For the first time in a decade, a new Lord of the Rings movie is playing in cinemas. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an animated prequel film set 183 years before The Hobbit, when the land of Rohan was ruled by a legendary figure named Helm Hammerhand. If you've read The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien or watched the films from Peter Jackson, Helm's name may ring a bell; he is the king for who, the fortress of Helm's Deep was named.
But what did Tolkien actually write about Helm Hammerhand? Is the movie a close adaptation, or does it take massive liberties?
If you want to go back to the source, you might be surprised to find out that Tolkien really didn't write about Helm Hammerhand at all in The Lord of the Rings proper. There's even debate that he may not have thought of Helm's full history until after he'd published The Two Towers, the book which famously features a battle at Helm's Deep between the beleaguered people of Rohan and the orcs of Isengard.
If you want to read about Helm Hammerhand, there is one source you need to refer to: the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. Specifically, in the first section of the appendices, "The Annals of the Kings and Rulers," there's a chapter titled "The House of Eorl" which covers the ruling lineage of Rohan. It's there that Tolkien briefly wrote about Helm Hammerhand and his clash with the Dunlending lord Wulf, which led to the first siege of Helm's Deep — a castle only known as "the Hornburg" beforehand.
The War of the Rohirrim is surprisingly faithful to Tolkien's text while still creating its own story
In my edition of The Lord of the Rings, there's only about two-and-a-half pages dedicated to the story of Helm Hammerhand, culminating in the rise of Helm's nephew Fréaláf as king of Rohan and the claiming of Isengard by the wizard Saruman. This is how The War of the Rohirrim ends as well.
While it is true that The War of the Rohirrim largely invented a storyline for its protagonist Héra, the overall arc of the tale is surprisingly faithful to Tolkien's writings. In "the House of Eorl," the conflict is kicked off in the exact same way, with Helm's daughter being betrothed to Wulf, the marriage falling through, and Helm killing Wulf's father and banishing him as a result. Tolkien never names Helm's daughter, and after the war starts Tolkien never mentions her again. This gave the movie ample space to create a story around her while still using the framework created by the famed fantasy author, so long as it explained why she was mysteriously forgotten by history.
Many other events are also drawn directly from the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, such as the fall of Edoras, the deaths of Helm's sons, Fréaláf arriving at the Hornburg to save the day, and Helm's one-man campaign to destroy the Dunlending army in the dead of winter, which leads to him being dubbed a "wraith." Even Helm's ultimate fate is the same, minus the involvement of Héra. Check out this passage from "The House of Eorl":
"One night men heard the horn blowing, but Helm did not return. In the morning there came a sun-gleam, the first for long days, and they saw a white figure standing still on the Dike, alone, for none of the Dunlendings dared come near. There stood Helm, dead as a stone, but his knees were unbent. Yet men said that the horn was still heard at times in the Deep and the wraith of Helm would walk among the foes of Rohan and kill men with fear."
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim includes all the major beats from Tolkien's limited writings about Helm, but manages to expand it out into a much deeper story. If you want to compare for yourself, grab up a copy of The Lord of the Rings and flip to the appendices to see what J.R.R. Tolkien had to say about Helm Hammerhand of Rohan.
The War of the Rohirrim is playing now in theaters.
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