The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

The Lord of the Rings has had a rough run of it lately, and to take stock of just how rough, one need only look to the Appendices. Recounting with cosy familiarity the story of the unlikely production of Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth trilogy, the Appendices to the original films have attracted something of a fanbase of their own. Much like the series they accompany, they tell with considerable care, attention to craft and character the story of an unlikely familial unit adventuring their way to triumph over adversity. Even the hardest of hearts would struggle not to be moved by Jackson’s reluctance to call for the final cut, all but demanding time to stop before it whisks his dream project into the rearview.

Jump ahead to the infamously torrid production of the bloated Hobbit trilogy, and the story is altogether different. Jackson slumped in profound existential defeat at the prospect of deciding what will happen and where within the blank green screened space that envelops him. The piercing thousand-yard stare of a weather-beaten blockbuster king in his plasticised kingdom. The chilling prospect of it happening all over again for the newly announced epic The Hunt for Gollum, which will take two films to tell us the fate of a character whose destiny is already well known, a task for which one film is not much needed. It’s tempting, then, to praise Kenji Kamiyama’s anime for bringing a sprinkle of the unorthodox to the largely depressing Tolkien expansion project, and for standing apart visually from much of what came before. It’s no less tempting to wish that the result were more willing to stake out grandeur of its own instead of borrowing so freely from the past. 

From the mournful tones of Miranda Otto’s narration to the score (by Stephen Gallagher)’s insistent quotation of Howard Shore’s original themes, The War of the Rohirrim makes clear that whatever unfamiliar turns this new story (a prequel, naturally) will take are only the smallest digressions from familiar comforts. As with Otto’s Eowyn, our lead Hera (voice of Gaia Wise) is an undervalued royal treated as a bargaining chip by a father gruffly oblivious to her true desire to fight alongside him (voice of Brian Cox). As before, there will be plucky sidekicks, besieged fortresses, enemy combatants atop thundering, elephant-like creatures and those all-seeing giant eagles.

Much of this is agreeable in the manner of a slick Saturday morning cartoon, but one can’t shake the feeling that what would play better as bitesize chunks has been transplanted to a canvas too big for it to accommodate. For all the spectacle on offer, there are few memorable images in The War of the Rohirrim, and for all the betrayals and allegiances spanning its sizeable cast, few characters to latch onto. Thank goodness, then, for the giant beasts, realised here with some measure of grotesque majesty. One feels some of the strain of Kamiyama’s film go out of it when a tentacled river beast with a tree atop its head holds the frame, as if he and co are freed, for a moment, from obligation to all the petty human in-fighting that otherwise occupies them. On that front, thank goodness again for Cox, whose booming gusto could grant the most rote conflicts the appearance of Shakespearean high drama.

Throughout, The War of the Rohirrim is wholly watchable, but passively so. Like so much media designed to remind us of what has already come and gone, it is too beholden to our assumed nostalgia to truly engage on its own terms, and too stubbornly unadventurous visually to make us feel we are seeing the old hat in a new light. The ostensible selling point of a prequel is to tell us all we only thought we knew about an old story. It’s a way of ensuring longevity, providing assurance that a beloved story never truly has to end. Much less considered is the thought that perhaps part of why stories become so beloved to begin with is because they do end, and for good.

Ultimately, this slickly watchable animated prequel can only do so much to stand on its own two feet before surrendering to expected prequel obligations. Still, it will likely only further one’s desire to revisit the original trilogy in time for the holidays, and thus may have done all that it intended to.

Thomas Messner

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is released nationwide on 13^th December 2024.

Watch the trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim here: