The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Parent Guide

Héra (Gaia Wise), daughter of King Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), is headstrong, independent, and one of the fastest riders in Rohan. With her older brothers, Hama (Yazdan Qafouri) and Haleth (Benjamin Wainwright) set to inherit the kingdom, the best Héra can hope for is a good marriage to some noble from the allied nation of Gondor.

Powerful landowner Freca (Shaun Dooley) has other plans. He wants Héra to be married to his son, Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), but Helm wants no relationship with Freca. The two get into a brawl, and Helm’s single blow leaves Freca dead. Wulf vows revenge, and soon amasses an army from the Dunlendings, against whom Helm has spent his life fighting in border disputes.

Desperate to fight with her brothers, Héra is left in command of the city while Rohan’s army rides out to fight Wulf. Her options keep narrowing, but all Héra can do is keep working for the people who so desperately need her help.

I’ve been saying for years that more fantasy films should be animated. Sure, CGI has come a long way, but I still think that there’s a magic to animation that lends itself fabulously to the genre. I’ve also been a life-long fan of The Lord of the Rings, so you’d think this movie would be right down my alley.

Unfortunately, I think it’s missed the mark (nerd pun not intended) in more ways than one. There are some deviations from Tolkien, which is inevitable, but the bigger problem is one of tone. The film never really seems to sit comfortably in Middle Earth, despite the animators’ meticulous care in replicating the backgrounds from Peter Jackson’s trilogy. I think there’s a disconnect between those renditions and the more anime-influenced characters and costumes. There are also some pretty glaring issues going on between the digital elements and the animated ones, and some scenes look less like a finished film and more like someone playing with paper dolls in front of a 90s video game cutscene. I really expected more polish than this.

Then there’s the writing. None of the characters really have much of an arc except Helm Hammerhand, and he’s not the protagonist. Héra is, and most of the time she’s just rehashing Eowyn’s moments – sometimes shot for shot – or standing dramatically in the background. Still, the film gives her a real boost: Tolkien only ever listed her as Helm’s unnamed daughter, so she’s really moving up in the world. The dialogue isn’t actively awful, but it also feels out of sync with the earlier films, and further removes the story from its franchise.

The War of the Rohirrim has almost identical content concerns to its Middle Earth predecessors, focusing on fantasy battlefield violence and minor social drinking or smoking. The bigger risk is disappointment. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe I’m just struggling to move on from Jackson’s trilogy. But I think The Lord of the Rings set records at the Oscars for a reason, and I think there’s a good reason none of the successive Tolkien-inspired films have come close. War of the Rohirrim is more disappointing than bad, but it shouldn’t be necessary to lower your expectations. There’s lightning in a bottle in the original movie trilogy. Maybe it’s time to stop trying to top it up with tap water.