El Señor de los Anillos: La guerra de los Rohirrim

What can you do when you have Lord of the Rings, having a crossover with anime cinema, and exploring a new era in its universe?

This new Lord of the Rings movie is still, in some ways, an adventurous movie: it's exciting, colorful, tense, and engaging. Sola Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation provides a colorful, adventurous design and presentation there with some well-constructed character designs and battle sequences. Many of the sound designs and action sequences are bright and tense, for LOTR's thrill standards, it still sells out what the world is like. The world J. R. R. Tolkien has created is large and ambitious, there are many approaches and styles that can be explored to see many different aspects about their world and setting.

However, instead of making a wonderful and classic narrative and world of what made Peter Jackson's Lord of the Ring approach. War of the Rohirrim is the definition of a beautiful mess, a mess that still both impresses and fails to impress me at the same time. It suffers from what both modern Anime cinema and Hollywood suffers. Crafted with static colorful animation, ambitious concepts, and great action sequences, but phoned in with the cliche bad aspects of character development and engagement, uneven writing, and phoning the tiresome anime tropes that run the well dry. It lacks what made Jackson's LOTR amazing, because unlike Jackson's approach, many of the characters are not interesting and you don't connect nor remember them on an emotional level. Almost as if it repeats some of the worst aspects about The Hobbit Trilogy.

It's a shame because the beautiful character designs and background are breathtaking, despite some use of poor CGI. The voice performances are all pretty good, alongside the musical score and thrill moments. With the concepts and world, things could have been approached pretty well. But for a LOTR narrative, it doesn't really feel like a LOTR story. You can name it anything else and I would have believed it was something new and different from LOTR.

But let me say this, nobody asked for anime and LOTR to become a thing. Yet it happened. I do applaud the studio and filmmakers to actually do it.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024) : Movie Review -

We are all die-hard fans of Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy and somewhat of "The Hobbit" trilogy. Let's just forget Prime Video's failed attempts for now. Kenji Kamiyama's tale is a prequel to Jackson's trilogy, but it's an "anime," and don't you worry, it has enough content. The problem arises in the scale, which can never be large for an animated feature, and since we have seen Jackson's gigantic sequences, the scale of this film looks quite small in comparison. The film still manages to keep things interesting in the first half, but then it lacks enough material to maintain the same momentum in the second half. Every LOTR film previously had one large-scale action sequence in the climax, and this film lacks that essential element! It's totally UNACCEPTABLE.

Set 183 years before the events of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001-2003), The War of the Rohirrim tells the story of Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Brian Cox), a legendary king of Rohan, and his family as they defend their kingdom. Helm's daughter, Hera (Gaia Wise), is young and brave and has no thoughts of marriage, yet the matter is openly discussed, and Wulf (Luke Pasqualino) proposes to her. Both she and her father reject the proposal, leaving Wulf's father enraged. He is killed by Helm, and then Wulf forms an army to seek revenge. Hera is kidnapped but saved, and then Helm is trapped and mortally wounded during a war. As winter approaches, will Hera be able to defeat the coward Wulf?

Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins, and Arty Papageorgiou wrote a 130-minute film that features many slow moments. Jackson created almost four-hour-long epics, but they never felt slow or boring. Kenji made a two-hour film and still gave me enough time to take small naps. The first half of the film was indeed interesting, but the second half failed to provide enough support or content. Three back-to-back action sequences appeared in the first half, offering nice entertainment and keeping the film engaging. Two of them take place at night, making it too dark and leading to an unsatisfactory experience. With anime, things are slow, and dialogues come at a tortoise's pace; then you have to endure dark visuals-all of that is too much to handle. The eagles aren't utilized well, the climax lacks action, the middle portion contains too much drama that slows down the narrative, and last but not least, the predictability of the storyline sums up the verdict for you.

Brian Cox voices the hot-tempered King Helm, portraying the character as aggressive and macho. Gaia Wise as Hera was sweet, but as I mentioned, too many pauses between words make things seem childish. Luke Pasqualino has done a fabulous job as the voice artist for Wulf, while Miranda Otto, Lorraine Ashbourne, Shaun Dooley, Yazdan Qafouri, Benjamin Wainwright, and Laurence Ubong Williams provide excellent support. Technically, they are all spot-on for an anime production, but that also detracts from its human connection.

I am still pondering the mediocre sound design and art direction. LOTR implies colossal scale, but where is that in Rohirrim? LOTR requires a proper lineup of events, and this one is far from perfect. Now I just think back to the beginning of the story and realize that Helm could have easily killed Wulf, preventing all this from happening. Anyway, who is interested in watching such a cowardly villain? No principles, no rules, and no loyalty are acceptable, but where is the bravery? The visual effects are good, but the grandeur is lacking. That stupendous quality is clearly absent. Kenji Kamiyama's emotional arcs take too much time, and during that phase, we lose connection with the film as LOTR or action fans. The anime vision is still acceptable and should please anime enthusiasts. Less said is better; LOTR: The War of the Rohirrim gets the Rohirrim part right but forgets to focus on the "war" aspect. This is a decent film, but it falls short of its own potential and could have been much better.

RATING - 5/10*

I am a long time (40+ years) Tolkien fan, and arguably fall into the category of being hard to please. I saw this film on IMAX and I must say that it looks pretty nice, with the scenery being exemplary. The animation style might put some people off, depending on preference, but I think it holds up. In summary, overall production value is up to expectation for me (picture, sound, voice acting etc).

Now, where it falls short is definitely on the script side, and I join the (growing) crowd who has a hard time understanding why they decided to change the storyline from the book instead of just building on it. I get the motive and all, but it is still a mystery why they decided to go in this direction, despite the fact that they know EXACTLY what will happen when it hits the Tolkien fandom.

Filmmakers could easily have done more or less the same story, including the Hera perspective, but without tampering with the source material and they would have gotten through this in a much better shape.

I guess it is a sign of the times. Sadly.

The Rohirrim War unfortunately, the end result is a film that struggles to engage the viewer, offering a flat and predictable narrative.

The anime-style animation lacks depth and often appears confusing. The character designs also appear generic and unmemorable, failing to leave a mark on the hearts of viewers. The story, centered on the defense of Helm Hammerhand, is a wasted opportunity to explore the internal dynamics of Rohan. The narrative drags on wearily, lacking twists and moments of true emotion. The dialogues are often banal and repetitive, failing to convey the complexity of the characters and their motivations.

The film suffers from slow pacing and excessive length. Many sequences are unnecessary and artificially dilate the duration, boring the viewer. The lack of pace and memorable moments makes it difficult to remain involved in the story.

The lack of originality and courage in the narrative is the biggest flaw of this feature film.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Rohirrim War" is a film that disappoints on every level. The boredom, the flat plot and the uninspired animation make this film a disappointing experience for fans of the saga. A wasted opportunity to explore a fascinating period of Middle Earth.

Story is good. I mean its Tolkien. But animation is so bad. So many problems where they mix 2D and 3D. Textures are horrible. Fake Depth of field, characters floating in the air while walking. Directing mediocre. Voice acting mediocre. Such a shame for such good story. All in all solid 6. If it appeared 20 years ago would be 8 probably. But as Art Director my self I cant over look such rookie mistakes regarding art style, cutting corners by reducing action of a characters and there movement. Comparing to modern Japanese anime this is super bad. As someone who does art, and review art in daily bases this is amberesing for such big budget movie.