Lord of the Rings, The: The War of the Rohirrim (United States/Japan, 2024)

Considering the success of Peter Jackson’s live-action The Lord of the Rings trilogy and, to a lesser extent, his Hobbit movies, it may be difficult to remember that, during the 1970s and 1980s, the medium used to bring Middle Earth to the masses was animation. The first three Tolkien-inspired adaptations were all animated – two Rankin-Bass feature-length made-for-TV cartoons and Ralph Bakshi’s more ambitious theatrical The Lord of the Rings. So, in a sense, by returning to animation for the new prequel/spin-off, The War of the Rohirrim, the Peter Jackson faction of Middle Earth (as opposed to the Amazon faction) is going back to its roots. Although visually more impressive than even Bakshi’s blend of traditional animation and rotoscoping, The War of the Rohirrim suffers from some stylistic hiccups and the straightforward storyline limits the “epic-ness” of the production. Still, as a stand-alone adventure story, this is an engaging episode and a solid addition to a still-limited cinematic universe.

For any filmmaker willing to delve deeply into the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, there’s no shortage of material for additional stories (some of this was used by Jackson to enhance and extend The Hobbit – a decision that proved problematic, at best). The basic skeleton of The War of the Rohirrim can be found there (in Appendix A, for anyone who wants to look) but the story and screenplay are largely the invention of LOTR co-scribe Phillipa Boyens and screenwriters Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins (Boyens’ daughter), and Arty Papageorgiou (with Jackson and his wife, Fran Walsh, being cited as Executive Producers). Tolkien’s involvement? Limited, to say the least – he gets a “based on characters created by” credit. There are a few threads that loosely tie this to The Lord of the Rings, but they feel more like Easter Eggs than necessary components.

The decision was made to present the story from the point-of-view of Helm’s daughter (voiced by Gaia Wise, Emma Thompson and Greg Wise’s offspring). In the book, she merits only a brief mention and doesn’t have a name, but the filmmakers decided to call her Hera. She is The War of the Rohirrim’s hero, although care was taken to avoid many of the warrior princess tropes. Director Kenji Kamiyama has said that her characteristics were inspired by the young female protagonists in Hayao Miyazaki’s films. It’s an apt description; I found myself often thinking of the likes of Princesses Nausicaa and Mononoke while watching this tale unfold. Hera’s father, Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), on the other hand, is very much in keeping with the Jackson-Tolkien tradition of strong king being blinded by stubbornness and an innate belief in their own infallibility – think another king of Rohan, Thoeden (played in The Two Towers and The Return of the King by the late Bernard Hill). The main villain, Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), could have been more of a tragic figure had the film decided to lean in that direction but The War of the Rohirrim instead opts to avoid too many shades of gray. His childhood friendship with Hera is mentioned (and even shown briefly in flashbacks) but becomes little more than an afterthought.

The story’s arc focuses on Wulf’s plan of revenge against Helm, who accidentally kills his father, an ambitious and belligerent warlord named Freca (Shaun Dooley). Wulf gathers together an army of Dunlendings and attacks the Rohirrim, intending to depose (and decapitate) Helm and take the throne for himself. Helm underestimates the threat and, after losing Edoras to the invaders, he is forced to retreat to the fortress that would become known as Helm’s Deep (and which was featured prominently in The Two Towers).

The variable quality of the animation is perhaps due to the rapidity with which the project was assembled. Even a factory like Disney typically takes at least four years to put together a feature-length animated project and independent filmmakers, like Miyazaki, can take as long as six or seven years. The War of the Rohirrim was completed in less than three. Kamiyama, who has a solid background in anime (having begun his career doing background work for Miyazaki), mixes photorealistic backgrounds with hand-drawn characters. Although he uses motion-captured performances by live actors as a guide for the 2-D images, he doesn’t rotoscope. The result is mostly effective but there are times when it can be disconcerting with the differences between the background and characters being at odds. This is evident from the first scene, where a breathtaking mountainscape is interrupted by a hand-drawn eagle swooping into the foreground.

The clear intention of the filmmakers is for The War of the Rohirrim to be canonical insofar as Jackson’s Middle Earth tales are concerned. Narration is provided by Miranda Otto, reprising her role as Eowyn from The Two Towers and The Return of the King (although she is only heard, not seen). Several places and structures – Edoras, Helm’s Deep, and Isengard – use the same designs employed by Jackson in the LOTR trilogy and composer Stephen Gallagher incorporates themes from Howard Shore’s music into his score. (I would have preferred that he use even more since his own material is somewhat generic.)

If The War of the Rohirrim was released as a fantasy-adventure unrelated to Tolkien’s works, it would not have merited particular attention. It’s a well-made, high-quality endeavor but there’s nothing remarkable about the overall production. It offers strong storytelling but character identification is limited and the emotional investment is surprisingly shallow. I can imagine a live-action version of this same tale that would have been stronger and more engaging. As to whether animation is a viable path forward for additional stories set in Middle Earth, the jury remains out. The War of the Rohirrim feels more like an experiment than a trailblazing film. It’s fine for what it is – bringing to life three pages from an appendix – but ultimately falls into the “entertaining-but-unnecessary” category. Anime and LOTR die-hards will enjoy it. Others, maybe not so much.

Lord of the Rings, The: The War of the Rohirrim (United States/Japan, 2024)