves to do your magic. and Psionics is magic of the mind. while a lot less versatile than the other two magics, it can be powerful. and psionics are mostly born with the gift people can be awakened with this power or artificially induced. through genetic manipulation. hermetic and shamanistic magic do not cross over. while psionics can also use hermetic and shamanistic magic.
Okay, if you are not a college professor then I don't know what else you could be. Pure brilliant prose. New sub.
Much of the 'look' of WIZARDS is due to the artist Mike Ploog, who was a comicbook artist for Marvel -- their PLANET OF THE APES magazine, and the comics WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER. He also did the art-style of the HEAVY METAL movie's B-17 scene (one of the few scenes in that movie that wasn't based on a story from the HEAVY METAL magazine).
"A lot of weird shit came out of the 70's". I came out of the 70's & am pretty weird, so thanks.
As did I.
thnaks for the tip man. gonna watch now
I was super licky to see this at the drive in.
Not sure why my dad would take a 9yo to see Fritz the Cat and Wizards though.
'THEY KILLED FRITZ!!!'
Watching Wizards high af with friends is awesome experience.
What a strange adult animated film. Doubt it'd be made today.
Then the 1980s happened and we got animated films from both the West and Japan like The Secret of NIMH or Akira. Good times.
let us remember heavy metal
@9:40 I mean, I think you can basically say that about every country/army/culture.
Hey thanks for the video I watch Wizards a couple of days ago and i though it would a good video topic
One of my all time favorite movies
I watched this at age 10/11 and was completely immersed The weaker wizard shooting the more powerful wizard with a gun is the one thing I'd always remembered It's one of the best 'surprise tropes ' in fantasy history. Ever. Everyone is preparing for some major magic battle and the guy just pulls a gun ;)
Like Indiana Jones simply pulling his pistol and shooting the Arab swordsman instead of engaging in what looked to be a pending sword-battle royale ...
One of my favourites
this is one of my favorite movies, i have the art of the artillery cannon as my computer wallpaper
I like how you interpret how the authors saw themselves and the world at the time through their media on a deeper level. What would this type of analysis be called? Is it Historicism? I would like to read more on this type of analysis
I remember watching this... a bunch of times.
Fuck yeah, Wizards! This movie is so underrated.
I love how at the end of the movie a revolver takes out the evil wizard. It was a scene. 🎬
Wizards is so good! I was lucky enough that my parents let me watch it when I was like five or six and it was definitely a game changer going from watching He-Man to a Ralph Bakshi film 😂
I saw this in the theater in 1977, no idea what yo expect but it was cool
First R,rated movie for me. Thanks
Are you ever going to do a video about heavy metal
Sometime early in the 70's the boomers opened a portal to Hell.
That would explain some things.
My complaint was this: In 10 million years, nobody was ever worse than the Austrian corporal? That asks too much suspension of disbelief. I did adore this movie, however. It was just weird enough to tickle my sci fi loving brain.
It was just boomers, they were all told hitler and nazis were the ultimate evil blah blah. The nazis were evil but not some ultimate end all of evil.
But at least we got a killer Blue Oyster Cult track out of it
I love this movie ❤❤❤
DIA mentioned. This confirms it. #MichiganÜberAlles
0:08 *Peak Cinema*
*"THEY KILLED FRITZ!!"*
My first PG movie!
It would be interesting if you could compare and contrast 'Wizards' with the 2004 Japanese film 'Casshern'.
and also I remember in the early 1980s I saw a lot of ads in Dragon magazine for this RPG called Fireland supposed to be published by the K Society out of Tulsa OKH. but nothing came out of it. and the blurbs were very much a total copy of Wizards. and the official Wizards rpg was published in 1992, setting good RPG systems suck balls,
Sounds cool
This stuff comes from Stanford. Changing Inages of Man book. You see it in the 80s at full octane. The purpose to program the youth to accept big changes.
Nice
Dude I love Wizards
They killed Fritz !!!!
"Germans are subhuman orcs"
Ad a Polish man - this is accurate description
This movie was rated G when it came out
🚫 Capitalizing "holocaust" 👎🤢
✅ Capitalizing "Holodomor" 👍😄
The lies are being exposed like never before since Oct 2023
I came of age in the 70s but didn't actually watch this film until I was in my late 40s. I wasn't particularly impressed, and considered it to be a poorly made film by an undisciplined director. For me, the climax, where Avatar shot the villain with a Luger felt empty. Maybe Bakshi thought he was subverting the expectation that Avatar would use magic. Frankly I had mentally and emotionally checked out of the film by the first half hour.
I think these weapons have the same problem a lot of steampunk has. No doubt the fictional technology is inferior to what it reasonable should exist along side.
This movie looks hilarious. Also, now the Orcs are Russians, so how long until we get a remake with Soviet imagery?
"Nazi's are bad" used to be a given...what the fucks happened.
I actually pasted a text to Facebook that said "fascists are not subtle". Great minds yada yada yada.
Never animate while you're high.
never animate unless youre high...
Bakshi wore a smaller than usual hat -- that's all anyone needs to know.
It’s a poor version of Tolkien but it’s animated 😂!
Black Wolf loves Zima. The Fæ folk brew ale!
As brilliant as Ralph Bakshi was, his movies were always a very confused mess.
This is one of those movies you really dont want to watch sober.
Of course you've seen this; and of course you've read that.
bonearms has too many bones in his arms. oh ok his name is blackwolf ok
"A communist working on commission" What's that supposed to mean?
Some of my friends like this one, but I sure didn't. It came off as basically hippy propaganda to me, presenting as idyllic the idea that people would just frolic out in the fields and have sex constantly, while being so anti-technology that something as simple as a record player is banned, and this is put forward as a positive. Though if that wasn't enough, the hero of the story is a complete hypocrite who still owns some of the banned technology, and he even uses an example of it to win in the end before tossing it aside distastefully. I also thought the rotoscoping and just straight up including WWII footage was lame, but then I find the short hand of just having slapping the swastika on the bad guys or otherwise to just make the bad guys be nazis to be a tired old trope. About the only positives are the examples you brought up as some of the goblins not being uniformly evil.
I think this was a premise of the movie. The fairy lands don't understand the threat, they think evil will get tired and go home after a token scrap, because that's what the mutants have always done.
Towards the end we see a bunch of the remnant elf army, like some sort of partisan Polish Home Army dudes. And they sure have a mix of guns with them. And a wizard with a luger is how we have kept portraying wizards in our game ever since.
This was such an odd movie the first time I saw it. We were expecting it to build to this big magical face-off between the brothers. Suddenly the gnome pulls out the luger, and it's like WTF, didn't see that coming. Don't know if a film like that would get as broad of an audience today with all the propaganda symbols.
Wizard with a luger is how we have played wizards ever since.
yeah people pretend that the word holocaust can only mean one thing. Its rather odd. Not to mention the mythology behind it. How long into the future will we have to go to be honest about it?
Thankfully, organizations like the Committee for Open Debate On the 'Hollow Cost' started diligently gathering and publishing the facts in the 80s.
Just last year, they published The 'Hollow Cost' Encyclopedia Uncensored and unconstrained.
I think recent events are making it more and more acceptable to be honest about it
Yeah, I figured the Holocaust deniers would show up 🙄 Never fails.
"Yeah, I figured people who tell the truth would show up, 😭 Never Fails."
I enjoyed it on first watch, but Bakshi's politics and certain comments he made turned me off over time.
I’m seeing happy tree friends
*Which White Russians?*
The animation is very unique, except the troll- and gnome-like characters are familiar, including the garish colors.
This is kinda propaganda too though. Illusion vs Illusion. Thank the third party In this war via communism
"Sorcerer".
Hmmm...you sound like a right wing pseudo intellectual.
1980, end of year at school, we assembled in the main hall at school for an end of year film double bill, Born Free, about lions, conversation etc. and this film, a 12 year old me considered this the most self indulgent jism of a Nazi/Tolkien obsessed early teen could come up with, 6th form Fanw*ank if you will. And I had read some of the promo stuff in the UK edition of Heavy Metal a friend of my Mum had laying about at their place and was intrigued. All in all, a great disappointment. I have considered it the both the worst movie I had ever watched and the most squandered opportunity of great concept art and an overlong shaggy dog story! years later I see more in it now but that initial impression still stands if a bit wobbly on its feet and needing a cane.
Ralph Bashki is one of those filmmakers that pretentious types watch to make themselves feel superior to others. They'll just tell you that you "don't get it."
The way you say "communist.... working on commission" like you're pointing out sone kind of devaststing irony is... not smart.
Strange that you omit that Bakshi was born in Haifa, Israel, or as it was known at the time, British Mandate Palestine....
why would he ever need to include that
@@TrafficPartyHatTest Because, unless you have been living under a rock these last ten years or, are yourself a hater of Jews; we Jews have seen a HUGE resurgence of antisemitism the world over, including in the free-est and most tolerant country in the world, the USA.
Additionally, we Jews, while miniscule in number are responsible for the majority of accomplishments, awards and advancements in the field of entertainment, in front of the camera and behind it.
I could go on and on, of course...
@@TrafficPartyHatTestSome people think there’s a “secret” reason people don’t admit there’s a Jewish conspiracy behind everything. We usually ignore these people and their dumbass cause.
@@s.marcus3669 Oh yeah he was born there before you people ruined it
@@cyberninjazero5659 Your username should read: "Cyberninjaknowszero", because "zero" is what you know of history. Suggest you get over to Prager University and unscrew your head out of your ass, one five-minute video at a time....