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

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim features no Hobbits, no Elves, and no Dwarves. There are also no dragons, Ringwraiths, or great looming eyes of fire that see all. This is a tale of men and women, and jealousies that lead to great tragedies. It is a tale of the inhabitants of Rohan, whom Lord of the Rings fans will well remember as being the Norse-inspired race of humans in Tolkien's The Two Towers who were ruled by King Theoden, the once-noble king whose mind had been poisoned by Wormtongue in collusion with Saruman. The climax of The Two Towers features the Battle of Helm's Deep. War of the Rohirrim is the story of Helm himself. 

This film gives LotR fans something we've never really had: a full-length anime set in Middle Earth, sourced from the official Tolkien chronology and brought to life with all the elements developed by Peter Jackson and his team. The visuals, the music, the recognizable design--it's all here, but in anime form.

The film takes place nearly 200 years before the events of The Two Towers. It's a story of Rohan history pulled directly from the appendices of Tolkien's original Lord of the Rings books, and anyone who has read those appendices can attest to their rich, almost biblical density in which Tolkien recounts generation after generation of fictional history across multiple races and lineages. At the center of this tale is King Helm Hammerhand (voiced here by Brian Cox), his two sons, and his daughter Hera (voiced by Gaia Wise), who is our main character. After an act of accidental violence ignites a feud with a bitter challenger to Hammerhand's throne (Wulf, voiced by Luca Pasqualino), a full-scale war breaks out for control of Rohan. The scope of the film is impressive. 

On paper, this all sounds rather impenetrable, but I'm pleased to report that it works. In an era of lazy tie-ins and franchise fodder, the resulting narrative is actually a powerfully-moving and fully-realized piece of The Lord of the Rings movie cannon that not only holds its own, but adds to the cinematic mythos in a meaningful way. 

New Line/Warner Bros. is clearly committed to rooting this movie firmly in the world created by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens all those years ago--going as far as to bring all three of them back as producers. The moment the film started, I knew I was in good hands. First the New Line Cinema logo appeared, then the Warner Bros. Animation logo, and then, perhaps unexpectedly....THE LORD OF THE RINGS logo appears along with that familiar, haunting music first written by Howard Shore, dangerous and heartbreaking in equal measure. It's amazing how a piece of music can instantly put you back in a particular time and place. Instead of Cate Blanchett's Galadriel narrating, this film begins with Rohan's Eowyn, voiced by the actress who brought that character to life, Miranda Otto. Her melancholy introduction sets the stage for the tragedy to come, and then composer Stephen Gallagher weaves in Howard Shore's Rohan theme, taking me right back to The Two Towers. 

This is New Line/Warner swinging for the fences. The animation feels expensive and ambitious, blending traditional anime-style 2-D models (the film is directed by Japanese animation maestro Kenji Kamiyama) with elaborate computer-created backgrounds that are occasionally bewildering. The studio has also taken considerable effort to make sure the release of the film feels prestigious. The film is playing in select markets on IMAX screens, and the fact that the feature got a full theatrical release at all (especially when other Warner Bros. films this year, such as Juror #2, did not) shows the studio's commitment to The Lord of the Rings. AMC theaters are offering moviegoers the option to buy both a collectible Helm's Hammer popcorn bucket that measures 27 inches long and a faux-wood stein with the film's logo on it. I bought both. 

As much as I enjoyed the film and look forward to revising it again to catch all the Tolkien-lore easter eggs that I'm sure I missed, I must admit that the first half hour is a bit on the talky side and I found my attention drifting from time to time. The screenwriters (there are four of them) go to great lengths to respect Tolkien's mythology and the canonical history of Middle Earth, but without yet knowing where we were going, I found the first act to be a bit lethargic--which is not ideal for an animated film. Once things pick up, though, they never slow down. I will also admit that I occasionally had trouble following what was happening on screen due to the animation techniques, which often feel like the entire kitchen sink is being thrown at the viewer. Really, this movie is begging for the live-action treatment, but such a film would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and a cast of thousands. Hollywood is not making those movies at this moment, and I'm grateful that this story exists in any visual form. 

On the note of those easter eggs: as previously mentioned, this story is not connected to the exploits of Bilbo, Frodo, Aragorn, or Sauron and his quest to recover the Ring of Power. And yet, the film will occasionally drop clues that add context as to what is happening elsewhere in Middle Earth. Keep an eye out for former Hobbits Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan in very unlikely voice roles, and fans of wizards will get a taste of the machinations from Isengard, too. It's all done with so much respect and knowledge, it's hard for a Lord of the Rings buff not to love this. 

The War of the Rohirrim is stirring, brutally violent, and deeply respectful of what has come before--both from Peter Jackson and from the master himself, J.R.R. Tolkien. I went into the movie expecting to be mildly entertained, but I came out feeling like I'd seen something truly epic in scope. If this film does well, the possibility of more Tolkien adaptations could be possible; after all, the good professor wrote thousands of pages about Middle Earth, and there are no less than a dozen weighty tomes chronicling its history, sourced directly from his notes. Nothing will ever supplant Tolkien's original writing for me, but I'm very grateful that the people involved with bringing these tales to the screen have such respect for the source material. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is yet another jewel in the crown of 2024, one of the greatest movie years in recent memory.