It’s hard to say how much genuine excitement there is for new Lord of the Rings properties. As the lukewarm reception to Amazon’s billion-dollar, multi-series exploration of Middle Earth’s second age suggests, it’s difficult to forge new storytelling paths while capturing the spirit of Peter Jackson and Co.’s landmark trilogy. Rival studio Warner Bros. has the upper-hand on Amazon when it comes to exploiting Tolkien’s writing. They hold adaptation rights to his Third Age stories, the setting of Jackson’s original trilogy; and a new film, Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, hopes to capture some of its magic.
On paper, this new film, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, known best for the TV series Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, is a clever move. It returns to the nostalgic glow of the most famous and recognizable period of Middle Earth while unearthing untold stories, but it hopes to break new ground through animation. Viewers might be right to cringe at that prospect given animation’s history with Tolkien adaptations. But while Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation of Tolkien’s books wasn’t well-received in 1978, its reputation has improved in the years since, and it’s hard to deny that the realism-bending qualities of the animation have potential.
Whatever innovation was sought out through animation, however, clashes inelegantly against a nostalgic imperative being squeezed out, drop by miserable drop, in David Zaslav’s creatively bankrupt hands. The stench of corporate timidity clings to every beautifully rendered but largely riskless frame, all of which pay fealty to Jackson’s 25-year-old vision instead of its director’s own. And there is yet more patronage to what came before: Howard Shore’s famous theme gently guides us from above the clouds into the realm of Rohan, while Miranda Otto as Éowyn, gamely but awkwardly attempting a gravelly impression of Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, narrates the proceedings.
The plot concerns the as-yet untold story of Héra, daughter of Helm Hammerhand, King of Rohan, during a period of political infighting, familial vengeance, and civil war, “almost 200 years before the Ring ever came to Bilbo Baggins,” according to Eowyn. When a politically motivated marriage proposal goes wrong, Helm Hammerhand accidentally kills Lord Freca of Dunland, leader of a region in the Kingdom of Rohan; his son, Wulf, a childhood friend of Hera’s, vows vengeance after he’s exiled in the aftermath. Wulf gathers his army and launches an attack on the stubborn King Helm, who refuses to back down despite his disadvantages in fighting power. Instead of retreating to the Hornburg, Rohan’s longtime stronghold, the King assembles a doomed army to fight in the open, merely delaying their inevitable retreat.
The War of the Rohirrim is shackled to Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth. Not only do broad strokes of the plot, including an exiled nephew who returns at the 11th hour with reinforcements, hold onto familiarity for dear life, but even some of the visual sequences are cribbed, almost whole cloth, from those in the original trilogy. A surprise mumakil attack that jumpstarts the action of the film’s second act, for instance, though a welcome reprieve from its generally lethargic animation, will trigger memories of a similar sequence in Jackson’s Return of the King.
This reliance on reference could be forgiven if the characters held their own within the story. In a sea of men, none are able to make a mark. Nor, surprisingly, is Héra. Dressed in pop-feminist ideals — she bristles against marriage proposals made without her input; in fact, she has no thoughts of marriage at all — Héra’s wild-child, earthen outsider who never dresses right for the occasion (unless the film makes her do so in plot contrivances bearing all the subtlety of a cave troll) is an all-too-familiar, lumberingly out-of-date characterization to encounter in 2024. Where these stereotypes just might have blended into the rest of the film, the framing narration, stressing the untold stories of Middle Earth’s strong women, only draws them conspicuously out into the open.
It’s hard to say what might come from Warner Bros. exploitations of Tolkien’s books: is The War of the Rohirrim merely a placeholder to prove the company was actually doing something with the rights, or is it a genuine indicator of some great impending wave of content. Sticking to the theme, Éowyn offered up a prophetic summation of the current state of IP devotion when she also dreamed of a great wave. Right now, it’s hard to see anything but utter darkness in the abyss before our feet. Let’s hope we can turn back to the light behind us, rather than just stand here, waiting to be swallowed whole.
DIRECTOR: Kenji Kamiyama; CAST: Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Miranda Otto; DISTRIBUTOR: New Line Cinema; IN THEATERS: December 13; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 10 min.
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