Shadows on the Wall | The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

The Lord of the Rings
The War of the Rohirrim

dir Kenji Kamiyama
scr Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins, Arty Papageorgiou
prd Philippa Boyens, Joseph Chou, Jason DeMarco
voices Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Miranda Otto, Luke Pasqualino, Lorraine Ashbourne, Shaun Dooley, Benjamin Wainwright, Yazdan Qafouri, Laurence Ubong Williams, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Christopher Lee
release US/UK 13.Dec.24
24/Japan New Line 2h14

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001

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With anime-style characters in stunningly detailed painted landscapes, this animated prequel looks gorgeous. Director Kenji Kamiyama maintains a lovely sense of light and has a great eye for spectacular set pieces. But this movie is let down by a script that never pulls the audience in. Without a single offhanded moment, characters have little personality. This creates an over-earnest tone that will only appeal to die-hard fans.

In Rohan, King Helm (Cox) is a powerful and benevolent leader, shocked when a hot-headed lord turns on him violently. And this lord's son Wulf (Pasqualino) vows vengeance for his father's accidental death, putting him at odds with his childhood friend Hera (Wise), Helm's daughter. Hera is smart and capable, but is overlooked in favour of her brothers, warrior Haleth (Wainwright) and musician Hama (Qafouri), who are called upon to defend Rohan from Wulf's attacks. Then when Helm's subjects find themselves under siege in a mountain refuge, it's Hera's lateral thinking that might save them.

All of this takes place nearly two centuries before The Fellowship of the Ring, and narrative links are dropped in here and there, including voiceover narration by Eowyn (Otto). This story is told from Hera's perspective, which adds interest since she's the fiercest warrior among her people but is sidelined as a woman. Although that's about it as far as deeper themes go. And the bigger problem is that each character is written without texture, only required to deliver emotive dialog and rousingly cliched speeches.

Being unable to identify with any of these people makes the film frustrating, because the story itself has some compelling inbuilt momentum. And it looks terrific, most notably due to the beautifully rendered backgrounds and settings, plus a strong sense of icy weather and weighty physicality in the action beats. There's also some fun to be had spotting references to the earlier films, from a late appearance by Saruman (complete with Lee's voice) to some cool casting.

But watching this overlong epic is rather hard work. We want to root for these characters, but none of them is developed enough to elicit much sympathy beyond what's expected. This is especially true for Wulf, who could have been a properly complex antagonist but simplistically turns from nice to nasty. And the events themselves are presented without resonant context, leaving us out in the cold, as it were.

themes, violence 11.Dec.24

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