It’s a pretty busy movie month I have to say, a lot of interesting titles are coming out and people are probably choosing what to watch, well hopefully The War of the Rohirrim is not the choice you’re making, since this one falls in expectations drastically. The good news is that this is a stand-alone story and you don’t have to watch any of the previous films in order to understand what’s going on, but you will like the homages more if you have seen the original trilogy by Peter Jackson.
Set 183 years before The Lord of the Rings, The War of the Rohirrim follows Helm Hammerhand, the legendary king of Rohan, and his family as they defend their kingdom against the Dunlendings. Narrated by Éowyn, the story highlights Héra, Helm’s daughter and a would-be shieldmaiden, whose tale is forgotten by the time of the War of the Ring.
The conflict begins when Freca, a Dunlending lord, arrives at Helm’s hall with his son Wulf. Freca opposes Héra’s arranged marriage to a Gondorian lord and attempts to force her to marry Wulf to seize Rohan’s throne. A confrontation ensues, and Helm kills Freca with a single blow, earning the name “Hammerhand.” Wulf, devastated, swears revenge. – Synopsis
This film is directed by Kenji Kamiyama who has a history of working on 3D animation on titles like Ultraman, Cyborg 007 (Modern reboot), and Ghost in the Shell – which all are quite mediocre material, I mean yes Kenji knows what he’s doing, but I doubt he really had any big creative control over the storyline this can be seen that the main protagonist “Hera” was only mentioned single time in the books, so everything about her is totally fabricated and you can see that as the story unfolds that she is totally bland and uninteresting character to the bone – trying to juggle around being a girlboss and also feminine character.
The War Of The Rohirrim is a Cheap Adaptation of Beloved IP
There are very few good things I can say about this movie given that people involved had no intention to honor Tolkien original work and actually create an engaging story that would resonate with the OG fans of the original trilogy. Yes, there are some nice voice-acting homages from Christopher Lee and they are re-using some of the iconic tracks from the original trilogy, but instead of feeling like a nostalgic experience it kinda felt unfitting for an animated series I suppose, because it just didn’t feel right. All the original new tracks added also into the movie sucked as well it just shocks me sometimes that an animated film like this would end up costing 30 million dollars in production.
The animation style is mostly 2D, but there are certain elements, like the horses and Mumaks, that are sometimes done in 3D. I think they aren’t super noticeable, so that’s fine—but for a movie production, I felt some 3D elements looked extremely sloppy and not something I would expect going into a high-budget movie experience. If this was a TV Anime series, I wouldn’t be so critical of this fact.
From Women to Women (Gynocentric Worldview)
Even going 5 minutes into this film you can clearly tell that everything here was written by women and the movie’s perspective is explored from a gynocentric point of view. Hera is a spoiled girl boss who doesn’t want to marry a handsome Chad and because of her selfish desires instead of putting her kingdom and family first, she causes a war. At no point in the film, she can actually muster a proper argument as to why she doesn’t want to get married, it’s like she doesn’t even need to give a proper reason to the audience.
In a lot of ways, Rohan actually feels like the hostile, arrogant, and violent enemy in this story and Hera is a representation of a modern woman who is abandoning her duties as a “Mother/Bride” archetype. Only a woman could write something so arrogant in nature and that is the big turnoff of the whole film for me – there is nothing here for the male audience and Warner Bros knows that and so does Amazon. The gynocentric worldview sees women as a potential consumer class for geek culture which was cultivated and created by men, but even though different IPs are penetrated by women, they never become whale or loyal consumers – this is why modern filmmaking is financially bankrupt.
Tolkien Legacy will be in Ruins for a While
As Amazon and Warner Bros hold rights to producing games and movies out of this IP, things aren’t going to change. Whether it’s the new Gollum game or the Shadow of War series, the recent productions revolving around this IP have been abysmal compared to what it was at its height with the original trilogy and some of the great RTS games that came out decades ago. Things aren’t gonna be better anytime soon, if lucky we might get The Lord of the Rings-based Total War game that might be actually good.
Right now Warner is chasing the last pieces of cheese left to squeeze out of the IP they have rights to – they are working on Fellowship of the Ring prequel which most likely is going to suck, because the part they are adapting isn’t very thrilling or built for a good movie in my opinion. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I do actually think that Rings of Power is better than this movie, it at least manages to build some lore that’s good and it manages to capture some of the majestic elements of the world we know as Middle-Earth. If you are a hardcore fan of LOTR, it might be the decent film to watch for free via Amazon Prime later when it comes out, but spending money is definitely not worth it.
