The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024) Review
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)
Director: Kenji Kamiyama
Screenwriters: Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins, Arty Papageorgiou, Philippa Boyens
Starring: Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Miranda Otto, Lorraine Ashbourne, Yazdan Qafouri, Benjamin Wainwright, Laurence Ubong Williams, Shaun Dooley, Michael Wildman
“Lord of the Rings” fans haven’t exactly been starved for content in recent years. We may now be two decades removed from Peter Jackson’s unimpeachable film trilogy, but since then appetites have been sated by trilogy of Hobbit films from the same creative team and the epic prequel streaming series ‘The Rings of Power’, which has meant many an extended stay in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. Now comes The War of the Rohirrim, an anime telling of the history of the horse lords of Rohan who were so prominently featured in The Two Towers. Returning from the LOTR Trilogy, Peter Jackson is an executive producer, Philippa Boyens has a credit as a co-writer of the story, and the designs of creatures, weapons and armour are consistent with those created by Weta Workshop, but this is very much the brainchild of director Kenji Kamiyama (‘Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex’) who is tasked with providing a new angle on this familiar world.
As recounted by Eowyn (Miranda Otto reprising her role from the Jackson films), 200 years before the War of the Ring, the land of Rohan experienced another costly conflict. After a tragedy at a meeting of his lords, a civil war breaks out between those loyal to King Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox) and the vastly more numerous forces of the ambitious, vengeance-hungry Wulf (Luca Pasqualino). With their numbers and leaders dwindling, it soon falls to Helm’s only daughter Hera (Gaia Wise) to mount a desperate last stand at the stronghold of the Hornburg.
Those expecting similar epic scale battles to The Two Towers or The Return of the King may be disappointed by their relative lack here. Instead, we are given a series of creative smaller skirmishes and a big finale at a very familiar location. Anime is particularly well-suited for portraying heightened one-on-one fights, with the camera whirling and the combatants deftly sweeping their weapons and acrobatically flipping over each other, so it’s no surprise that the duels between characters with very personal grievances are the most engaging of the action scenes.
The larger battles that we are given – one between the Rohan’s horsemen and towering elephantine Mumakhil that takes place at night and is atmospherically lit by torchlight, and another that is essentially a re-staging of the final battle in The Two Towers (only with about one tenth as many combatants) – have some cool moments but lack momentum and a distinct identity of their own.
From the opening scene of Hera riding out to feed a giant eagle a ridiculous ‘Flintstones’-looking leg of meat on a mountaintop, we understand that the new perspective being explored is: what does it mean to be a headstrong woman in this time and place? Tolkien’s work, being a product of its time and inspired heavily by the history and mythology of largely patriarchal societies, was always a little lacking in interesting female characters, though Galadriel was undeniably one of the most powerful figures in Middle-Earth and Eowyn was able to destroy Sauron’s deadliest servant, the Witch King, precisely because of her gender. Hera is very much in the Eowyn mold, expected to perform her duties as part of the royal family but passed over in favour of her two brothers when it comes to actually ruling and fighting. The idea of shield maidens, warrior women as were found in real-world European cultures such as the Vikings and mythologised across the continent, is a fascinating one to dig into in a fantasy context. It brings to mind Eowyn’s line from The Two Towers, “The women of this country learned long ago, those without swords can still die upon them,” and it’s exciting to see Hera get to self-actualise and become the defender of her nation and symbol of the strength of all its people no matter their gender. Plus, Hera’s middle-aged handmaiden Olwyn probably gets the most action of anyone in the film, besting many men half her age in defence of her lady, and talking almost wistfully about fighting by Helm’s side in her younger days.
Unlike The Hobbit and ‘The Rings of Power’, there are no real opportunities to discover any new lands or people of Middle-Earth in this particular story – we visit the Rohan capital Edoras, the wizard Saruman’s soon-to-be stronghold of Isengard, and the impregnable fortress of Helm’s Deep, and all look exactly the same as they did in The Two Towers, only rendered in Japanese-style animation. The film does have a bad case of prequel-itis in that it’s much less successful when clumsily making links to the other films through repeated dialogue or laboured character setup. When it’s allowed to be its own thing, a Middle-Earth warrior princess adventure, it is far more compelling.
The comparisons with Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1997) are unavoidable, but if you’re going to borrow from another work to inspire your kick-ass fantasy female warrior, you might as well go for the very best. Gaia Wise imbues her character with real steel and is more than a match for her formidable father embodied by a larger-than-life Brian Cox.
When the film is allowed to go in for the full exaggerated anime spectacle in its action instead of just recreating imagery from The Lord of the Rings (and by doing so justifying the new medium it is being told in) it really sings. Notable highlights include a battle between two massive creatures you might not expect to ever encounter each other in a forest lagoon, Helm Hammerhand earning his nickname and showing both monsters and men just how deadly he can be when he flies into a berserker rage during a blizzard, and some exiting stuff with ridiculously (even by Lord of the Rings standards) giant eagles.
As pleasing as it is for The Lord of the Rings fans to return to this world and be told a forgotten story by a familiar character, and for Howard Shore’s iconic theme music for Rohan to be matched to images one last time, even the most dedicated Tolkienite might find themselves a little unengaged. The animation, voice performances and sound design are all extremely high quality, and you can see what they were aiming for, but because you feel one step removed from the journey of these characters and too much of this has been seen before in live-action, The War of the Rohirrim feels less than essential.
Score: 14/24
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