Film Review - The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a new animated Lord of the Rings film executive produced by Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings writers Fran Walsh and Phillipia Boyens and concerns king Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox) the king of Rohan in a time before the one ring came into Bilbo’s possession and Theoden assumed the throne as horselord, one night at court King Hammerhand kills the king of a rival Rohan clan and his son Wulf (Luke Pasqualino) vows revenge.

The War of the Rohirrim is actually a pretty good film but then again I was more open to it than others I know who were put off from watching it when I told them it was an animated film and the animation here directed by Kenji Kamiyama is pretty good, it captures the feel of Middle-Earth as we saw it in the Lord of the Rings films pretty well even if at times the anime style felt a little janky to watch and lacking that smoothness you want to see from a well animated film.

Also the use of the Rohan theme from Howard Shore’s score was good as well and I quite liked Brian Cox as King Hammerhand and he is a very different king to the late great Bernard Hill’s Theoden but I could see how he leads to Theoden assuming the throne during the events of the Lord of the Rings films.

But alas this movie like the Hobbit trilogy from 10 years ago just cannot light the beacons the same way that the Lord of the Rings films did, the storytelling is okay but nothing you didn’t see during the battle of Helms Deep in the Two Towers and you just get that feeling while watching this movie that as much as I liked it you would rather just watch the Lord of the Rings movies again.

And if I were David Zaslav the head of Warner Brothers I would take an axe to The Hunt for Gollum which is the next spinoff in the works because we already know what happens, Ian McKellen told Frodo and the audience “I looked everywhere for the creature Gollum but the enemy found him first” there it is in one sentence, there is no need for a 2-2.5 hour film about this one sentence.

And that was the Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim which I enjoyed for the most part but its just more of the same from a franchise that is doomed to repeat the mistakes of Star Wars in that it created a groundbreaking trilogy that defined what movies can be for a generation and then every attempt to follow it up ends in failure, 3 out of 5.