The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

⭐8/10

I went into this one with pretty low expectations. We haven't really gotten a great Tolkien adaptation since the original trilogy, and I wasn't exactly expecting an anime to be the one to finally stand out. I think anything passable would have pleased me at this point. 

Well, I'm not actually sure this movie was totally passable, but I liked it anyways. As far as negatives, I think there are plenty. For one, I don't think it was finished. I've been reading about how WB had to release a movie this year to retain rights, and it definitely felt like this one was pushed through the door. Some of the animation is choppy, and plenty felt under baked. Not a great start!

There are also some bizarre choices. I've heard a few people praise Brian Cox as Helm, but I thought his performance was mostly terrible. He has the wrong voice for that role, and most of his lines seemed completely mailed-in. I just imagine Brian Cox scowling when his agent reminds him he signed on to do this one and he has to go record lines now. I guess, as Lord of the Mark, I ended up comparing him to Bernie a lot, and Bernie has perhaps my favorite performance from LOTR, so that's unfair. But I thought this was truly uninspired. 

Speaking of Cox, he has this weird accent in a movie full of weird accents. Every family member has a different accent, and the funniest one is that the villain has a northern Yorkshire accent and then in a flashback as a kid, he is Scottish?? These are nitpicks, but I had to laugh. 

Anyways, I guess the bigger issues are real things like the main character not having a lot of depth, and there not being a lot of creativity with the plot. They have a few too many call-backs to the trilogy, characters repeating what other characters said. Objectively, I'm not sure it's a great movie. 

But I liked it, remember?? I actually thought this was a pretty cool take on Middle-earth, feeling to me a lot closer to Tolkien's European conception rather than Jackson's New Zealand. This Middle-earth (or at least Rohan) has clouds and rain and snow. I love winter as a setting, and we get some great dark, moody shots here with hooded figured standing ominously in flurries.  The tonal shift definitely made me think about the way that Tolkien himself viewed Middle-earth.

I liked Helm's arc, an interesting take on a great King who's life begins to unravel. I don't remember much about him from the books, but I like the treatment he got here, with a cool send-off. Speaking of which, I thought this movie had an interesting, gritty feel. There are no elves and no magic, and really no orcs, so this felt like a war of humans killing humans which is darker than most Tolkien, and yet it felt appropriate. That second half was a pretty interesting descent into darkness, or descent into the shadow as Tolkien might say. 

Anyways, that's a lot on a movie that I thought was kinda just okay. It was a cool exploration into Middle-earth that felt a tad derivative, but also unique enough to justify existing. I'm not sure it will please all Tolkien fans, but I'm also not sure non-fans would have much of an interest. But I liked it and I stand by that.