The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)
History becomes legend.
I was playing a video game earlier and made a comment about how cool it would be to have a mode where you were laying siege to a tower dramatically and the Lord of the Rings music would kick in, and that’s all it took today. I’ve already seen the other movies, even if I’ve only done a review of one of the Hobbit ones and can’t bring myself to watch the original trilogy after a extended cut marathon that has left me unable to ever proceed past a scene of Treebeard speaking without going unconscious - but either way thought it proper time for me to get to the animated one. I mean, it’s a no brainer on paper - I like anime, I like animation, I like fantasy, so i should like this. Let’s go a head with this mouthful as we check out The War of the Rohirrim.
Although the name isn’t inaccurate, I almost feel like a name more in tune with Helm would have made sense, given that it follows him and his family. Specifically, it follows his one and only daughter, who in classical land-viking lady fashion is a stubborn headed battle girl craving adventure and no man to get in the way of her freedom to ride about doing suicidal things like feeding the enormous eagles. Another lord shows up in town, starts blasting the king about how his daughter should marry the lord’s son instead of some Gondorian git, and the king bestows a street fight pardon to the man so they can duke it out like they both want to. Of course, the lord is soft and tubby, so despite striking first and landing three or so blows (and drawing a little blood) first, the king’s counter attack one shots the lord out of this realm, to which his son flips his crap. This means he blames everything on the king and will be our villain of the movie as he seeks revenge for this one act that his own dad brought on like an idiot (but that’s movies for you).
The movie keeps up a pretty decent pace up until we hit the siege section of the movie, in which - much like a siege - things slow way down. It is in fact all animated, so most the acting is going to be done through the vocal side of things - but the animation can help support a line delivery at times anyways, so it’s not all bad there. I also feel like some of it might be some level of rotoscoped at times, as there’s a few actions that just have that classic feel of painting over a real person with how they move. Could be off base there, I really don’t think it’s the mo-capped stages of animation, particularly given how some of the scenery doesn’t always mesh with the character’s with the fancy camera moves - but that’s getting a bit further off from the acting. Line deliveries are good, and although at times I’d say it would be fair to say some could perhaps have been done with a bit more gusto of emotion, it’s overall no worse then you’d really expect. They do a good job, at the least good enough to get a feel for the characters and what they are thinking.
Characters are in about the same kind of spot as the acting. It’s good enough, but falls behind the acting in account of most of it really not having much to it. Simple is good for ease of viewing - don’t get me wrong - and I’m not going to say it would be unrealistic that a revenge motive would play out like that, but it also feels a bit “just because” at times. That sometimes comes out in the lines as well - like we had to phrase it in this manner because we wanted to do a little easter egg sort of thing to the OG movies instead of something that might have felt a bit more natural. That said, our main character feels good, doesn’t really come off as being good at everything like some sort of self-insert character largely would end up doing, and still gets to go on a bit of a hero’s journey despite being the same person through the entire thing honestly. I feel like the biggest change actually comes out of King dad to be honest, who goes from somewhat generic “know-it-all King” to practically Shinji levels of moping, only to turn it around and basically be this Akuma style boss. It’s a nice twist from generic to epic that I wasn’t really expecting. Even our lead daughter gets to have some sweet fights after pretty much getting helplessly bullied through a good chunk of the movie (even if that did kind of confuse me as to why she wasn’t being as effective as with that shield maiden attitude you know she’s gotta be better then the movie is giving).
The whole family.
Animation looks good as far as quality of any given still. It might not be everyone’s specific breed of drawing, but I find it well enough done. It sort of sits in that detailed at points but not so overly detailed it feels like they wanted it to be super real playground, and I can dig that. Colors and overall feel make me think a bit about Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and since I adore that it’s not a bad thing to trigger in my brain. The actual animation itself though (the motion side of things) can feel a little back and forth. It’s not quite as smooth as some animation is, feeling like maybe if everything else was animating every second frame this would at times be every third or forth - so slightly choppy at times. It wasn’t so bad it made me uncomfortable or anything like that, but it was something I certainly noticed at times especially at the beginning. Perhaps it just need a break-in period for me to get accustomed to it, since i don’t feel I noticed it as much towards the end. I do think there is some 3d models getting thrown in here frequent enough as well, although I’m not entirely sure if the main cast is getting that same treatment at all times because they mostly lack that look.
As mentioned before, it’s sometimes apparent that the two aren’t the same type of medium when the camera gets running real good. Sometimes it’s the classic animation tell - you know, one things colors just don’t match that background object that isn’t getting interacted with, leading to that thing that is getting broken to be obviously different then the stuff that isn’t. There’s also a wooden wall that gets destroyed at one point that looks awfully like a CG sim was just run for it - not that it looks bad, but you see it and go “yep.” For the most part though, it does look and feel like Lord of the Rings meets anime, so it’s nailing what it was going for even if it does have it’s own little hiccups here and there. Of course, then you have the “run away” that made me think of rotoscoping I mentioned earlier on, so it’s one of those things where I’m sure there’s all sorts of methods getting thrown around on this, and I’d kind of be interested to see some behind the scenes stuff at some point just to see if it was just happenstance that caused it to look that way or if that extra character flair really was because that reference material.
Audio is what you would think. It’s got some classic Lord of the Rings sounds and songs in it, and the balance is all well done. It mostly manages to avoid contact with the rest of the movies and the likes until the ending - although it’s kind of nice that it had the renaming of Helm's Deep to Helm’s Deep in there, because my slow self didn’t even register they kept calling it by a different name the entire movie until they pointed out it having a new name. Never said I was the fastest car on the track, you know? Anyways, for the thinking person it’s batch of classics - like revenge is bad and stupid, being young and/or a woman doesn’t mean you aren’t smart and/or capable, family, and the benefits to being nice to gigantic birds. For those looking for easter eggs and that kind of stuff, you’ll get a ton of it - probably a bit more than me considering how much I pay attention usually doesn’t catch all the little background details of stuff. That said, the idea of rabies in middlearth does bring up some questions I don’t know if I really want answered.
Sometimes age doesn’t mean smart.
Not a bad flick. It has the feel that I expected out of it, and although it delivered what I expected it also didn’t really do a whole lot to stand out a crazy amount more than I expected. It did have a few turns or ways things played out that wasn’t entirely what I expected, but overall a smooth if not somewhat generic ride into the fantasy lands. Still has some things that might feel a bit poke-and-prod towards the fandom, still has some of those shots that feel like they linger a little longer than they really had to, and still has some fun battles fronted by guys making dramatic speeches. What more do I need from a fantasy flick?