The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim – Film Review
It’s been 10 years since J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy stories were last brought to life on the big screen so it’s time to return to Middle-earth with the anime film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
The film is set 183 years before the events in Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings trilogy and is presented like a legend passed down through generations, narrated by Éowyn (voiced by Miranda Otto, reprising her role from the franchise). The animation follows Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), the legendary King of Rohan, and his daughter Héra (Gaia Wise) after they and their people come under attack from Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), a Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father. Their war comes to a head outside the mountainside fortress that will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep.
I must put my hands up and admit that I am not well-versed in the mythology and geography of Tolkein’s world. I have seen all of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films once and have read none of the books so I would say I have a casual passing knowledge. That will be enough to get you through this anime – I understood the most obvious references and nods to the trilogy (and some are very obvious) but I’m sure others went straight over my head.
The story of Helm is mentioned in an appendix about the history of Rohan’s rulers in The Return of the King, the third novel in The Lord of the Rings series. The fact that they turned such a nugget of a story into a full film really shows how far the studio is going to keep the rights to Tolkien’s world and how greatly they had to stretch out the narrative to make it feature-length.
I really struggled to engage with The War of the Rohirrim. It has some great action scenes at the beginning and the end but there’s a lot in between that fails to inspire excitement. This is down to a combination of factors – the film is far too long (134 minutes), the pacing is too slow in the middle and the screenplay is not very well written. Also, our protagonist is a bland action heroine and Wise didn’t inject enough personality into her voice acting.
But there are some positives, of course. The Japanese animation style makes it visually interesting and sets it apart from its predecessors, Cox’s booming voice is perfect for Helm, and it’s more violent than I expected (it’s a 12A), with a truly ruthless villain in Wulf. Also, Lord of the Rings fans will probably dig all the ways it connects to that story.
It’ll be interesting to see what diehard fans make of this because as a casual watcher, I thought it was simply fine.
In cinemas from Friday 13th December
Rating: 3 out of 5.
