‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ movie review: A dazzling yet cautious canter through Middle Earth’s lore

In its best moments, ‘The War of the Rohirrim’ embraces the arresting surrealism of anime or the introspective wonder of Miyazaki, but instead settles for something safer: a forgettable myth-making exercise

There’s always been a curious magnetism to Middle Earth’s rich mythology of untold tales — the whispered legends tucked into appendices, or the histories that get only a fleeting nod in Tolkien’s pages. The War of the Rohirrim, the latest foray into this hallowed realm, takes up the challenge of unearthing one such story: the origin of Helm’s Deep, the fortress whose name alone conjures echoes of Peter Jackson’s grandiose battle sequence. 

There’s also a peculiar kind of pressure that comes with adapting Tolkien. You’re tending to the sacred flame of geekdom, stewarding a world whose fan base makes the Uruk’s look tame. Kenji Kamiyama’s anime feature is not so much a gallant charge into this rarely-charted territory as it is a cautious trot down a well-worn path, with just enough novelty to justify its existence and plenty of fodder for those who find Middle Earth’s cinematic ubiquity exhausting.

Set two centuries before the Fellowship’s arduous quest, The War of the Rohirrim focuses on Héra (voiced by Gaia Wise), the spirited daughter of Rohan’s king Helm Hammerhand (voiced with gravelly gravitas by Brian Cox). Héra is a proto-Éowyn — a horse-riding, sword-swinging shieldmaiden who dreams of defying patriarchal expectations. She is everything Tolkien’s women were often not: a warrior with a strong arc, albeit one that doesn’t quite escape the pull of predictability.

Crafted by a fellowship of writers including Philippa Boyens (a veteran of Jackson’s trilogy), the screenplay tries valiantly to inject her with a sense of agency, yet she remains curiously adrift, and more of a narrative device to tie together a tale of revenge and ruin.

Revenge, in fact, is the film’s driving force. The plot kicks off when Helm accidentally one-punches a rival lord to the afterlife during some testosterone-charged negotiations. The man’s son, Wulf, swears vengeance. He is your standard-issue villain  — brooding, snarling, and single-mindedly set on destruction. 

Wulf’s siege on Helm’s Deep — the iconic fortress not yet mythologized by Gandalf’s epic third-act cavalry charge in The Two Towers — forms the better part of the story. It spans a bitter winter with an extended set piece that Kamiyama renders with a painterly menace: snow-swept battlements, dwindling supplies, and a creeping sense of doom that evokes a slow-burning dread. It’s grim, atmospheric, and at times hauntingly beautiful. 

But then the characters start talking, and the spell breaks. Over the second act, the quality of the dialogue takes a plunge off the deep end and veers into clunky exposition, robbing the quieter moments of their power, sort of like watching the Battle of the Pelennor Fields with an LOTR nerd pausing every five minutes to explain why their favourite character is an inanimate siege weapon (guilty).