Watch the first 8 minutes from new Lord of the Rings film War of the Rohirrim

Next weekend, New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Discovery will release The War of the Rohirrim into theaters, a new Lord of the Rings movie set some 183 years before the story we all know. It's an animated film about Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), a king of Rohan under attack by a Dunlending lord named Wulf (Luke Pasqualino). He is forced to seek refuge in the Hornburg, a fortress that will later become known as Helm's Deep.

WBD has released eight minutes of the movie online to watch for free, and by the looks of it, things are gonna weird up in the Hornburg. Helm Hammerhand seems to have become a deadly wraithe, or at least that's the rumor. His daughter Héra (Gaia Wise) is on the case. The whole thing is very eerie and heavy and creepy, which isn't a bad look for a Lord of the Rings movie. Watch the clip above!

Directed by Kenji Kamiyama, The War of the Rohirrim also stars Miranda Otto, who memorably played the Rohan shieldmaiden Éowyn in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, as the narrator. I will say the animation looks a little choppy to me, but I like the mood, so I may check this movie out when it comes out in theaters on December 13.

Watch the first eight minutes of Kraven the Hunter

Also opening on December 13 is Kraven the Hunter, a new movie about the big game-hunting Spider-Man villain, played here by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Sony has now made several of these movies about Spider-Man villains, none of which actually contain Spider-Man. The results have varied wildly. The Venom movies have all done well, but Morbius and Madame Web went over terribly with both audiences and critics.

Where will Kraven the Hunter fall on this continuum? Watch the first eight minutes below and find out:

I will say it's bold to kick off the movie with a lenghty Russian-language sequence. I don't know anything about Kraven the comic book character, but apparently he spends some time in a Siberian prison. I hear it sucks this time of year. I hear it sucks every time of year.

With big movies like Wicked, Gladiator II and Moana 2 all in theaters at once, Hollywood has been having huge success on the big screen lately. Can the one-two punch of The War of the Rohirrim and Kraven the Hunter continue that good streak? Probably not, but they are coming.

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