- Brian Cox, Miranda Otto,
- December 13th 2024
- 134
- Kenji Kamiyama
Brian Cox voices the King of Rohan, Helm Hammerhand, in this anime adaptation of a new Middle-earth story.
After 10 years off our cinema screens, more film adaptations of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth tales are coming our way. First up is the anime feature The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
The film is set 183 years before the events in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy and is presented like a story passed down through the years, narrated by Éowyn (voiced by Miranda Otto, reprising her role from the franchise).
It tells the story of Rohan’s King, Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), and his daughter Héra (Gaia Wise) and follows them as they try to protect their people from Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), a Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father.
They take refuge in a mountainside fortress – which will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep – and Wulf brings the war to them.
While Jackson’s six Middle-earth films were inspired by full novels, this movie comes from an appendix about the history of Rohan’s rulers in The Return of the King, the third novel in The Lord of The Rings trilogy.
The story is about Helm, but the filmmakers chose to focus on his daughter and make her the lead of the movie.
Unfortunately, Héra is a very generic action heroine that is hard to fully invest in, perhaps because the writing is not strong enough and because Wise needed to inject more personality into her voice acting.
There are some exciting action scenes at the beginning and the end and it’s more violent than you might expect for an animation (it’s a 12A), but the story is drawn out and it lags in the middle.
It doesn’t help that the film is far too long at 134 minutes and the pacing is too slow at times.
On a positive note, the Japanese-style animation sets this film apart from its live-action predecessors and is visually refreshing and Cox’s voice works perfectly for Helm.
You don’t have to be a diehard Lord of the Rings fan to understand this film – a casual passing knowledge of the previous films will be sufficient.
However, true fans will probably get more out of the story and pick up on more references to the trilogy.
In cinemas from Friday 13th December.
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