Star Cast: Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Miranda Otto, Luke Pasqualino
Director: Kenji Kamiyama
What’s Good: The only good thing here is the soundtrack, which uses many pieces from the original trilogy soundtrack composed by Howard Shore.
What’s Bad: The animation quality is very poor, and on top of that, the script is just incredibly cliche, and the pacing feels like a slog.
Loo Break: You can go for a break at any moment and won’t miss much, which you can later piece together through context.
Watch or Not?: Only watch if you are a hardcore Lord of the Rings fan; if not, this is a pass.
Language: English (with subtitles).
Available On: Cinemas
Runtime: 134 Minutes.
User Rating:
Opening:
Even after over two decades, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is still regarded as one of the most impressive pieces of filmmaking ever created. Very few productions can even match a fraction of what Peter Jackson and his team did for that adaptation, and much less match it in terms of quality; only the Dune series of movies seems to come close and even so, the Peter Jackson trilogy will be one for the ages. So when Warner Bros. decided to go back to Middle Earth for a new film, everyone was a bit apprehensive, and with good reason.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Movie Review: Script Analysis
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a film based in the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien and, specifically, one paragraph about the story of Rohan, one of the main nations in the lore of Middle Earth. It is in those lines that it is revealed that King Helm had a daughter, and just from that fact, director Kenji Kamiyama and a number of writers decided to make an entire film around this long-lost princess without a name. On paper, it sounds like a good idea to fill out the lore from Tolkien, but if you are not able to match the quality of his writing and world-building, you better step aside.
This is the biggest problem with The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim; it is a movie that cannot really match the legacy it stands on, and the lack of quality in basically every regard makes it seem like no one in the production actually cared to make this a good film at all. We are in the age where animation aimed at adult audiences is blooming as ever before. Shows like Castlevania, Blue Eye Samurai, and Arcane, all of them on Netflix, are just miles ahead of this theatrical anime film that uses the name of one of the biggest brands in fiction in its name.
The writing is cliché to a fault because clichés can work only when executed with sincerity and emotion. But here in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, there is no passion behind the story, and the result is several conversations, sequences, and lines that are just thrown together, as the plot stretches every longer to fit the two-hour mark for some reason. The characters don’t really shine in any way because they are all relatively flavorless, and not having romance, jokes, or any sort of mysticism, at least in the background, feels like a move from someone who doesn’t understand the franchise.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Movie Review: Star Performance
It is very hard to fault most of the cast because it isn’t really their fault that their characters are so boring to watch. The fault lands on the writers and the director, but Brian Cox definitely steals the show as Helm Hammerhead, the mythical king whose name was given to the location that serves as the battlefield for the best action sequence in the franchise, the Helm’s Deep siege in The Two Towers. Cox brings charisma and strength to his lines and serves the role well.
However, the rest of the cast falls flat, especially Gaia Wise, who plays Hera, our protagonist. Her delivery is flat, and there is no energy behind it. The same happens with every single other character in the film. This is not to say they are bad performers, but the direction given through recording their voices was not the best, just go and watch and heat the performances in the shows I previously mentioned, and you will see this could have been so much better.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Movie Review: Direction, Music
Kenji Kamiyama is not a new guy in town, but at the same time he is definitely not a big name around. It feels a bit like a questionable move to give such a big franchise to him and his team of animators, instead of going to one of the best anime studios in Japan, and let them know that they would have the resources to create something fantastic with the material. Studios like Mappa, Madhouse, and WIT could have done better.
As it stands, the film stretches its running time by lingering too long on very unimportant things. The animation quality is truly awful, with characters barely moving at times or having just a couple of frames of animation at all. Even at very important moments, there is no consistency, and it hurts the movie a lot.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Movie Review: The Last Word
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim feels like a waste of time and money. It is an attempt by Warner Bros. to milk the Lord of the Rings franchise a bit more without putting in the effort and necessary resources to actually make something good. The quality of the animation and the writing is just too poor, and while it is nice to always go back to Middle Earth, the franchise and its legacy deserve just so much more than this.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Trailer
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim releases on 13th December, 2024.
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