The War of the Rohirrim is an anime prequel to The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogies. It’s a major disappointment, featuring a hackneyed story and ho-hum characters, and the animation is only marginally impressive.
At the movie’s beginning, you want to see excitement worthy of its epic predecessor. Alas, it only serves as a pale shadow, and that’s being generous.
The movie takes place 183 years before the events of LOTR and it focuses on the people of Rohan who are introduced in The Two Towers. Brian Cox is the voice of Helm Hammerhand, the king of Rohan. Gaia Wise is the voice of Hera, his daughter, a shieldmaiden.
Hera has a desire to protect her people when the Kingdom of Dunlending arrives and their leader Freca (Shaun Dooley) wants to claim the throne due to his lineage. Freca and Helm have a fight, with the latter accidentally killing him and spurring the wrath of Freca’s son, Wulf (Luke Pasqualino). He vows revenge against Helm.
Years later, Hera is kidnapped and offers herself to Wulf as a bride to stop the warmongering. Before that can happen, she’s rescued, and Wulf marches back to Rohan to declare war.
The rest of the movie is a recycled version of what was done better in Peter Jackson’s trilogy. We only get a certain amount of rooting interest for these characters, but their development also comes with sluggish scenes that drag on and on without giving us any sense of wit or imagination. If anything, the way these characters are drawn in anime is decent, but when we hear the actors delivering the dialogue, the result is spectacularly unconvincing. Their mouths don’t seem to match.
The War of the Rohirrim is a pretty hard sell, even for hardcore J.R.R. Tolkien fans. It does nothing new or exciting to add to the mythology. Instead, we’re treated to a story that is dull, bloated, and needlessly long at 134 minutes.
Sorry. This ring rules nothing.
Grade: C-
(Rated PG-13 for strong violence.)
