Much like that last minute save that occurs in Return Of The King, where Rohan rides to aid Gondor as Sauron’s orc army attempt to batter down the gates, it seems that the Lord Of The Rings franchise still has a bunch of spirited charges left in it. Sure, the Amazon series, The Rings Of Power is doing its thing, but the measure of its quality tends to vary depending on who you talk to, but with a whole Modor full of cinematic projects on the way, it seems that we’re blatently not done with Tolkien’s world just yet.
The first of these gallops into cinemas in a slightly different format, however, as The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim takes an Anime route to keep things fresh and varied as it delivers a prequel tale set around 180 years before Peter Jackson’s original trilogy. However, while it seems that the world of Balrogs and Ringwraiths is gradually moving into the realms of Star Wars with renewed amounts of content (a Gollum movie is also being touted), can the riders of Rohan lead a brand new charge?
Nearly 200 years before Frodo, Aragorn and company took a perilous journey to return an unwanted item of jewellery, we turn our eye to Rohan and the people who exist on the plains of Middle-Earth as they live under the rule of the proud Helm Hammerhand. While the ruler has a few children, we focus on the free spirited and willful Héra, Helm’s flame-haired daughter who would rather be out, discovering the secrets of Middle-Earth’s giant eagles than playing the demure princess that everyone expects.
However problems arise when Freca, a lord from Dunlend with Rohirric heritage summons all the Horse Lords together to Helm’s hall in Edoras to make some demands and it seems that the corpulent leader has issues with the likelyhood of marrying off Héra to Gondor to unite the kingdoms, when Rohan should be kept strong. Obviously Frecca ans to do this by offering his own son, Wulf, up as a possible suitor, but when Helm calks him on his power grabbing horseshit, matters get out of hand.
With Frecca accidently lying dead because of a single blow of one of Hammerhand’s legendary punches, Wulf is understandably pissed, but after being sent away to wander in the wilderness, but years later, his thirst for vengence causes him to rise up again as a legitimate threat. After capturing Héla, he reveals that he’s mashalled the wild men of Dunlend into an army and paid for the aid of Southron warriors and their devastating Mumaks (think crazed,near Kaijymu-sized elephants) to help him take Edoras by force.
With a desperate need to defeat Helm and marry his daughter, it seems that Wulf won’t hesitate to stoop to any levels to get what he wants, but after Héra escapes, she allows her kingdom time to prepare. But if Edoras falls, can the Rohirrim survive a brutal winter seige behind the gates of their glorified fortress, the Hornburg?
To be honest, I genuinely thought my time on Middle-Earth had come and I was to diminish and turn to other franchises and sprawling, connected universes. Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those guys who shit on The Hobbit trilogy or turn my nose up at The Rings Of Power, but nothing has really managed to equal those three Christmases between 2001 and 2003 where Jackson had us eating out of the palm of his hand since. The change in tactics are especially commendable, especially seeing as The Lord Of The Rings first to my attention thanks to Ralph Bakshi’s aborted but admirable attempt to bring Tolkien’s books to life in animated form back in 1978.
However, the film bends over backwards to make sure that you can make the connections to Jackson’s movie at every opportunity it can starting with Miranda Otto (Éowyn from the original trilogy) delivering a very Galadriel style voice over to set the scene whenever Howard Shore’s Rohan themes aren’t coming in at the edges. However, they prove to be welcome stabilisers in establishing links and as a whole, it’s weirdly reassuring to be back in Middle-Earth in a cinema on a cold, December day.
The animation is lush, with the more traditional character design meshing well with some lush backdrops which accurately convey the other worldly setting that New Zealand brought to the table and director Kenji Kamiyama (also responsible such titles as some of the Ghost In The Shell series and Eden Of The East) manages to melt that Anime style nicely into the more traditional nature of the world that Jackson and Tolkien created. The action carries weight, the stakes are high and the voice performances are a solid as the Hornburg’s humongous doors with Brian Cox’s Helm Hammerhand a noticable standout. We also get a go-down-fighting, heroic sacrifice moment that’s almost worthy of Sean Bean’s Boromir that may very well have you crying the most manliest of tears, buy as spectacular as a lot of this is, something us unavoidably rotten in the state of Rohan.
Maybe it’s because over twenty years have passed since Jackson’s trilogy, but The War Of The Rohirrim makes some Mumak-sized errors by making all their major battle sequences virtually carbon copies of what we’ve already seen in the films. Yeah, sure, witnessing a Watcher in the Water gobble down a Mumak whole and seeing Helm fist fight a troll like he’s Jake LaMotta is pretty damn sweet, but the Mumak attack (that’s fun to say) on Edoras is just a smaller, animated version of the Battle of Pelennor Fields from Return Of The King. Similarly, despite spending more time there, Wulf’s seige of the fortress formally known as the Hornburg, doesn’t differentiate itself from the Battle Of Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers nearly enough to avoid simply feeling like a retread – it even ends with a last minute save.
While this obviously isn’t enough to deter the fans who will no doubt be dazzled by name drops, posthumous voice cameos and Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan voicing Orcs, for someone who could still quite happily just live with the original trilogy (sorry Bilbo Baggins) it’s not quite enough to stir me up for a renewed swell of Tolkien-based projects.
It also doesn’t help that this entire story is plucked out of one of the author’s notoriously sprawling appendices, meaning it’s technically guilty of not really being Tolkien’s work at all, but if you’re willing to let three movies of The Hobbit side, then this should be no trouble at all.
It’s fun for the most part to explore a bit more of Middle-Earth’s history and the switch to anime is an interesting change, but it’s hardly a barnstorming, triumphant return to the world of the One Ring some might have hoped would stir up interest once again. However, it’s crafted well enough to be a diverting, if overfamiliar footnote, rather than a bold, new chapter.
You don’t mess with the Rohan.
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