The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim came and went in theaters quickly. In the span of a week it was gone from many theaters. It was no easy task finding time to see it before Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Mufasa: the Lion King squeezed it out of its one showing a day. Despite its struggles to pull a profit at the box office, this film deserved more success.
War of the Rohirrim is a coproduction between Warner Bros Animation and Japanese studio Sola Digital Arts. This alone may give pause to Toonami fans, who have seen many of the disappointing titles Sola coproduced in recent years in conjunction with Toonami’s Jason DeMarco. Titles like “Rick and Morty the Anime” are infamous for their poor animation quality. Fortunately, the animation in the Lord of the Rings film manages to stay consistent throughout. The mix of motion capture, CGI, and traditional animation results in a look that is neither too cartoony nor too realistic. While this technology was in its infancy during the production of Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings animation of the 1970s, advances since his early efforts at rotoscoping have allowed for a great deal of stylized animation based around motion capture.
More controversial than the animation in the story. Once again, the appendix of Lord of the Rings is being thoroughly searched for snippets that can be extrapolated into full stories. This time, a king named Helm Hammerhand had his story chosen. Due to the short length of the appendix entry, the story needed to be fleshed out. Helm Hammerhand alone as protagonist may not have worked. He works well in this film as an Odin figure, making choices his children may not agree with and often verging on madness. The one eyed bearded king who can kill a man in one blow proved himself one of the highlights of the film, but it is also important to have a character the audience can relate to.
Where controversy arose is the creation of a new character: his daughter, the Princess Hera. This original character became the main character of the story, leading to accusations that she is a “Mary Sue” in a “fanfiction” film. Hera may seem like a self insert to some, but she is far from a perfect heroine. Hera may have caused the deaths of many in her family and kingdom by rejecting the offer to marry her childhood friend Wulf. While she does what she has to in order to bring the war to a close, one can’t help but wonder if many lives could have been saved if she had returned Wulf’s feelings.
The film’s shortcomings are in its lack of scale compared to other Lord of the Rings projects. This is not a film like the Peter Jackson Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films, with countless Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits in massive battles. The central conflict is a spiteful suitor trying to punish Hera for rejecting his proposal by taking her family and her kingdom. This is hardly the sort of grand battle many expected from the commercials that use Peter Jackson’s name liberally. The lack of a wider conflict may disappoint fans of the earlier live action films, but some Easter eggs are thrown in to tease interest in potential sequels. The scene of Orcs on the mountain searching for the ring gives the smallest of reasons to include Lord of the Rings in the film’s title.
Gandalf taking an interest in the Orcs’ activities provides a possible story avenue for further films. The cameo by Saruman showed that even returning characters are limited by the format and circumstances. His voice performance was derived from unused takes from previous films. Because of the character’s later importance, nothing too major can happen to him in a time long before the Hobbit, limiting him to a brief guest appearance.
This is not a critical part of the Lord of the Rings story, but the pacing of this two hour film about the history of Helm’s Deep was more engaging than the sprawling “Rings of Power” series on Amazon. Aside from the aforementioned brief ring scenes with the wizards, the rest of the film focused on the main story, allowing it to flow smoothly. Compared to prior Lord of the Rings projects with their 3-4 hour runtimes, War of the Rohirrim’s two hours passed quickly. While we are unlikely to see any anime sequels after this film’s financial failure, the stories of Tolkien will continue to be read and adapted to the screen for years to come.
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