The Lord of the Rings: the War of Rohirrim

Recap
Héra must save her people besieged by an old friend now turned treacherous enemy.
Spoiler Level: Mild
Review
Éowyn (Miranda Otto) narrates the story taking place 183 years before the War of the Ring and tells of Héra (Gaia Wise), the daughter of King Helm and a would be shieldmaiden. Héra is a wild free spirit and not as ladylike as her father, King Helm (Brian Cox) would like. She is an expert horseback rider, smart, witty and can fight well with swords, shield and bow. Freca, a Dunlending lord, comes to the King, concerned that Héra is being married off to a lord of Gondor and offers his son, Wulf’s (Luke Pasqualino) hand instead. But Helm sees this ruse as a way to have access to the throne and to usurp his power. Wulf and Héra were childhood friends and Wulf wanted to marry her, but Héra is uninterested in marrying anyone and declines. When a tragedy befalls Freca causing Wulf to be banished, he vows revenge and then disappears for years. He returns as the Lord of the Dunlendings, a host of hill-tribes. The king is warned of his treachery by Héra and Fréaláf, her cousin, but the King sees this as cowardice and banishes Fréaláf as well. Helm’s pride is his downfall and through nefarious means, Wulf forces the evacuation of the King’s hometown of Edoras to the Dunharrow fortress where the wounded Helm falls into a coma and Héra is forced to lead in the absence of her brothers and father. The harsh winter comes and Wulf, hell bent on getting his revenge, holds the keep in siege. With food and supplies running low, it is only through Héra’s cunning and bravery that she save the people of Rohan.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a 2024 anime style film based on the characters created by J.R.R. Tolkien and acts as a prequel of sorts to his Lord of the Rings books. The film was directed by Kenji Kamiyama and written by Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins, and Arty Papageorgiou. It is an expansion of the Peter Jackson film franchise which started with the Lord of the Rings film trilogy and several people who were involved in those productions returned for this animated film, including using Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh as sounding boards for ideas as well as executive producers. Composer, Stephen Gallagher, who was the music editor for Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, composed the score. The creative director of special effects company W?t? Workshop, Richard Taylor, returns after having worked on Jackson’s film trilogy to work on The War of the Rohirrim, along with illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe. They used a visual style based on that of Jackson’s films rather than the style of the previous animated Lord of the Rings films. The film was released in theatres on December 13, 2024 and pulled less than positive reviews with the Rotten Tomatoes website consensus reading, “This animated deep cut from The Lord of the Rings mythos has plenty of spectacle, but its clichéd characters and uneven animation resemble middle of the road more than they do Middle Earth.”
I love Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies so I was excited to see this animated film but was disappointed that it is mainly an all-human story, with very Middle Earth races being included. What I love about the world created by Tolkien is the magic that seems to permeate Middle Earth, and that is strikingly missing from this movie. There are some good action sequences and for the most part the animation is well done, if you are an anime fan, the characters are well cast with some excellent performances, but in general, the story is very flat and uninteresting in comparison to other Middle Earth tales. I did like that the hero was female considering the lack of strong female characters in the other franchise films and found Héra to be likeable but clichéd with nothing really setting her apart from the other strong feminine heroes we get in just about every movie now. I also found the entire film to be predictable with no real intellectual challenge. Overall, it was an okay film but nothing I am going to go around telling people to watch. It wasn’t unenjoyable or painful to watch, it just wasn’t amazing either and considering all of the stories that they could have expanded from the source material, I am not sure this was the best one to do.
Final Thoughts
Quite literally lacking the magic of the other films in which this is based.
The New Movie of the Week: The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
- Writing - 7/107/10
- Storyline - 6/106/10
- Acting - 8/108/10
- Music - 9/109/10
- Production - 8/108/10