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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Movie Review

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a 2024 anime fantasy film directed by Kenji Kamiyama. It’s a very safe and boring movie.

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“You do not seek an alliance…

You seek a throne“

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A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and traitorous lord of Rohan seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm Hammerhand, the king of Rohan, and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg. This movie was basically just made in order for the studio to retain the rights to this IP and it shows – it’s one of the laziest franchise extenders you can think of. They stretched one page of Tolkien’s books into one unnecessarily long movie that clocks in at over two hours and nothing of substance or interest ever happens.

I am not a fan of this franchise and this movie represents everything that I dislike about this type of fantasy series – the lack of truly fantastical elements and an emphasis on just war action scenes with no proper character development or magic involved. There are giant eagles here, overpowered characters and different unique creatures influenced by this series and anime as a whole. Those scenes were the best of the bunch, but more often than not the film focused on tedious medieval battles instead of fun adventuring.

My main problem with this movie is the lack of any meaningful character development. They employed some excellent actors, especially notable is Brian Cox in the role of Helm. These actors elevated their pedestrian roles, but only to a degree as they couldn’t save these non-entities for characters. They have no personalities to speak of and they talk in very typical medieval jargon with speeches that are overlong and dull.

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Hera is this standard badass heroine that we’ve seen numerous times before while Helm is yet another stoic and overpowered fantasy hero that is also very typical. The worst offender has to be Wulf, who is yet another one of these revenge-seeking lunatics that stand for a tiresome villain in any story and especially this one. There is nothing here that we haven’t seen before and certainly that central friendly relationship turned antagonistic ranks as the most familiar one.

The War of the Rohirrim does have solid animation, I will give it that. Many have complained about its cheapness, and the movie was certainly made on a shoestring budget, but I did appreciate its anime influences and traditional style. The movie was clearly made with the intention to bridge the gap between anime/gaming and LOTR/high fantasy fans, which was an admirable choice that only paid off in the visuals. The character designs are plain and overly simplistic, but the background work is stellar, the lighting and shadows were so well done, and the movie had numerous interesting locales and creatures well drawn and gorgeous to observe.

The score is familiar, but somewhat rousing. The movie has some moments of imagination and interest, but those came few and far in between. The vast majority of its scenes are just prolonged wars and battles that quickly grew on my nerves how boring and uninspired they are. The action really should have been better for this type of movie to work, but it would have not worked either way as caring about the plot and characters is requisite for me to care about the spectacle and to be emotionally engaged.

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