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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a soulless return to Middle-earth
Warner Bros. Animation’s new Lord of the Rings anime film is everything that’s disappointing about IP cash grabs.
Set about 200 years before the events of Jackson’s original Lord of the Rings trilogy, The War of the Rohirrim tells the tale of how King Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox) and his daughter, Princess Héra (Gaia Wise), became legends while defending the people of Rohan. In The War of the Rohirrim ’s focus on Héra — who is never named in Tolkien’s work — and her armed minder Olwyn (Lorraine Ashbourne), you can see co-writers Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins, and Arty Papageorgiou attempting to rework details from Appendix A into a more fully fleshed out narrative centering the women of Middle-earth. Between The War of the Rohirrim ’s multitude of Lord of the Rings musical cues and its smattering of on- and off-screen cameos alluding to future events, you get the sense that the studios are banking on fans’ love of the live-action films to catapult this new feature to box-office success.
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