Sometimes, the reason a film is produced can tell you everything you need to know. Director Kenji Kamiyama’s (“Blade Runner: Black Lotus”) occasionally breathtaking but ultimately unnecessary animated prequel to Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings,” “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” never rises above its corporate mandate to merely exist. Not to be upstaged by Amazon’s own Morgul-knife stab at expanding the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, Kamiyama’s film was fast-tracked and created to ensure New Line Cinema wouldn’t lose film adaptation rights. Born out of this prerequisite, at its best, the film refreshingly tells a self-contained story; moments of animated splendor evoke the works of Hayao Miyazaki, yes, but also Makoto Shinkai. But those scenes are few and far between; as it stands, it’s a loveless affair—competently made, yet pulsates with an uninspired and rushed sense of self-importance. Worse “art” has been made in the name of a studio trying to retain the rights to a franchise, but it’s hard to remember the last time a project embodied its company’s marching orders so blatantly.
At the film’s start, Miranda Otto returns as the shieldmaiden Éowyn and narrates that the events we’re about to see take place some two hundred years before Bilbo Baggins got Sauron’s ring. The kingdom of Rohan, led by the epically named Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox, channeling Logan Roy’s egoism but shading it with even more bellicose gruffness) and his sons Hama (Yazdan Qafouri), Haleth (Benjamin Wainwright), and Héra (Gaia Wise), have seen better days. The central conflict begins when Freka (Shaun Dooley), leader of the Dundelings, challenges Helm’s leadership and offers his son, Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), to marry Héra to bring their warring families together. The free-spirited Héra, channeling Miyazaki heroines like Nausicaä, refuses, viewing Wulf as a friend and not having aspirations for the throne. An angered Freka slanders her and the Hammerhand house, which angers Helm. The king suggests he and Freka settle their grievances through an old-fashioned fistfight. Still, it escalates in deadly fashion when Helm accidentally kills Freka with one punch (Cox is particularly great here, delivering the incredulous line “Impossible, I only struck him the once” with a mix of pride and regret). A rueful Wulf swears revenge against the kingdom of Rohan, mounting a years-long siege and attack against the kingdom of Rohan.
By far, the Smaug-sized issue holding the film back is its undeveloped characters, which is a true shame given that Wise voices Héra with the sort of reckless abandon that’s instantly endearing. There are only a handful of moments where Kamiyama slows the film down to allow his characters to be three-dimensional such as an early sequence where we see Héra try to bond with giant eagles (“The Boy and the Heron” meet girl and the eagle). It is mostly wordless but speaks to Héra’s love for nature and competence on horseback, and there’s a stunning shot of Héra chasing after the eagle only to be caught in the shadow of its wingspan, which acts as a sort of foreshadowing for the trials and tribulations that will come her way. It’s a shame that the film doesn’t have more of these moments, and too often, the machinations of the plot clash with the limited development we’ve witnessed of characters thus far. The most glaring example is after witnessing Héra defeat an oliphant, only the next scene is captured far too easily by Wulf’s crew; it is jarring to see after witnessing her competence in a sequence prior.
Striking and dynamic animation can forgive a lackluster narrative, but even on that front, the film remains inconsistent. It shines most during the film’s fight sequences, which are afforded a certain dynamism given thanks to the free-flowing visuals. This is best seen when Wulf and Héra have one of many sword fights; Kamiyama’s camera follows the arc of their swung blades in an immersive fashion (think “Challengers”’ tennis racket POV but with all sorts of bladed weapons). Cox’s Hammerhand is a standout, and as he pulverizes his enemies, you feel every crunched bone smashed in your face. It’s hard to believe Cox’s gravelly baritone hasn’t been utilized in prior Middle-earth projects and it’s a delight to see him go berserk as he wields his hammer like “God of War: Ragnarök’s” Thor. It’s only when the film isn’t in the swing of action that it loses its dynamism; when characters are not in combat, there’s a jarring incongruence between the flat, cardboard cutout expression on their faces and the emphatic nature of how lines are delivered.
Credit where it is due though, while the premise of the film revolves around how the Helm’s deep battleground got its name, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” mostly avoids the trap and temptation to shamelessly tie everything back to other films in the franchise. That isn’t to say it isn’t without some cringeworthy fan service (“What does Mordor want with rings?” an Orc rasps later in the film; the line is delivered with such self-seriousness that I half expected Sauron himself to make an appearance and tell us the reason). The moments where the film allows itself to be its own, namely through focusing on how Wise’s Héra strives to chart a different path free of the royal hubris and corrosive ambition that led to her people’s struggles, is where it shines. Otherwise, the film is a ghastly imitation of the franchise’s better films, a Ringwraith who possesses the frame and contours of something breathing but is ultimately hollow.
