While I’m not an avid audience for anime – as my anime-watching years ended in the early 2000s – the idea of using anime to tell stories from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ source material may be an interesting choice. It’s such a stark contrast to the visual tone and mood that was set forth by Peter Jackson in his successful trilogy of films that adapted J.R.R. Tolkien’s books and then later reimagined by the Amazon Prime series ‘Rings of Power.’ So, while I’m not a staunch fan of anime, I was interested to see how ‘Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ would play out. Afterall, I felt that everything I needed to see about the source material is completed in the trilogy ‘Lord of the Rings’ and I felt that the trilogy of ‘The Hobbit’ was a letdown after the first movie. I’m not a fan of the ‘Rings of Power’ either so I wondered whether ‘Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ would be a welcome expansion to the franchise or if it leans more towards just trying to cash in on those who love the world and the world-building of it and is another example of Hollywood being afraid of creating something new and unique and refreshing.
First of all, director Kenji Kamiyama has an animation style that looks flat and awkward. It makes plenty of uses of photo-realistic backgrounds and landscapes but then layers the moving anime characters unto that doesn’t always feel like a cohesive integration. On the opening scene, the protagonist, Hera, chases after one of the giant Eagles on horseback and rides up a mountain. The mountain face looks and feels two-dimensional so when the animated horse climbs up the mountain, the sound tells us its hooves are landing on the rocks but the visual doesn’t really match. There are quite a lot of moments like this but then are other moments where it works, like a brutal battle at Helm’s Deep during a harsh snowstorm.
On the visual level, there’s a lot of tension happening whether it’s gorgeous until the action starts moving or it’s just awkward from beginning to end. And with the live action world of Middle Earth so strong in my head – from the imagination of Peter Jackson – the disconnect with seeing the very Japanese-infused imagery of anime doesn’t quite blend well here. My experience with anime has prepared me for the shift of extremes: from the very serious to the hilariously silly – and ‘Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ never gets silly. It’s so serious and bleak that it feels alien to see it in anime form. Even when I saw ‘Evangelion’ so many years back, as dark and as bleak as that show can be, I remember it still having light and silly moments.
The story is definitely a call out to the horrors of war and the dangers of pride. The film is focused on the reign of King Helm Hammerhand of Rohan and how an accidental killing started a war that his only daughter, Hera, had to finish as those around her fell. The film takes a feminist approach by giving Hera a name (in the appendices of Tolkien’s books, she is unnamed) and a personality that has her wild and rebellious but unseen for her true worth by her father. The main antagonist, Wulf, was set on marrying her but after the death of his father, is now set to humbling her. Wulf is portrayed with the worst traits of toxic masculinity, which completes the feminist approach.
But the story feels stunted and a little too straightforward. It picks up and then slows down and then picks up again. There are characters, like Hera’s brothers, who have so much potential, but their stories end before they can be fully explored, and it seems that the material might have better suited a series than a movie. Halfway through the film, I realized I didn’t connect nor feel invested in any of the characters nor the outcome of this war as I felt that the film created these characters to point out a theme but forgot to make them unique or fresh. They all seem very much like characters from other films that talks about the horrors of war and of women who must rise to their potential despite being unrecognized and acknowledged by every man around them.
I found myself dozing off a lot in the beginning due to the film’s pacing and had a hard time feeling like I was seeing something new. It was an interesting idea, for sure, but one that did not take flight from development.
My Rating:
Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is now showing in cinemas. Check showtimes and buy your tickets here.
