Under Kenji Kamiyama’s taut direction, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” skillfully blends 2D hand-drawn animation with Tolkien’s penchant for heroic fury and painful loss in an epic feature film releasing December 12th from Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema. A surprisingly brisk 2:14 runtime hits all the right notes (as does Stephen Gallagher’s gorgeous score) — where vibrant Japanese anime gives royal family drama, imminent heartbreak, and cruel warfare a rather supernatural ferocity. The result is a terrific film, hands down. Handling both fantasy and tragedy with all seriousness, this standalone Middle-earth story beckons us back as “the next big LOTR film.” Although the entire sketch of this story fits in about 2 pages of Appendix A, “The War of the Rohirrim” is a satisfying narrative piece that stands tall alongside Peter Jackson’s previous LOTR and Hobbit Trilogies, but does not outdo them.
A Fine Standalone Tale
A bit disconnected from previous stories concerning the War of the Ring, this film considers a more intimate drama. A mighty King loves his daughter to the point of being overprotective; yet no one dares cage her unbridled free spirit, never to be diminished. Echoes of Théoden and his niece Éowyn, to be sure. In fact, Miranda Otto returns to be the film’s narrator (an elegant and welcome touch). The voice actors are excellent all-around.
Helm Hammerhand (an imposing Brian Cox) will suffer no fools. His sons Haleth and Háma are always close to his side. His daughter, Héra (a stunning Gaia Wise), would rather be out feeding a shank of mutton to fledgling giant eagles. Wearing a formal dress to the royal council is NOT her bag. One cold evening Freca, a rich and powerful man (but one with Dunlendish blood), comes to Edoras. He brings an unwanted marriage proposal, desiring to wed Helm’s coltish daughter to his son Wulf. All hell breaks loose. Every good script needs an inciting incident, and boy, this one is a whopper.
After the Proposal
The tumult that follows is fully realized; as the filmmakers draw up spectacular scenes of battles both far afield and deep within the human heart. Soon bitter war and an even more biting winter rends asunder the lives of everyone in Rohan. All roads lead to the Hornburg (would have been cool to hear it called Súthburg, but what the heck); renamed “Helm’s Deep” in the near future. The night is dark and full of terrors, to borrow a phrase. But I shall spoil no more.
Thematic Essence of Tolkien
This is as much Helm’s film as it is Héra’s. He is the Dad who’s always there for his children and certainly for his people. His decisions are brash and often grim, yet his motives are precise. However often circumstances would strip Héra of her agency, she yet finds her passion and opportunity. She rises to the legendary namesake of “Shieldmaiden of Rohan” with needful determination. Tolkien excels at this kind of storytelling. His characters’ toughest edges are yet molded by compassion. The difficult choices they face truly resonate with the Professor’s sensibilities.
Fair credit to Oscar-winning producer Philippa Boyens for choosing to zero in on this particular tale in such a way that writers Jeffrey Addiss and Will Mathews (known for Netflix’s Emmy-winning “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance”) and Phoebe Gittens & Arty Papageorgiou could so successfully play in the sandbox to flesh out such exigencies. Special gold star for the handling of Fréaláf, one of my favorite characters.
Heightened Skill of the Animators
The character drama compels here as much as in the live-action films. This is largely due to Kamiyama’s shrewd storytelling sense and how he stages large action scenes against emotional powerhouse moments. A word of praise for the animation team: how beautifully these artists stage the sweeping vistas of Middle-earth! How gorgeously this imagery harkens back to original WETA designs of architecture, clothing, weaponry, and cultural objects! Colors and backgrounds are especially rich, going a long way to help frame distinctly Rohirric themes of unrequited love and revenge-lust. Sound design and foley work is stellar!
Howard Shore’s leitmotifs play a key part in this story as with all LOTR/Hobbit films. Composer Stephen Gallagher worked previously as the Music Editor for “The Hobbit” — here he brings a magic toolbox of material that really shines. His score (playing during the very writing of this review) makes one long for mountains, pine trees, waterfalls and the vast grasslands of Rohan. The closing credits song “The Rider,” sung with astounding dexterity by Paris Paloma, is perhaps the most evocative thing I’ve heard in years. Big Florence & the Machine energy opening the ears and the heart to this new vision of Middle-earth.
Tolkien Anime Adaptations Came First
A point of historical note: the glowing success of “The War of the Rohirrim” — in fact its very existence — brings us full circle back to the 1970’s where the earliest adaptation of “The Hobbit” was likewise created by a pan-Pacific production team. Indeed 1977 was a mighty big year for fantasy and sci-fi, seeing the publication of “The Silmarillion” and the phenomenon of the first Star Wars; and yet also the Peabody Award-winning telecast of “The Hobbit,” on CBS.
Produced by New York-based Rankin/Bass and animated in Japan by Topcraft, “The Hobbit” has stood the test of time as an early anime milestone (and ultimately glorified by South Park ridicule). Animators from Topcraft would work for a fledgling production house called Studio Ghibli; a new operation on the scene that would make a legendary name for itself. Seeing at least one or two distinct references to Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke” (and a nice visual composition of Helm in battle clearly going back to Ralph Bakshi’s representation of Théoden from his 1978 LOTR films) truly warms the heart.
The Advantage of Animation
A lack of appetite for anime should not detract from enjoying “The War of the Rohirrim” on its merits. Roger Ebert famously championed the medium of animation — reminding us how it frees the filmmaker from the demands of realism, gravity, even cameras. Imagination can truly fly, unfettered by the physical world, able to convey the most artful approach. It has often been said animation provides a layer of abstraction one can never find in live-action. It offers the audience a broader point of meeting the tale head-on, allowing one to appreciate the hard-won craftsmanship on display.
“The War of the Rohirrim” should fuel fan conversation for years to come. A minority may wish the team had “animated on the 1’s” instead of “on the 2’s or on the 3’s” or some other technical gripe, but that is not truly the style of Japanese anime. It is not much of a complaint considering the overt beauty that Kamiyama-san and his team have achieved. The film succeeds comfortably within its own art style.
Film Rating
I rate this a solid 8.5 out of 10 with focused praise on use of color, framing of compositions, great pacing, clarity of character motivations, lovely music, and the overall serious handling of Tolkien’s tragic tale with emotional verisimilitude.
If you have read The Lord of the Rings, there is a good chance that you skipped over one or more of the 75 songs and poems in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic. Yet long before he was the “father of modern fantasy”, Tolkien’s great ambition was to be a poet.
He wrote hundreds of poems throughout his life, running the gamut from playful limericks to lengthy verse epics in Old English alliterative meter (verse that focuses on alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds in two or more words or syllables). But despite his prolific poetic output, Tolkien remains best-known for his prose. Published by Harper Collins, The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien – the first tome to bring together all of his poetry – will not alter its author’s reputation as a storyteller first and foremost, but it will offer readers illuminating new insights into this oft-neglected side of his personality.
This new book has been in the works since 2016, when Christopher Tolkien sent editors Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull several folders of his father’s unpublished poetry. Hammond and Scull are two of the world’s most respected Tolkien scholars, having written painstaking reference works such as the J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (2017) and The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion (2008). They have also edited previous works by Tolkien, including the short poetry collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (2014).
Between them, Hammond and Scull have precisely the obsessive eye for detail and encyclopaedic knowledge of Tolkien’s corpus required to pull off such an undertaking. And once you hold this deluxe, three-volume, 1,500-page tome in your hands, you will grasp just how monumental an undertaking it is.
The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien contains nearly 250 individual works spanning more than five decades, 70 of them previously unpublished.
Hammond and Scull do not present the poems as standalone texts. They meticulously document the manuscript history of each poem from initial fragments to final drafts, tracing their evolution over the course of years or even decades.
This is because Tolkien would frequently return to the same poem throughout his life, revising and reworking it over and over – much as he did with his literary mythology.
The Sea-Bell is a perfect example. In 1934, Tolkien published a poem in The Oxford Magazine entitled Looney. It describes a man’s voyage to an enchanted other-world and his desolation upon returning to ordinary life afterwards.
Almost 30 years later, Looney underwent major redrafting to become The Sea-Bell, which was published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil in 1962. The poem’s basic narrative arc remained the same, but the imagery was darker, more evocative, more devastating. The protagonist is utterly cut off from his contemporaries, with no words to communicate an experience they cannot understand.
But The Sea-Bell is not merely a revision of its predecessor. Looney was conceived and published as an independent work. In The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, on the other hand, The Sea-Bell is framed as a text written by an unnamed hobbit within Middle-earth, which Tolkien had discovered and translated for modern readers. This conceit invites readers to put the poem in direct conversation with the themes of melancholy and sea-longing which run throughout The Lord of the Rings.
By charting how the poem and its context changed over time, Hammond and Scull show how its meaning changed too.
Many of us live with a nagging sense that industrialised modernity has cut us off from the cosmos, from nature and from our authentic selves. The Romantics and their inheritors believed that art could reconnect us to what is deepest and truest in ourselves and in the world around us – could re-enchant the world.
This is one way to read Tolkien’s entire literary project. He suggests as much in his famous essay On Fairy-Stories (1947).
Eminent Tolkien researcher Verlyn Flieger reads The Sea-Bell as a profound expression of disenchantment, a reflection perhaps of Tolkien’s service in the first world war. But the powers of re-enchantment are at work elsewhere in his work, in the elven-realm of Lothlórien for instance. This dialectic of disconnection and reconnection lies at the heart of Tolkien’s enduring appeal.
As The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien attests, that same dynamic is at play in his poetry as much as his prose. But be forewarned: this book is not for the faint of heart. Its massive scope, and the academic presentation of the material, are better suited to the Tolkien scholar than the casual reader – certainly not the one who leapfrogs the songs in The Lord of the Rings.
But if you, like me, feel a compulsion to own everything released under the professor’s name, that is hardly going to stop you.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
The Hollywood Reporter in conjunction with Prime Video recently posted a series of behind-the-scenes videos focusing on the set design in the Prime Video series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”.
The “Building Middle-earth” series of videos show details that can be missed while watching the series at home. The commentary by set designers, actors, and craftspeople reveals insights and secrets about the decisions that went into the direction the series took and how it was made. The craft and care that went into the sets is truly amazing! It’s the type of stuff Ringers everywhere are trying to spy out about the Season 2 of the show.
The review embargo for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was lifted today and reviews are now coming in fast. The reviews have been generally positive, praising the epic feel and production, with a current Rotten Tomatoes score of 93%.
Here’s a growing list of reviews (and spoilers):
Many predicted Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ prequel would be a disaster. It isn’t.
Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is a unique take, telling something of its own story using a distant time period of the lore that Tolkien mostly laid out in broad strokes. It’s a bold approach, and here fortune has favored it. The two-episode premiere marks a strong start, with breathtaking cinematography, excellent acting, and a story that – after a somewhat labored set-up – shows some serious promise and intrigue.
There are ways to do a prequel, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power does them all wrong. It takes six or seven things everyone remembers from the famous movie trilogy, adds a water tank, makes nobody fun, teases mysteries that aren’t mysteries, and sends the best character on a pointless detour.
This is TV that is made for big screens, although surely destined to be watched on smaller ones. It is so cinematic and grand that it makes House of the Dragon look as if it has been cobbled together on Minecraft.
Amazon’s long-awaited ‘Lord of the Rings’ prequel series slots well into the cinematic universe of Peter Jackson’s films, while establishing itself on its own terms.
For a television series, the production values are staggering. The sets feel huge and lived-in, the costumes are beautiful and intricate, and the digital effects are sharper than most movies.
It’s technically impressive, reasonably ambitious, packed with Easter eggs that I’m certain I’m not versed enough to get and, with my interest in different plotlines already varying wildly, it could fall off a precarious cliff at any moment.
I came to this series a skeptic, but after watching the first two episodes, I walk away a believer. What showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne have created is something simply staggering in scope and scale, in raw beauty and magnificence. It is nothing short of a masterpiece—and a welcome return to Tolkien’s legenderium.
Having invested hundreds of millions in mounting a series version of “The Lord of the Rings,” Amazon has gotten its money’s worth in production values but not storytelling, with a handsome prequel that could leave all but the most devoted Hobbits feeling more bored than lord.
Rings of Power is not just good, it’s great: a gorgeously immersive and grandly ambitious spectacle packed with stunning imagery and compelling plot threads. Most importantly, it captures the same sense of awe we felt while watching the Lord of the Rings movies — one we don’t often get to experience on the small screen.
It’s a series that wants dearly to set itself apart as a fresh take on the material, right down to setting itself an entire age before the adventures of Frodo Baggins and his Fellowship. But it also does everything it can to stir our nostalgia for the Jackson films, from costume to music to overall design, which can occasionally make it like a store-brand version of the same.
Though the eight-part debut season portends an imminent war between Elves and orcs — with Dwarves, humans and a precursor to the Hobbit race called the Harfoots in the mix — the copious and choppily edited action in the first two episodes (those screened for critics) is bloodless and computer-effects-driven.
By now you may be wanting to know what The Rings of Power is about. In a way, I feel the same. The first two episodes of the show are full of exposition, unhurried table setting and character introductions but not much else.
On the one hand, The Rings of Power’s unwavering focus on its heroes allows the show to truly spotlight several of its strongest cast members. Clark shines as a version of Galadriel who is more battle-hardened and outwardly headstrong than the older, wiser, and more ethereal iteration Cate Blanchett famously played in Peter Jackson’s movies. Owain Arthur nearly steals the show with his likable, charismatic turn as Durin IV, the dwarven prince of Khazad-dûm.
On the other hand, the lack of a major antagonist in The Rings of Power’s opening installments creates an unfortunate sense of waywardness. At times, the show’s disparate storylines feel like they are only connected by the vague notion that evil may be just around the corner. Consequently, there are moments — especially in The Rings of Power’s second episode — when the series’ continent-spanning structure feels frustratingly unwieldy.
This first quarter of the season is almost entirely setup for what is to follow, so it’s hard to render much of a verdict on the series from relatively unknown showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, who have contributed to movies including “Star Trek Beyond” and “Jungle Cruise.” Through two hours — both nicely directed by the talented J.A. Bayona (“The Impossible,” “A Monster Calls”) — “The Rings of Power” is intriguing but not quite engrossing.
The Fellowship of the Ring is a big influence here, and the characters go off on quests to investigate strange occurrences in the land while dark rumors from the previous war start to circulate again. The episodes do a commendable job of not only showing the enormity of the world and its history, but also giving the feeling of dread weighing down as the clues begin to be revealed.
Adjectives like “bold” and “ambitious” are par for the course when it comes to this franchise, and they absolutely apply to what we’ve seen so far of the show.
Two episodes in, the world-building is just as stunning and intricate as you could hope for. It’s the kind of show that deserves to be seen on the big screen instead of your phone, but that’s not going to stop fans from visiting Middle-earth via a six-inch display
…first-time showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay are content to take their time establishing the characters and laying the groundwork for what’s to come in a measured and deliberate way instead of giving viewers a taste of something and then jumping ahead years into the future by the next episode.
There are great performances throughout, including Clark as a Galadriel, who dances much closer to the darkness than one might expect from the future Lady of Lorien. There’s strong chemistry between Clark and Robert Aramayo as Galadriel’s friend Elrond, who at this point is but an ambitious young politician. However, the dwarves — Owain Arthur as Durin and Sohpie Nomvete as Disa — make the strongest impression.
From the tempestuous Sundering Seas to the glorious halls of the dwarven kings, each location is richly created. It’s clear how much of the budget went into making these places look as magical as imagined. On top of that, composer Bear McCreary’s soundtrack plays off the familiar tunes of Howard Shore’s iconic soundtrack and instantly tugs at the heartstrings of anyone who would find themselves affected by the music of Middle-earth.
