Fire and Ice (via Hoopla Video)

Fire and Ice
by Randy Norton, Ralph Bakshi, Frank Frazetta [Hoopla Movie]

While I was having a discussion about animation styles and methods with someone, they gave this movie as an example of rotoscoping and showed me the first few minutes so I could see what they were talking about. This method of animation is when they film live people acting out the film then use that to create the animation. The result is very real looking human movements and features. It was odd at first because animation does not usually look real at all, even for things like people and animals that are real, so at first it looks kind of awkward, but got less so the more I watched. I didn’t feel like turning it off after the first 10 minutes, which was the intent, and ended up watching the whole thing. The plot is there that is a king with a son and a daughter in the kingdom of fire, and an evil ruler and his mother in the kingdom of ice. Hence the title – Fire and Ice.

The kingdom of ice is on a glacier and is invading lands here there and everywhere. They reach the kingdom of fire and ask the king to surrender; when he says no, the ice minions kidnap the princess. She’s not exactly a damsel in distress however because she escapes her captors and in the process meets two other people set on bringing down the ice kingdom. One, a solider who’s band of brothers were killed in battle against the ice kingdom and the other a mysterious Batman / Conan type character with his own reasons, which are more implied than laid out for us (even after the whole movie is over it’s unclear, but hinted at). It’s set in a fantasy world, if that was not yet obvious, so in addition to the humans there are various beasts and winged dinosaur looking creatures they get to ride on. It’s definitely not a movie for everyone and it’s not a kid’s movie either. Most of the characters don’t don much in the way of clothes, there is blood, murder and battle; this makes it sound like Game of Thrones (Song of Fire and Ice), but they are not related. This predates even the Game of Thrones books from 1996, as this movie came out in 1983. At any rate, if you want to see it, you’ll need to do so on Hoopla, either streaming it or downloading it on PC or mobile device.

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official Fire & Ice page on Ralph Bakshi’s web site ]

 

Recommended by Kristen A.
Gere Branch Library

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