If you gave me 3 guesses as to how New Line Cinema and Warner Bros would try to continue the Lord of the Rings franchise in theaters, I don’t think I’d land on a 2D animated prequel with a 135 minute runtime, and released in the heat of the competitive holiday box office season. But here we are, that movie exists and it is mostly… fine. The War of Rohirrim has its share of flaws, which we’ll get to, but it’s an inoffensive action flick with cool moments and some solid voice acting. What the film doesn’t have going for it is staying power, partially due to some hiccups in the animation as well as a simplistic story that seems stretched thin for this outsized runtime.
We’re dropped into a Middle Earth set 183 years before the battle of the One Ring. Helm Hammerhand’s (Brian Cox) reign over Rohan is a fruitful one, as he prepares his daughter Héra (Gaia Wise) to have her hand taken in marriage. Yet, on the night of an eventful celebration, the party is crashed by an oafish Lord, and his young adult son Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), whom the Lord believes should be the rightful husband of Héra – as the pair were once childhood friends. Helm is not only offended by the intrusion but foresees an ulterior motive for his party crashers, which inadvertently kicks off a years long war.
I can’t say The War of Rohirrim is a must-see film, especially when its aesthetic isn’t far off from a random anime on Netflix. The animated style is going for vibrancy and elegance, as our 2D characters traverse 3D backgrounds. Yet, the animation itself, which should be the main draw here, is at times dynamic, but other times underwhelming. When the characters speak, the mouths don’t always appear matched up. It’s not that the dialogue is out of sync so much as the mouths seem to move slowly, sluggishly, with quite a few moments where the characters are showing nothing but teeth while they’re talking. It’s not entirely immersion breaking, and I do think it gets better as the film goes along, but it’s noticeable enough to think it’s beneath a big studio production such as this. It makes you wonder if there were major production issues or if the animators even had enough time.
In general, the characters appear a bit blocky, and the movements aren’t always crisp. However, in the scenes that are going for a more 3D look, that speed is there, such as when Héra flees a violent threat via horseback. The colors are well chosen, but perhaps missing a touch of vivid glow and contrast. The action scenes themselves won’t revolutionize the genre, but they’re easy to follow and hard hitting. One of the high points of the film is a grand one-man stand outside a castle, as a warrior fights off invaders in what is essentially a blizzard. I won’t spoil what the end result is from that scene, but it’s admittedly a very awesome moment. Elsewhere, Héra has a recurring story thread involving a giant eagle, and the film does a fine job of capturing the beauty and weight of the animal, especially in flight.
If the animation itself is choppy, the story is also a mixed bag to match. The key issue is that Wulf just isn’t much of a compelling character. He has clear goals, and he desires power, but there isn’t much depth to his persona. Perhaps a leading cause of this is that we don’t get to see Wulf and Héra as children, where this great friendship supposedly took place. It cheapens the plot, as the filmmakers hope you’ll care based on vibes and innuendo. It also negates the potential to show these characters at two distinct points in their lives, showing the growth each person has taken into adulthood and deepening the conflict between the two. This is a particularly interesting criticism, the lack of actually seeing these relationships that the movie talks so much about, when the movie is already long enough. Too long, in fact. There’s few things in the film that appear egregiously unnecessary – it’s just that a lot of scenes could have been trimmed down for time. Shaving off 20 minutes, or even using that time for better character development, likely turn this film into a much better story.
The voice cast is mostly solid, but they’re pretty much all blown over by Brian Cox’s fiery performance. To the point that it’s very noticeable when his character isn’t on screen. Like, you can tell he’s really giving a damn in what is essentially a B-list animated movie, but a professional is still a professional. The tenor in his voice alone shakes every adversary to their core; I don’t know why he even bothers with punches when he can just shout someone to death.
But these finite positives don’t entirely make up for a shallow story, weak villain, and disappointing 3rd act. Perhaps the film needed a rewrite and more production time because there’s plenty of potential here. But once we get to the action heavy climax, the Battle of Helms’s Deep, ironically, this is not. This is a movie that would be better-than-average if it was “straight to video” or straight to streaming, but it can’t live up to the expectations of the silver screen. And to think, we have this, but those cowards at Warner Bros are still keeping Coyote vs Acme from us.
