Details from IMDB:
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and traitorous lord of Rohan seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan, and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg.
Initial Thoughts:
I’ve been a fan of LOTR for a long time, since I was 14 years old and first read “The Fellowship of the Ring”, so almost 35 years now and I was thrilled when I learned Peter Jackson would be making movies in the late 90s and equally as excited to see it in 2001. Now its’ 23 years, and 6 movies later, and like lots of people I was a little disappointed in The Hobbit trilogy but when I heard about this animated movie my hope was renewed and I saw it today, in a very sparsely populated theatre sadly.
Main Points:
I am not sure why people are not seeing this or complaining that it’s not LOTR. I think the obvious answer is that anyone who says that is just wrong/has issues, while this is certainly different as it’s animated and the main character is a woman, it’s LOTR and it’s a good one. Franchises survive by embracing change, doing the same thing all the time gets boring, if you don’t feel that way, get your head out of your ass and stop trying to ruin it for other people! Ok I’m off my soapbox/negative talk. I will be doing some light spoilers here, so SPOILER ALERT!
I thought the voice cast did a great job and it was a nice treat to hear Christopher Lee (not AI, I checked) one last time. It was also nice to hear Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan again, you’ll have to look and see who they play.
Like most of the LOTR movies I did find this to be a little long, maybe 10-15 minutes could have been cut, but with these movies it become a tradition to wrong long and it is thankfully only two hours and 15 minutes, not 3 or 3.5 hours. The animation is top notch and I thought it was a great idea to not only make this movie animated but to do it in the Japanese/anime style. There is some violence and blood, there is a hand chopped off, corpses, lots of action with people getting hacked up (including a beheading) and some coarse language, so ages 13+.
Final Thoughts:
I was glad to see the involvement of both Peter Jackson and Howard Shore, if you listen closely you can hear some of the LOTR theme at the beginning and the music is very much in the style/genre of the other films. I enjoyed this movie and I give it 7.5 out of 10. It probably won’t be in theatres long, so I would recommend seeing it soon. I think anyone who enjoys LOTR or anime would like this. Please don’t bring young children to this. I am looking forward to movie LOTR movies (and season 3 of the show!) and I think this is worthy addition, go see it while you can!