War of the Rohirrim fails as anime and Lord of the Rings fiction
Complaining about War of the Rohirim for 2700 words
The new Lord of the Rings movie, War of the Rohirim, plays in a promising space for Lord of the Rings media. It tells a story set in a familiar context, the Anglo-Saxon inspired land of Rohan. Set long before the events of the Lord of the Rings, the film features characters referenced in passing in the Lord of the Rings, like Helm Hammerhand and the wildmen of Dunland, leaving a lot of creative space where one could tell a new story and take some liberties to make a unique film.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t lives up to the lore of the Lord of the Rings, the inspiration of Anglo-Saxon storytelling, nor the heroic anime battles we were promised.
Instead, if you watch this film you are in for a derivative mess, which despite having some good ideas, is truly a poorly constructed fan fiction that tries and fails to cash in on the nostalgia of Lord of the Rings movie fans, while disregarding the substance that makes Tolkien’s iconic fantasy world so special and worth spending time in.
The story is about Hera, the only daughter of King Helm Hammerhand. Freca, the father of her childhood friend Wulf, comes to Edoras to seek a political alliance between his people in Dunland and the Rohirim through a marriage of Hera and Wulf. Upon rejection of that marriage proposal, Freca throws a temper tantrum and demands a fight with Hammerhand outside. Not one to turn down the chance to punch someone, Hammerhand accepts the challenge. In the courtyard, Freca strikes first, getting a couple blows in, but Hammerhand one-shots him, killing him with a single punch . Wulf despite seeing that his father instigated the fight, attacks Hammerhand with a sword. Hammerhand quickly overpowers the younger, weaker Wulf who vows revenge for the death of his father and is subsequently exiled from the land of Rohan.
In the next Scene, Hera is separated from his party by a random raging Oliphant, who then eaten by a Tentacle Monster in the woods as Hera watches. Hera is kidnapped by Wulf’s men shortly after. In a fortress in the hills, Wulf confronts Hera with a tirade about how she disrespected him and his plans for war. Hera reconsiders the marriage proposal if it would save her people, but even asking clarifying questions about it makes Wulf lose his mind and assault her. Luckily, she is rescued by her shieldmaiden and cousin.
Despite her cousins heroic efforts to save her, Hammerhand banishes him because he didn’t do a good job protecting her from getting kidnapped in the first place and her father rides out to war against Wulf’s men. Upon being betrayed by one of Rohan’s generals, Edoras falls and the Rohirrim are forced to flee to Helms Deep, Rohan’s ancestoral fortress once gifted to them by Gondor. During their last stand at Edoras and flight to Helms Deep, both of Hera’s brothers are killed.
At Helms Deep Rohan faces a seige, and long story short Helm Hammerhand dies trapped on the bridge in front of the main gate by getting frozen to death during a Blizzard after the gate itself froze shut.
With her family dead or exiled, Hera takes up the mantle of leader for her people, during the seige. Ultimately she enlists a great eagle to bring her Father’s armor to her cousin to have him return from banishment with his men in hopes that the specter of Hammerhand’s ghost will frighten the wildmen in the final battle, one of the only unique pieces of storytelling in the movie.
While waiting for her cousin’s return, Hera defeats Wulf in single combat after making an agreement that the winner would win the war. But Wulf is treacherous and doesn’t respect the agreement. He kills his advisor and sends his men to plunder Helms Deep. Ultimately, Hera and her Shieldmaiden on the bridge buy enough time for her cousin to return. Seeing a man wearing Hammerhands armor, the wildmen are dismayed and flee from what they believe to be a wraith bent on revenge. Her cousin takes the throne, while Hera takes to the wilderness to pursue adventure and freedom.
Let me start with some things that I think worked in this movie. The premise is not bad. Setting the story in Rohan gives viewers a familiar jumping-off point, while the different era allows the filmmakers to tell a new story with new characters.
The handling of the patriarchal discourse was solid. Hera is established as an independent free spirit who isn’t interested in marriage, but Rohan and Dunland’s respective cultures are depicted where at best free adventurous woman is an exception not the rule. Meanwhile, they did a decent job establishing a history where shield maidens stepped up when the men of Rohan fall, establishing that women are and have been trained in warfare for a long time even while being kept from it as much as possible.
All of this lines up well with the Lord of the Rings depiction of Rohan’s culture. A key part of the story of the Lord of the Rings is that Rohan is a patriarchal culture where power is held by men, and women are subjegated and expected not to go to war. Leadership for Eowyn was supposed to be leading the women and children. If this were not the case, Eowyn’s story of taking up arms and disguising herself as a man so she may fight are the Battle of Pelennor fields would not be subversive.
The depiction of the great eagles was tremendous, and the scene of Hera ice climbing to call upon the great eagle for help was my favorite scene in the movie.
Now I will discuss why this movie fell flat for me.
The most annoying part of the movie, that repeatedly took me out of the world, was the multiple instances where the writers lifted lines from the Lord of the Rings and inserted them into the screenplay here in ways that didn’t make any sense. The most egregious example of this metafictional device was in the first battle against Dunland which the Rohirim should be confident in their ability to win. Helm Hammerhand, a man who had never lost a battle in his life, gives a speech in which he proclaims to his men: “DEATH, DEAAAATH.”
It’s a clear lift from Theoden’s speech at the Battle of Pelennor Fields in the Return of The King. But the reason Theoden made this cry was because they WERE riding to their death against an overwhelming host of orcs where victory appeared impossible. There was a specific reason for that battle cry that didn’t apply to the line in the War of the Rohirim. Acting like it’s just a battle cry they say no matter the context cheapens the hell out of it when Theoden says it.
There were several other instances of lifted lines that took me out of the narrative. At one point, a character says “And Rohan will answer” in response to a need for action within Rohan. The line in the original movies made sense because it was about Rohan answering the call of an ally, Gondor, who needed aid. Lifting lines from the Lord of the Rings makes this movie feel less original. It feels like a decision driven by the anxiety to tell fans “REMEMBER LORD OF THE RINGS, WE ARE LIKE THAT, REMEMBER IT.” This movie spent so much time trying to be derivative of the Lord of the Rings, that it didn’t end up contributing very much that was new and exciting to Middle Earth.
There were fundamental storytelling mistakes too.
At one point her younger brother is cornered and has to make a stand against a bunch of enemies because his horse collapsed. He stands tall, pulls out his bow, knocks and arrow, draws it back. The music heightens, and just as he is about to make a heroic final stand we… cut to a commercial. And then never return to the scene. We are robbed of this moment, a robbery that flies in the face of the themes and methods of heroic literature. Even within the movie, this same character said that he hopes one-day someone will sing a song about his heroism, and then they cut away from his moment? Rude.
The next time we see him he has been captured and then is uncermoniously killed by Wulf to make the point that he’s still a bad guy. The handling of this character's death fails as both heroic literature and anime.
While less bas, we also didn’t get to see the death of Helm Hammerhand. We did get to see him holding the bridge at Helms Deep against a dozen or so enemies after the gate froze shut leaving him with no escape. But at some point, it just cuts away, and then reveals him frozen by the Blizzard. Just like with his son, we are robbed of a moment of heroic sacrifice. Maybe more importantly it wasn’t really a heroic sacrifice in Hammerhands case. If he couldn’t open the gate, the enemies wouldn’t be able to get through them either. So while he was trapped and forced to fight for his life, they could have upped the stakes by making it so they need to close the gate and he is holding the line until they can. This would be both more heroic and make for a better anime battle moment.
Rohan’s culture is defined by Anglo-Saxon values. Heroism in Anglo-Saxon poems like the Battle of Maldon is defined by honor, sacrifice, bravery and devotion in the face of absolute defeat.
On the honor front, this movie is fine. The protagonists are people of their word, while the villain is treacherous. The protagonists stood strong in the face of defeat, while their enemies fled and broke their bonds with each other.
On the sacrifice side, however, they really struggled to structure the story around these moments. Her older brother is killed at random in the Battle for Edoras, her younger brother’s final stand is excluded, and her father died fighting many but they didn’t raise the stakes to make his sacrifice feel important. Anime is traditionally excellent at setting up captivating and emotionally satsifying fights, and so is heroic literature, but in this movie which features both it just isn’t happening.
There was a moment where I thought the movie was going to redeem itself in this department. There is a bridge scene where the men of Dunland have built a huge siege tower that converts into a bridge to cross the wall into Helms Deep. The enemies are preparing to come across and there are only a handful of Rohirim soldiers left inside the fortress. I got excited, expecting Hera and her Shield Maiden to answer the call and hold the line on the bridge against a sea of enemies..
But instead, Hera rides out alone and challenges Wulf to one-on-one combat to end their hostilities. She beats him, and then Wulf sends his army to attack anyway. This was a fine fight scene, but I feel that the scale of a larger battle on the bridge where she is holding the line for her people would have been a cooler moment informed by the same heroic literature that inspired Tolkien, instead of another reminder that the villain is a bitch.
Another thing that bothered me as a hardcore fan is that this movie played fast and loose with the Middle Earth lore. The most significant example of this is when an Oliphant shows up, actually several oliphants show up throughout the movie. But oliphants are from east of mordor, why would there be a bunch in Rohan?
There is no good argument for why the men of Dunland would have access to Oliphants, especially given the established reality that the men of Dunland are poor. The Rohirim hold the farmland and the resources, while Dunland is in the hills and has access to far fewer resources. In short, they’re broke boys. How did they import multiple Oliphants from east of Mordor to help in their war effort?
Another moment depicts a watcher, like the one from the Mines of Moria, living in a forest pond on Rohan. Tolkien didn’t explain the origins of the watcher, but it’s pretty obvious that it is a unique being that is likely one of the nameless things that crawled from deep inside the mountains when the Dwarves mined too far. It doesn’t make sense that one is hanging out in a Rohirrim pond.
In the grand scheme of things, these are relatively minor grievances on the lore end.
The villain isn’t scary to me. He is a bit of a whiney bitch who knows his father instigated the fight that killed him, and is still throwing a fit about it the entire time. His primary goal was to marry Hera, but when she seriously considered it to save her people, he throws a temper tantrum when she asks some clarifying questions about it. This is not a very ominous villain, compared to the grave evils of Smoug, Melkor, Saruman, or Sauron. I don’t think it has to be the level of evil as these past characters, but I think they spent too much time reminding us that he is treacherous and morally dubious, and not enough time showing why I should be scared of him.
On a smaller note that applies to all the offshoots of Lord of the Rings lore, the need to shoehorn the connection of every story back to the original Lord of the Rings main plotline gets annoying. The end of this movie depicts Hera riding off to meet Gandalf to talk about some rings she saw orcs stealing in the second act of the movie. It like feels forced and unnecessary tie to the main storyline. Why can’t we have stories set in Middle Earth that live on their own?
All-and-all, it feels like they didn’t read up on Lord of the Rings lore OR anglo-saxon lore, nor did they watch any badass animes before making this movie. Furthermore, they were so anxious to tap into fan nostalgia that they ended up using cringe line lifts from the original movies and retreading a lot of the same scenery and storytelling from the original movies, but not in a way that felt fresh or even matched the standards set by those movies.
