THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Warner Bros. Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 12, 2024

For a fictional place created by one person, Middle-earth certainly has a lot of history—so much so that The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has little to do with J.R.R. Tolkien's most famous tale in his invented realm. This one is set more than 200 years before the events involving a powerful ring, a fellowship of the world's various races, and a long journey to a volcano. Only a few characters from that story appear, either in person or by way of narration, or are mentioned in director Kenji Kamiyama's animated fantasy, which stands mostly on its own as an entertaining appendix of sorts.

Those who know Tolkien's work know he loved his appendices, and the bones of this screenplay (written by the team of Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins, and Arty Papageorgiou) come from some part or parts of that supplementary material. In it, we see a bit more of the history, culture, and politics of Rohan, that land among some of the plains of Middle-earth and inhabited by humans who have an affinity for horses.

The tale itself brings us to some familiar and familiar-looking places, since the film was made with the vision of Peter Jackson's cinematic interpretation of Middle-earth as the basis for its locales, and gives us characters who fit a certain mold of those who will chronologically come after them. It feels comfortable, in other words, but transferring Tolkien's world, as envisioned through Jackson's films, to animation breathes some new life into everything.

Kamiyama, who hails from Japan and has spent decades in the anime industry, brings this story and world into that particular style of animation, too. The characters here look and feel as if they belong to a fantasy realm. Take Rohan's current king Helm Hammerhand (voice of Brian Cox), who's a hulking mass of muscle and bravado, or his only daughter Hèra (voice of Gaia Wise), the tale's protagonist and an ethereal combination of beauty, physical strength, and resilience of character. The previous films in this franchise proved that real actors could convincingly embody the traits of Tolkien's heroes and villains, but the style of animation in Kamiyama's film allows these figures to be larger-than-life in the way of myth or epic poetry.

It's tough to imagine us buying one character's final stand in this tale, for example, if it involved a flesh-and-blood person, but when that character here battles foe after foe against the massive gates of a fortress and in a raging blizzard until our hero is frozen in place in a pose of defiance, we accept it. The style doesn't just create a gorgeous world to observe. It solidifies a certain tone and approach to storytelling that allows mythic gestures, fantastical deeds, formally bold dialogue, and grandly horrific creatures to exist as the norm.

This story does require that. It revolves around Hèra's place in Rohan, as the sole daughter of the king. She is expected to become part of a politically convenient marriage but wants to be free to defend her home like her two brothers (It's appropriate that the story is narrated by Miranda Otto in character, presumably, as Éowyn, a future woman of Rohan whose own experience somewhat mirrors that of our main character). The brothers are Haleth (voice of Benjamin Wainwright) and Hama (Yazdan Qafouri), by the way, whose own duties are to continue the line and reign of their father, which come under threat pretty quickly into the plot.

A potential usurper appears in Edoras, Rohan's capital city on a mound, and after unintentionally killing the rebel with a single punch, the dead man's son Wulf (voice of Luke Pasqualino) vows vengeance against Helm and his entire family. As Wulf's childhood friend, Hèra wants to find the banished villain and attempt to find a peaceful solution, but Wulf raises an army of Wildmen to raze Rohan and bring Helm to his lowest, before killing the king and taking his crown.

The story may be fairly barebones. It's amplified, however, by these big personalities and, of course, the exceptional work of Kamiyama and his artists in using both hand-drawn animation, with flashes of the computer variety in some of the more complex moments of movement and action, to re-create Middle-earth and bring life to its assorted inhabitants.

Some of this is stunning in both its significant sights, such as the painted versions of Edoras and a keep that has not yet earned its more famous name, and its subtle ones, such as the quality of light at sunset as Hèra climbs a mountain to find a potential ally in a cavern. There are also some noteworthy battles here, including a charge on the plains in the shadows of early morning and the implementation of a massive siege tower, and fights with great beasts, such multiple enormous elephants, a troll, and an octopus so large that the top of its head looks like an island sitting in the water.

Much of the narrative of The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is undeniably familiar and routine, beyond the tales of Middle-earth we've already seen on screen. That's almost irrelevant, though, when that story is so boldly told in visual and tonal ways. With this style and medium, Kamiyama makes Middle-earth a place of real myth, and one can hope other filmmakers might be inspired to bring similar form to other such stories within that expanse of myth.

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