The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
The ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien is resurrected for an anime epic that takes its time in finding its dramatic footing.
Everybody’s Tolkien: Héra takes charge
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
Almost two hundred years prior to the misadventures of Frodo Baggins and his friends, the kingdom of Rohan in Middle-earth was ruled by Helm Hammerhand, a powerful king with two sons and one daughter. The girl, whose story this is, was a headstrong and red-headed princess, who could ride a horse even before she could walk. Now she is the fastest rider in all of Rohan. Her name is Héra and when a rival for the throne, Lord Freca, demands that she marry his son Wulf, her childhood playmate, a fight breaks out between Freca and Hammerhand. But in spite of his advancing years, the king is strong and he kills Freca with a single blow to the head. Wulf now vows revenge and vanishes from the kingdom; temporarily…
Rushed into production before New Line Cinema lost the film rights to the Tolkien stable, The War of the Rohirrim boasts a story of Shakespearean power and sweep (the Scottish play often leaps to mind). The work of four scriptwriters, the film draws its characters from the appendices that Tolkien wrote for The Lord of the Rings, so it’s certainly loyal in spirit to the LOTR model. The one major change is the presence of an uncharacteristically strong female protagonist, along the lines of the equally red-headed Merida from Pixar’s Brave and Elodie from the Netflix fantasy Damsel. However, compared to the visual aesthetic of the Ring trilogy and the Hobbit films, the anime here does feel a little raw at first and its execution seems clunky in comparison.
Nevertheless, a powerful soundtrack and Stephen Gallagher’s persuasive, unremitting music help to bolster the action in the second act. And with the characters of Héra (voiced by Gaia Wise, daughter of Emma Thompson), her father Helm (Brian Cox doing Brian Blessed) and Wulf (Luke Pasqualino) well established, the story does gather a degree of dramatic traction. It should also be noted that Lorraine Ashbourne delivers good value as Héra’s Aunt Olwyn, worth noting as the actress is married to Andy Serkis, no stranger to the LOTR franchise. And any misgivings one might have about the rudimentary nature of the anime at the start, the pictorial power of the film certainly comes into its own in the third act. Perhaps diehard fans of anime coupled with any Tolkien completists out there might provide an audience for The War of the Rohirrim, but it is still likely to be an uphill struggle.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Voices of Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Laurence Ubong Williams, Lorraine Ashbourne, Miranda Otto, Shaun Dooley, Benjamin Wainwright, Yazdan Qafouri, Michael Wildman, Janine Duvitski, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Christopher Lee.
Dir Kenji Kamiyama, Pro Philippa Boyens, Jason DeMarco and Joseph Chou, Ex Pro Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Toby Emmerich, Screenplay Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou, from a story by Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews and Philippa Boyens, Ed Tsuyoshi Sadamatsu, Music Stephen Gallagher, Sound David Farmer, Tolkien consultant Janet Brennan Croft.
New Line Cinema/Warner Bros. Animation/Sola Entertainment/WingNut Films/Domain Entertainment-Warner Bros.
134 mins. USA/Japan/New Zealand. 2024. UK and US Rel: 13 December 2024. Cert. 12A.
