Rough Ride
Kenji Kamiyama makes the fourth best ‘LOTR’ movie and will probably keep Warner stockholders happy.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
Director: Kenji Kamiyama • Writers: Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins, Arty Papageorgiou, based on a couple of paragraphs by JRR Tolkien
Starring [English]: Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Lorraine Ashbourne, Laurence Ubong Williams, Shaun Dooley, Miranda Otto
USA / Japan • 2hrs 14mins
Opens Hong Kong Dec 24 • IIA
Grade: C+
You know shit’s gone sideways when you have to filter evaluations of a film through an MBA lens. But such is filmmaking in 2024, so it’s hard to look at Kenji Kamiyama’s The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim without bearing in mind a few things. First and foremost, this was made purely for “use it or lose it” commercial reasons; New Line Cinema and Warner had to churn out some kind of LOTR product or lose their international distribution rights. Ka-ching! Licensing is (relatively) new Warner Bros. Discovery overlord David Zaslav’s preferred reason for creating art, and so here we are, whether we need it or not, with a film inspired, allegedly, by a couple of paragraphs and appendices referencing the legendary King of Rohan in JRR Tolkien’s The Two Towers. Still, hope springs eternal, especially considering director Kamiyama cut his teeth as an artist on Akira and Kiki's Delivery Service, leapt to prominence for Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and recently contributed a segment to the underrated Star Wars: Visions.
Set nearly 200 years before the events of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, whose Wingnut co-produced here, it goes without saying lots of crap has been made up to flesh out the two-hour-plus (!) story, much of it rote nonsense. Really? Buddy’s pissed because some chick won’t marry him? Very au courant, I guess. Anyway, very long story short: Éowyn (a returning Miranda Otto) narrates the tale of the epic siege and defence of Hornburg, under the stewardship of Héra (Gaia Wise), a Rider of Rohan just like her brothers Hama and Haleth, and something of a Mononoke lite. She’s in charge because her admittedly awesomely monikered father Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), he of Helm’s Deep fame and King of Rohan is kind of an asshole and didn’t listen to his trusted lieutenant, and nephew, Fréaláf (Laurence Ubong Williams) when he warned there were hill-tribe rebels massing on… some side of Edoras and now he’s walking dead. Leading the rebels is Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), the leader of the Dunlendings following the death of his father Freca (Shaun Dooley) at Helm’s hammer-like hand. Which, it should be noted, was a fair fight by this world’s standards, and one that Freca started. Also? Wulf is a little bitch.
Two paragraphs… maybe
All these names are going to carry great meaning for LOTR nerds – there are also mentions of oliphaunts, Gondor, orcs, shieldmaidens, the One Ring and a “cameo appearance” by Christopher Lee as Saruman – but Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou’s script spends a great deal of time spinning its narrative wheels. I get world-building, and I get having to really grok why Héra is an unsung hero of Rohan. But Wulf and Héra don’t need to be childhood friends. If you’re going to evacuate Hornburg then get moving. Do we really need to hear so much about a wedding gown? In a film where so much of the world has already been built, it would have been nice to get a story that earned its fat runtime. How about more of Héra’s trusty right hand, Olwyn (Lorraine Ashbourne)? Or how about cranking up the tension between the misguided Wulf and his increasingly disillusioned General Targg (Michael Wildman)? Surely producer-gatekeeper Philippa Boyens could have conjured better?
On the picture front, in many ways Kamiyama’s vision has just as much in common with Ralph Bakshi’s very 1970s, very counterculture The Lord of the Rings as it does with Jackson’s (now definitive) version. There’s a uniquely anime vibe to the visuals – all the men have that unmistakable genderless beauty about them, complete with errant strand of perfect hair dangling in front of one eye – that at least gives The War of the Rohirrim a distinct aesthetic within an aesthetic. And Japanese animation studio Sola Entertainment put a lot of work into re-creating Middle Earth as we now know it, combining 2D animation that mirrors the look of Jackson’s films with 3D motion-captured actors for nailing the camera movement. The final product (made with Epic’s Unreal Engine game engine) is novel, but it also overwhelms with nauseating perpetual motion that works in the action scenes but flirts with egregious elsewhere.
That said, perhaps the problem isn’t the relentless picture movement and more that bland AF story driving the action. The War of the Rohirrim really kicks off when Freca and Wulf propose an alliance by marriage between Wulf and Héra. She’s not interested, Helm sniffs out a threat to his throne, and by the time Freca kicks the bucket Wulf’s desire to avenge his dad is inextricably linked with Héra’s rejection. No amount of oliphaunt chases, supernatural Hammerhand murders or clashing broadswords can mask the lazy broken-hearted dude motor lurking beneath the surface. LOTR doesn’t need romance sub-plots. jilted or otherwise. May I present Exhibit A – the dreadful “love story” between Tauriel and Kili in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (which Rohirrim, I will grudgingly declare, is better than). Did Éowyn teach us nothing?