We live in a world that festers on the idea of sequels, prequels, remakes and otherwise expanding Intellectual Property. For a long time, The Lord of the Rings had avoided this label, with an iconic trilogy, self-contained for just under a decade. Even then, The Hobbit trilogy was another Tolkien adaptation, although far less well received, there seemed to be a purpose to it. However, with the Amazon series The Rings of Power, Middle Earth joined the likes of Star Wars, The Wizarding World and Marvel as a franchise willing to extract every last ounce of fan engagement. With The War of the Rohirrim, the franchise enters the big screen once again telling an “Older, lesser-known tale” almost establishing its own fate as a weaker and less potent narrative, without a Tolkien text behind it.
Set some 183 years before The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The War of the Rohirrim follows Helm Hammerhand, the stubborn, greedy and proud King of Rohan who must defend his family and his Kingdom against an army of his own making after he accidentally kills Freca after refusing to accept his demands for his daughter Hera to marry his son Wulf. Wulf, banished from Helm’s Kingdom takes his army with the promise to declare war against Helm, refusing to stop until he meets his demise.
The first thing you notice about the film is its immense visual style. The use of an anime variation of animation works well, particularly in wide, geographical shots that show the scale and beauty of the Middle Earth landscape. The film immediately sweeps you back into the glory of the New Zealand mountains, forests and the fortress iconography from Peter Jackson’s two trilogies. Its handrawn style lends itself well to the world, rugged-edged and almost like a book illustration, although having an English-language anime feels somewhat disconcerting at times, especially in motion which is a bit jolty and the mouths sometimes don’t align with the vocal performances. However, more importantly, it is the characters themselves where the film becomes most unstuck.
The film struggles to establish interesting characters to follow. Particularly its female protagonist, Hera, who has little in the way of character development, or fundamental traits that make her an interesting or intriguing figure the audience should care about. This is not helped by an opening act that is hard to follow, full of narration as it attempts to cover a large amount of ground in a short time frame, which tries to especially create a relationship between the protagonist and antagonist in flashback, in a scene without enough intensity to build the foundations to which the film will be held on.
Choppy editing and poor pacing leave the film feeling vacant, scrambling your brain trying to keep up before the film leaves you behind. Not helped by the animation style and a voice cast full of Northern English accents giving information overload, a shout of “Don’t fret lad” felt particularly out of place. A mirage of side characters that are either pointless or underdeveloped doesn’t help the cause, with any emotional stakes lacking a killer punch.
However, the film is dealing with an interesting, if underdeveloped plethora of themes. Middle Earth has never been so political, showing the burden of a King, dealing with the discontent of his people, with the portrayal of Helm being one of a flawed but good man, something that is rare to see in blockbuster filmmaking. The film looks at the balance of love and courtship, tribalism and revenge, all with a douse of intriguing tactical action. Impressively the film feels part of Middle Earth without an overreliance on nostalgia – at least until the very end, although as someone who isn’t that knowledgeable on the fantasy world, the geographical chess pieces sometimes feel disorientating.
Perhaps this is the biggest frustration with The War of the Rohirrim, there are some interesting ideas at play, but an underdeveloped script and some out-of-place moments took me out of a film that has something to say, particularly in leadership and the value of the people that serve the leader.
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