The War of the Rohirrim

069, Movie Review

Now that the rich mine of Middle Earth has been opened up for exploitation, the corporations that have rights to exploit it are keen to do so as rapidly as possible before the movie-watching public gets bored. Rings of Power is at least nominally based on the events chronicled in The Silmarillion. The War of the Rohirrim is mostly just shameless recycling of previously used material.

The idea was attractive. With live-action movies being expensive and much of the sets from the Lord of the Rings movies having been dismantled, Peter Jackson and his collaborators have turned to animation. Specifically they brought in a well-known anime studio. That would give a very different look to the film.

I am not a great expert on animation. I gather that the film was put together at breakneck speed. I have seen suggestions that the resulting work is of poor quality. Whether this is true, or is simply a bunch of dudebros having a hissy fit over the feminist elements of the plot, I don’t know. It looked OK to me.

What was not OK was the plot. Yes, it was simplistic and clichéd. I can cope with that. Yes, in theory, it was set in the past and about wholly different characters. But the extent to which it recycled themes from LotR suggested a stunning lack of imagination on the part of the scriptwriters. Let us count the ways:

  • Aged and foolish king of Rohan who comes good in the end
  • Willful princess who wants to be a warrior
  • Miranda Otto (Eowyn in the movies) narrating just in case we have forgotten what this is about
  • Advisor to the king who turns out to be a traitor
  • Bad guys using Isengard as a base
  • Our heroes besieged in Helm’s Deep
  • Eagles to the rescue (but only at the last minute)
  • Idiotic downhill cavalry charge
  • Gratuitous guest appearance by Saruman just in case we have forgotten who will move into Isengard

There are probably others, but the downhill cavalry charge was the single most idiotic element of the LotR movies (which, for the most part, I loved). This film has taken it, and made it even more stupid. I despair.