Written by: Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins, Arty Papageorgiou
Starring: Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Miranda Otto
Rating: [3/5]
When you love a world so much, any excuse to re-enter it will have you hooked. It makes sense why Hollywood loves the bankability of sequels and reboots, as the built-in audience will forever want more when given to them. It comes as no surprise The Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim would drive that interest from me, and while the narrative does not necessarily bring anything necessarily revelatory, it does just enough to warrant checking it out through its animation and deepening of lore.
Perfectly content to never wed, Héra (Gaia Wise) watches as her father, Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), receives an offer to wed her to her childhood friend, Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), from his father, Freca (Shaun Dooley). When the rejection leads to blows and the death of Freca, Wulf vows vengeance as years later he assembles an army seeking to forcefully take over the kingdom of Rohan.
My love for The Lord of the Rings and everything within Middle Earth knows no bounds, as the rich tapestry J. R. R. Tolkien crafted and left behind for us to explore contains such a wide array of rich characters and a long history. It, therefore, makes sense that it presents plenty of material to mine from and create an offshoot film such as this one that focuses on a particular moment in the vast history of this world. In this instance, we return to Rohan, but not with Eowyn at the center but 200 years prior to Bilbo’s discovery of the ring, when Helm Hammerhand ruled and had to contend with a different foe than what the live-action films presented. In this film, bouts of betrayal, autonomy, lineage, and violence take center stage.
The area in which this film does not necessarily leave an impression is the story beats it follows. The source material for this production stems from just a couple of pages of lore Tolkien wrote about this point of history in Rohan. The writers took the material and generously spread it out into a film that is running over two hours, and while it had some intriguing characters into the fold, it does not necessarily present anything innovative. From the first scene to the last, this film telegraphs every move it will make through its story, and it does not necessarily bring anything new. It mostly presents a familiar type of story but interjects some characters and names we know from Middle Earth. That alone cannot carry this film to success, but the medium it utilizes sure can.
Moving from live-action to animation, The War of the Rohirrim opts for an anime style in its presentation of the features of these characters and the impending violence that sits on the horizon. It allows for the fantastical elements of this world to come alive in a way where replicating it in live-action would balloon the budget immensely. Utilizing animation allows the imagination to run free, and for the most part, much of this film looks amazing. By capturing the beautiful landscape of Rohan and the other locales these characters travel to, it allows the animators to further engross the audience into this world with no limitations that utilizing actors would make inevitable. Everything that runs the risk of looking silly, such as the armor, simply just looks better and more at-home in the animated medium, which only further highlights why animation should continue to remain an option for telling fantasy tales if the creators have the desired effect of not inhibiting the grand vision of its magical components.
While certainly nowhere near the original trilogy with regard to quality, The War of the Rohirrim brings just enough through its animation to remain something worth checking out. It tells a story with all of the tropes one can expect from a female lead who does not want marriage out of political gain for her father and suitors who want the union, or they will threaten upheaval. However, anyone who enjoys Tolkien’s work can at least appreciate the care taken by the creatives behind this film to further expand the history of Rohan and illustrate the tales of the names referenced throughout the text and the live-action films.
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