The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a flawed but enjoyable return to Middle-earth

Light the beacons and gather your movie-going fellowship of friends: a new Lord of the Rings movie is out now in theaters! The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an anime prequel film from director Kenji Kamiyama, set 183 years before The Hobbit when the forces of Mordor were quiet and Rohan was ruled by a fearsome king named Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox). Hammerhand is a mythic figure in Tolkien's lore, and the man for whom the famed fortress of Helm's Deep, which features heavily in The Two Towers, is named.

But who was he really? And was his legend truly all his own? The War of the Rohirrim brings this story to life for the first time onscreen, expanding Helm as a character and building out the role of his daughter, Héra (Gaia Wise), who is mentioned but never even named in Tolkien's writing. Here, Héra is a force of nature and a true daughter of Rohan, who held the line and saw her people to safety during one of the most brutal sieges in their history.

Despite having The Lord of the Rings name attached and being produced by Peter Jackson, The War of the Rohirrim is currently tanking at the box office to the tune of around $5 million over its opening weekend against a $30 million budget. I went to see it at a mostly empty theater over the weekend and have returned to tell you about it. Should you be booking your passage back to Middle-earth? Or is this one to skip?

Your mileage may vary. The War of the Rohirrim is an enjoyable but flawed film, and I think the middling response it's getting is warranted. But personally, I had a pretty good time with it! Read on for my review, which contains mild spoilers.

The War of the Rohirrim retreads familiar ground while still being a worthwhile journey

If you're a fantasy nerd above a certain age, there's a very good chance you have a strong emotional attachment to seeing Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies in theaters, or even the less-beloved trilogy of films he later made out of The Hobbit. Jackson's take on Middle-earth is one of the most iconic fantasy adaptations of all time. The War of the Rohirrim is directed by Japanese filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama, but since Jackson and his long-time Middle-earth cohorts Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh produced it, the movie still very much feels like it belongs in Jackson's cinematic universe based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It even uses some of the same music, an automatic nostalgia trigger for many a Lord of the Rings fan.

That means that if you're one of those people who loves to watch a Lord of the Ring in a movie theater around the holidays, The War of the Rohirrim is a wonderful way to step back into that space. I had a good time watching all two hours and 14 minutes and left the theater giddy enough that I went straight home and rewatched the first Hobbit movie, which I haven't been able to bring myself to do in quite a while since I was so mad about the last Hobbit movie.

All that's to say, I'd easily recommend The War of the Rohirrim to any lover of Middle-earth. It's fun to explore this little-known part of Tolkien's lore, which isn't covered in The Silmarillion or any other major text the author wrote. The tale of Helm Hammerhand and the first siege of the Hornbug — Helm's Deep — is something Tolkien only glossed over in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings; the entire saga is told in about two-and-a-half pages, which means that The War of the Rohirrim had lots of room to expand on it.

And expand it does, mostly very successfully. The main character of the film, Héra, is mentioned in Tolkien's writing but never even given a name; the movie deftly gives her a more substantial role without contradicting anything Tolkien wrote. Héra is a fantastic heroine well-voiced by Gaia Wise. Generally speaking, the voice cast is pretty solid. Cox is another standout as Hammerhand, and there are even a few appearances from Lord of the Rings alumni like Miranda Otto (Éowyn), Billy Boyd (Pippin; don't worry, he plays a different character here), and Christopher Lee as Saruman. Lee's posthumous cameo is one I was torn about, since I have strong feelings about keeping actors working in movies even after they're dead. But I thought Rohirrim handled Saruman's very brief appearance with care, using archival recordings of Lee with the blessing of his widow. And since Saruman's small involvement is one of the few bits of established canon for this story in the appendices, I can understand why the filmmakers decided to include it.

All that said, there were things that bugged me about The War of the Rohirrim that they kept me from loving the movie quite as much as I wanted to. One of those is the writing; many of the scenes themselves are fine, but The War of the Rohirrim recycles a lot of beats and character arcs from The Lord of the Rings. Héra is essentially proto-Éowyn, going through the exact same trial of being the exceptionally skilled female heir of the ruling family of Rohan who is told she cannot fight by the men in her life — in this case, her father rather than her uncle. Helm Hammerhand has a conniving noble who whispers bad advice in his ear to ultimately serve his own ends, a Wormtongue. Héra's cousin Fréaláf (Laurence Ubong Williams) has an arc that is pretty much an exact duplication of Éomer's from The Two Towers, and so on. Any one of these on its own would have felt like a fun nod, but put together it feels like Rohirrim is relying too heavily on well-trod ground.

The animation is the other glaring weakness. There is some beautiful imagery in The War of the Rohirrim, and I really like a lot of the character designs, but the animation itself often feels choppy and cheap. Some illustrations have very little detail, others utilize static images in a way that feels like the scenes were rushed. I left the movie feeling like it needed a little more time in production to breathe some extra life into its visual presentation, which is arguably even more important for an animated film than a live-action one. And after hearing this morning that The War of the Rohirrim was apparently fast-tracked through production solely so that Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema could hang on to the film rights for The Lord of the Rings, my impression that Rohirrim needed more time to simmer seems fair.

The War of the Rohirrim did a beautiful job with Héra

Let's bring things back around to Héra. Of all the things The War of the Rohirrim did right, I think Héra's story is the best. As I mentioned earlier, the lore for Helm Hammerhand is pretty light in J.R.R. Tolkien's written works. In The Lord of the Rings appendices, we learn that the war between Helm and a man named Wulf (Luke Pasqualino) was kicked off when Wulf's father tried to betrothe him to Helm's daughter. The marriage fell through, Helm killed Wulf's dad in the ensuing argument, and then Wulf became his most bitter foe.

So far as I know, that is literally the only time Helm Hammerhand's daughter is mentioned in Tolkien's works. The author didn't even bother giving her a name, unlike Helm's sons Haleth and Hama. According to director Kenji Kamiyama, this surprising blank spot in Tolkien's mythos was a driving force behind building out a story for Héra. Who was this woman, and what happened to her?

Without going too deep into spoilers, I think The War of the Rohirrim answered the question of why the characters in The Lord of the Rings don't know about Héra. Héra doesn't want to be a ruler, or to marry to secure alliances; she wants adventure. That ties into her ultimate ending in a way that I found extremely satisfying. And once you know that the reason Kamiyama first started developing Héra as a character was because he realized she wasn't even given a name in Tolkien's mythos, the fact that the movie ends with narration that includes the line "Her name was Héra" has a lot more weight.

The fact that The War of the Rohirrim managed to do all this without upending any of the pre-established lore is admirable. It kept all the details of Helm Hammerhand's story from Tolkien's writings, often lifting what little bits Tolkien wrote about this war right down to the letter, while also making its own resonant story.

Whatever its flaws, I'm glad I saw The War of the Rohirrim, and think the good outweighs the bad. It's just a shame this movie didn't get more support to elevate it to the heights it might have reached.

Verdict

The War of the Rohirrim is a great way to return to Middle-earth this holiday season. It is a grim animated tale filled with betrayal and bloodshed and darkness, all of which is chased off by the light of camaraderie and perseverance in a way that feels wonderfully Tolkienian. The movie's flaws prevent it from being a truly outstanding watch, but for those who yearn to return to the fields of Rohan and the halls of Helm's Deep, it's a great excuse to find yourself lost once more in the world of The Lord of the Rings.

Movie grade: C+

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