Whatever else you might say about it, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim was a bold idea. Ten years after the last of the Hobbit movies, the Tolkien franchise would return to the big screen not in some mass budget remake or direct prequel, but in an original story based in the lore of one of the human kingdoms of the mythos done as a standalone movie produced not in live-action but as an anime. It’s a weird direction to take the franchise, especially in light of the relative safety of Amazon’s The Rings of Power sticking close to a lot of the familiar subjects and themes. A story that has nothing to do with hobbits or elves, wizards or the dark lord or rings of any kind. Indeed it could be any generic fantasy movie, simply with a Lord of the Rings coat of paint applied.
Unfortunately, The War of the Rohirrim is just that: any generic fantasy movie, simply with a Lord of the Rings coat of paint applied. It is set some two hundred years before the War of the Ring during the reign of Helm Hammerhand in Rohan -the formidable king who would give his name to the fortress of Helm’s Deep. The accidental death of a vassal lord and the desperate desire of his son to marry Rohan’s princess Hera plunges the kingdom into a civil war that the wild and courageous Hera is ultimately forced to fight herself as a beacon of Rohan.
The film loosely derives from a footnote of Rohan's history, though it is clear the film's writers don't have the reverence for it of Tolkien purists (nor generally, should they). The narrative chosen to pursue is a curious reflection of the changing winds in the fantasy genre since that initial trilogy two decades ago -with an absence of most of the mystical elements and otherworldly creatures, War of the Rohirrim feels much more like a storyline out of Game of Thrones than the classical folklore and mythology that Tolkien's universe has more often evoked. Though bits of it are imbued with a Beowulf-style grandiosity, most of the movie is entrenched in a kind of hard grittiness that has the feel of something more realistic. This isn't inherently a bad approach, and indeed Peter Jackson's movies certainly adapted some elements of the text in a similarly grounded and more accessible way, but the writers -none of whom have worked on a Tolkien project before- leave most of the characters as mere archetypes.
And not simply medieval fantasy archetypes, but in the format that this movie has taken, they are plainly anime archetypes as well. Though not as versed as others, even I can recognize the personalities of and dynamic between Hera and Wulf, the chief antagonist, as typical of anime tropes. Hera is designed to be the consummately just warrior princess, with a cliché aversion to the notion of political marriage, a self-taught finesse as a combatant greater than anyone around her, and a yearning desire for adventure. She is drawn obviously as an antecedent character to Eowyn, and indeed Miranda Otto reprises her role as the story's narrator. But unlike even Eowyn, none of these traits are fleshed out by personality or a depth of motivation -we're asked to merely infer the breadth of her character. Wulf is more deliberately defined, a human villain unlike any this franchise has had, driven by pure rage.
He gets quite far on it, but it cannot be satiated, especially his unbending desire to marry Hera -a childhood crush. But his characterization eventually becomes tiresome, especially the more it shields the genuine cracks in "heroic" Rohan's armour. Its ambassador, King Helm, is an unstoppable behemoth, the most explicitly mythic figure who runs counter to the movie's plays toward modest authenticity -capable of every physical feat up to and including punching through goblin monsters. He is not so noble a figure as reputation makes out, largely depicted as brutish and stubborn; and though this makes the voice of Brian Cox a perfect fit, it doesn't make the argument for the innate righteousness of the Rohirrim that is so often evoked.
Rohan suffers throughout this movie, both in scenes reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings and acts taken further -the principal city of Edoras being torched to the ground for instance. And while I do appreciate that the story sticks to this corner of Middle-Earth -there are no jaunts into Gondor or Mordor, Rivendell or the Shire- it can't help itself when it comes to repeating certain beats from the movies everybody loves. There are a lot of parallels between the story told here and Rohan's story in The Two Towers -including a siege on the kingdom that forces a retreat to the Hornburg and the early casting out of a dedicated loyalist destined to return and save the day at the eleventh hour. In fact, the movie’s climax is brazenly similar.
The movie is directed by Kenji Kamiyama, best known for directing installments in the Ghost in the Shell franchise. Having also worked on Star Wars: Visions and Blade Runner: Black Lotus, this isn’t his first time making an anime explicitly designed for an American audience. There is something a little weird though in seeing iconography so associated with a live-action film series rendered in this kind of animation. When it is getting away from the familiar sets it can look quite good however, if not to the calibre of anime movies ironically partially inspired by Lord of the Rings like Princess Mononoke or Children Who Chase Lost Voices. The trademarks of anime action are all over the movie, and in several instances, not particularly well done. A couple sequences are inarticulate, and the broader violence, though aiming to be more thematically effective, is often unintentionally funny. It’s difficult to be moved by a character we barely know being shot through the neck by an arrow while in the middle of a badly read exultation of premature victory. There are a handful of these moments through the movie. And at times, Kamiyama’s aesthetics, which do draw from very conventional modes of anime action, run up against the context and style set by the source. Hera’s outfit through much of the movie for example, with its tight fit and elaborate versatility, looks less like something derived from old Saxon folklore and more like one of those battle suits off of Attack on Titan.
Though it steers clear for the most part, the movie can’t help a few Lord of the Rings easter eggs -the much anticipated posthumous Christopher Lee cameo is merely a single line however. But they don’t intrude at any point on the movie’s own narrative, which in spite of everything, does have a few upsides. Like the cogent aspect of Wulf’s attitude, who from early on is emphasized as the architect of his own downfall -there being many points where he could have secured his victory and that for his people, but baser impulses always take over. Maybe there’s a little bit of hope then in how familiar his character seems. And while the Game of Thrones stuff can be at times off-putting, the more serious take on Middle-Earth politics is distinguishing, and especially in that early sequence at Edoras, pairs well enough with the more highfalutin nature of Tolkien’s history.
The War of the Rohirrim is probably a new record for a Tolkien movie in terms of the most expansion from the smallest source -in this case a few sentences from the Lord of the Rings appendices. But in that brevity there is so much that can be filled in, which is why it is disappointing the movie doesn’t take more risks or find a stronger way to tell its story. It feels often stifled by its Tolkien connections, a part of me wonders if Kamiyama would have rather just made his own fantasy anime -especially in those places his style clearly rubs adversely against the western studio’s. This style and format was a bold venture that I do somewhat respect, but I wish that the movie could have really lived up to the promise it set.
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