Westeros Conquered Middle-earth
'Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim' feels like it owes more to 'Game of Thrones' than Tolkien.
It’s been over twenty years since The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and I’m not sure we’ll ever get that magic back. Director Peter Jackson couldn’t do it with the lackluster and tonally confused Hobbit trilogy. The Rings of Power on Amazon feels like a prime example of Mid TV where a lot of money was spent to make something that’s not bad, but also not all that interesting, and certainly not as good as the thing it’s meant to evoke. The best Lord of the Rings thing of the past twenty years is probably the video game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and even the story pales next to its gameplay mechanics.
While Lord of the Rings kicked off a string of fantasy film imitators throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, the future of fantasy storytelling on screen went to Game of Thrones. It pulled the genre in a more “realistic” direction meant to echo the violence and politicking of 15th century England, and others have assumed that fantasy will only appeal to modern audiences if it’s people using violence to jockey for position. This is a far cry from the Lord of the Rings, the world fell in love with where power is a corruptive force and inflicting violence, while necessary in war, is not necessarily what makes a hero.
Sadly, the new animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim feels more in line with the hit HBO series of the 2010s than the hit Peter Jackson movies of the 2000s. Even though the animated movie, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, wears the clothing of Jackson’s movies with musical cues borrowed from Howard Shore’s unforgettable scores and Eowyn (Miranda Otto) providing the narration, these trappings only serve to highlight the distance between Rohirrim and the Oscar-winning trilogy.
Working from the appendices of Tolkien’s books, War of the Rohirrim is set two hundred years before the events of Lord of the Rings and follows Héra (Gaia Wise), the strong-willed, thoughtful heroine (basically Eowyn before Eowyn), whose father Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox) must battle against the vengeful Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), Héra’s childhood friend who now wants revenge for the death of his father at Helm’s hands. When Wulf unites the wild people to march on Edoras, Héra rises to protect the people of Rohan.
War of the Rohirrim has a great kick-off when Eowyn’s narration tells us that Héra’s story was lost and no one sings songs about her. That’s a terrific place to start because, too often, women’s work goes unremarked in history, or it only exists insofar as it serves famous men. After all, we know the name Helm’s Deep because of Helm Hammerhand, so turning the focus to his daughter feels both subversive and an insight welcome into who gets to be the heroes of these stories. But the film never delivers because Héra is a perfect hero with no personal challenge to overcome. These kinds of ideal heroes aren’t strangers to Tolkien’s story, but characters like Aragorn and Samwise are still tested by more than just the external enemies they face.
Everything in War of the Rohirrim comes down to physical strength. No one has to wrestle with doubt, loyalty, or love. The movie is largely a series of action scenes loosely tied together with the barest plotting, and for a film that runs over two hours, it’s disappointing that so little effort was spared getting to know Héra, Helm, Wulf, or any of the supporting characters. These are archetypes meant to fight, and that feels like such a shallow approximation of what’s compelling about Lord of the Rings. There is violence in Middle-earth, but when it’s set against fictional creatures like orcs, you can take a step back, whereas there’s no room to maneuver seeing a human catch an arrow through the neck or having his forearms lopped off.
These violent ends hit even harder when the world is largely devoid of magic. While Game of Thrones has its dragons and ice zombies, the meat of the story is about how men interact with other men. While I’m not necessarily against a story about conflicts among men in Middle-earth, it makes Tolkien’s world far less interesting. We get two orcs, a few eagles, oliphants, and a watcher in the water, and that’s it. With no wizards, elves, ents, dwarfs, hobbits, and so forth, War of the Rohirrim feels oddly colorless. If you took out Shore’s music, little here would even signify the world as Middle-earth. It plays largely as a generic fantasy story that’s chasing what’s popular rather than any love for the world Jackson and his cohorts made out of Tolkien’s books.
There are moments where War of the Rohirrim conjures a unique spark, and you get a brief glimpse of how a story set in Middle-earth using an anime style could be a breath of fresh air in Tolkien adaptations. But then the moment quickly fades, and we’re back to an endless action scene involving characters we don’t care about with largely meaningless stakes. The film opens by implying Héra’s story was lost because men didn’t want to give her credit. By the end, her story appears forgotten because it’s forgettable.
What I’m Watching
When the Atlanta Film Critics Circle awards for 2024 earlier this week, the only selection I hadn’t seen was the documentary winner, Sugarcane. I made time for it today since it’s now on Disney+ (it’s a National Geographic picture, and NatGeo is on Disney+). While I’m still comfortable with my top selection (The Remarkable Life of Ibelin), I have no issue recognizing Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s harrowing feature about the abuse and murder of Indigenous children at St. Joseph’s, a residential school in Canada. The film goes beyond an investigation of what happened at St. Joseph’s and pulls back to examine the generations of trauma reverberating through the community. It’s a powerful work, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar.
What I’m Reading
Moonlight in the Lion’s Den by Matt Zoller Seitz [Vulture] - Barry Jenkins is an auteur filmmaker who tells challenging stories about race and identity in America. So why would he devote years of his life to making a Lion King prequel? On the one hand, this piece by Seitz feels like it’s built to assuage the concerns of Jenkins’ arthouse fans—people who would happily see Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk but balk at the latest “live-action” adaptation (Mufasa: The Lion King is entirely animated; it’s just that the animation is photorealistic). But ultimately, this is part of the marketing push for the movie, and the best this article can do is highlight the tools Jenkins had to play with to try and tell this story. While it’s nice to get some insights into Jenkins’ process, you could just easily tell this story about any other filmmaker who disappears down a tech rabbit hole. I’m sure this was a rewarding process for Jenkins, but I still don’t understand why anyone should care about what Mufasa and Scar were up to as kids.
Trump’s Fans Are Suffering From Tony Soprano Syndrome by Adam Serwer [The Atlantic] - This is just a good media literacy story. Too many people are watching anti-hero stories and failing to understand them as such. On the one hand, I’m a little sympathetic to that. We tend to accept that our protagonist is the hero, and if we’re rooting for someone, we would assume they share our upright morality. We wouldn’t root for a bad guy…would we? But anti-heroes became a dominant character in the 21st century as long-form storytelling on television grew more sophisticated and was able to free itself from the FCC-mandated limitations of network television. As Serwer points out, people now see morally reprehensible characters as heroic because it fits their worldview without questioning the underlying actions.
What I’m Hearing
After being so painfully disappointed by A Complete Unknown, I’ve been listening to other folk music. Specifically, we have the great soundtrack for Inside Llewyn Davis. Unfortunately, only a few tracks from this album are available on Spotify (but just go buy it; it’s a great album). If you want more and only want to use Spotify, you can listen to the live album, Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn,’ which is also terrific.
What I’m Playing
After five weeks and 65 hours, I finally beat Horizon: Zero Dawn. There’s a lot to like in the game, and I tend not to get sucked into big open-world games like this unless they’re fun to play. I will say that I think that the game’s attempt to incorporate different play styles can make it somewhat daunting at the outset. For example, I thought I would need to constantly set traps for enemies and lure them there, but I found that other weapons were far more effective, so I didn’t have to worry about setting traps (it should be noted I played on “easy” so perhaps on harder difficulties you need to be more strategic).
Part of me wants to rush into the sequel, Horizon: Forbidden West, but I think I’m kind of done with big games for 2024. I’m going to tool around on smaller titles. I decided to pick up Ape Escape, and boy, going from a 3D game in 2024 to a 3D game from 1999 takes some adjusting. I can pick up a 2D game from my childhood like Super Mario Bros. 3, and play it with no problem. But trying to figure out the camera position in a 3D game from 25 years ago is a challenge in and of itself.
The last two sentences of that film review… clever writing, sir. I tip my cap to you.