Julien Neaves, Editor
Plot: Two centuries before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Héra, a would-be shieldmaiden of Rohan, and her father, King Helm Hammerhand, must protect the kindgom from a ruthless enemy.
Review: An anime LOTR prequel movie sounded like a splendid idea on paper. So how did it come to this?
Let’s start with the few positives here. The Kingdom of Rohan is one the coolest aspects of LOTR and I enjoyed having them front and centre in the film. It was fun learning more of the horse lords’ history and of the general lore as well, including that oliphaunts are also known as mûmakil. And having Miranda Otto reprise her role as Éowyn made the narration both pleasant and nostalgic. There are some intriguing characters here, like gruff, hot-tempered Helm (voiced by the always reliable Brian Cox), and wise shieldmaiden Olwyn. The film also does not shy away from going very dark at times, which I appreciated.
And that’s about it. The anime-inspired animation is somewhat stiff and lacks fluidity. Héra is quite bland as a protagonist and big bad Wulf does little to rise above generic antagonist. The plot borrows heavily from The Two Towers and a bit from The Return of the King, making it feel like a tired retread. The inclusion of elements like the eagle, oliphaunt and some cameos (which I won’t spoil) do not feel organic but like fawning fan service.
The biggest strike against this spinoff, however, is the action, or rather the lack thereof. We have a couple of decent battle scenes but none that even come close to what we had in the live action films. And the much-teased final war boils down into an uninspired battle. With the freedom of animation, we could have had battle sequences to rival the Battle of Pelennor Fields. But what we got was just an exercise in disappointment. And the movie has to gall to signal further adventures. With the well-deserved box office failure, I don’t see that happening. Which is for the best, as Tolkien’s rich fantasy world, the devoted LOTR fanbase and fans of fantasy in general deserved so much better than this derivative cash grab.
Editor Jules’ Score: 5.5 out of 10
Have you seen The War of the Rohirrim? What did you think of it? And you can check out more high fantasy content below:
Julien “Editor Jules” Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by the Cryptkeeper, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like “13 flavours of awesome sauce”. Read more.