Itās a discombobulating experience, after a āLord of the Ringsā trilogy that was built, down to every frame and hobbit hair, for the big screen, to see something so comparatively minor, small-scaled and TV-sized as āThe Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.ā
The film, set 183 years before the events of āThe Hobbit,ā is a return to Middle-earth that, despite some very earnest storytelling, never supplies much of an answer as to why, exactly, it exists.
āRohirrim,ā which sounds a little like the sound an orc might make sneezing, is perhaps best understood as a placeholder for further cinematic universe extrapolation from . (A live-action movie about Gollum is .) Here, the thin basis in Tolkien comes from the āLord of the Ringsā appendix, which lists a history of Rohan, the plains kingdom south of the Elven forest of LothlĆ³rien.
A small army of screenwriters ā Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou ā have from those faint embers conjured a fiery war movie, made as an anime by director Kenji Kamiyama (āGhost in the Shell: Stand Along Complex,ā āBlade Runner: Black Lotusā). The obviously talented Kamiyama fashions some dazzling vintage anime visuals that ā and perhaps this isnāt all bad ā feels a world apart from Peter Jacksonās Middle-earth features.
But āThe War of Rohirrimā also feels conspicuously closer to 1990s direct-to-video release than an heir to some of the grandest big-screen fantasy storytelling of the past 25 years. Though there are many ā too many ā examples of Hollywood over-mining once-rich intellectual property, this dull, appendix-extracted anime adds to a not particularly Tolkienist tradition.
Tolkien diehards, though, may be grateful for whatever āThe Lord of the Ringsā morsels they can find. And there is some precedent. Before Jackson (an executive producer here) built Middle-earth in New Zealand, āThe Lord of the Ringsā prompted a pair of 1970s animated TV specials and a not-much-remembered animated 1978 movie.
āThe War of Rohirrimā concerns the adventures of Hera (voiced by Gaia Wise), daughter of Helm Hammerhand ( ), the Rohan king. Cox, coming off of āSuccession,ā again finds himself beset with trouble over the future of his throne.
Things get underway when Freka (Shaun Dolley), leader of the Dundelings, offers his son Wulf (Luke Pasqualino) to marry Hera and take the throne. After a swift refusal, a fight ensues, and with a mere punch, Helm accidentally kills Freka. Given how extreme Wulfās vengeance is following this punch, itās fair to wonder if āThe War of Rohirrimā could have been started just as easily with a slap or, perhaps, an overly aggressive noogie.
But only self-seriousness reigns in this āLord of the Ringsā adventure. When the battle begins, Hera must save her people, which she strives to do by retreating to a fortress dug into a mountainside. Heraās story is said to be one lost to history in the opening narration, but āThe War of Rohirrimā is just as much an origin story for the stronghold that will later be known as Helmās Deep.
I donāt begrudge any Tolkien addict a little anime fun ā and maybe these references and callbacks will be enough to conjure some of the majesty of the books or Jacksonās movies. You can tell "Rohirrimā was made with sincere belief in the world Tolkien created. But I found the connective tissue, like the few notes from Howard Shoreās original score that float in, only reinforced how such grander movie ambitions once came to Rohan. āThe War of the Rohirrimā does manage to recapture one trait of the earlier films: at 134 minutes, itās long.
āThe Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,ā a New Line release is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for strong violence. Running time: 134 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
