The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim Footage Reaction: Middle-Earth Goes Anime And It Looks Amazing [Annecy]

"The War of the Rohirrim" is one of our most anticipated movies of the year here at /Film. For me personally, ever since the prospect of a "Lord of the Rings" anime was announced, it's been the most exciting project set in Middle-earth, and it's not even close. When the very first early footage was shown at the 2023 Annecy Film Festival, it only made this project more exciting. Now, dear reader, I have seen about 20 minutes of the film, which is not quite done, but getting close to that point, and it left me as addicted to wanting to see more as Gollum is addicted to the One Ring.

This year's Annecy presentation started with a short video introduction by Peter Jackson, who, together with Fran Walsh, are back to executive produce the project. Jackson expressed his admiration for animators, how they brought Gollum to life, and how the medium is "critical in bringing Professor Tolkien's world to life." The message went from cute to absolute mayhem when it got hijacked by Gollum himself, who started attacking Peter Jackson, "that hack" Andy Serkis, and the animators themselves, shouting profanities, throwing away the camera and threatening the animators in the audience to "animate this, motherf***ers!"

We were then shown the very beginning of the movie, which starts with a big beautiful map of Middle-earth as Éowyn (Miranda Otto) introduces us to Héra, the previously-unnamed daughter of Helm Hammerhand, via voiceover narration. "Don't look for her in the ancient accounts, for there are none," Éowyn warns, as we see a young, hotheaded daughter of Rohan ride a horse to the top of a hill to feed a giant eagle. The footage is accompanied by Stephen Gallagher's score, which uses Howard Shore's incredible Rohirrim theme.

The idea of songs and stories seems to be important to this film. "The War of the Rohirrim" tells the story of Héra, who is present in Tolkien's books as the daughter of Helm, but never named. "Where is the Horse and the Rider?" is heard sung by a character as the camera moves through Edoras, capital of Roham, a poem from the books that the late Bernard Hill's Théoden King recites in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Later, a group of characters talk about Shieldmaidens: a group of women who took up arms when their men were killed, but are now being forgotten.

The footage uses a blend of 3D backgrounds and 2D characters, the camera moving freely as if it were a live-action film. Unfortunately, the mix between the two, and the 3D camera moving around, is never as seamless as in, say, "Attack on Titan." Still, it looks pretty stunning. The backgrounds, in particular, have essentially been lifted straight out of Jackson's "LOTR" movies, which "The War of the Rohirrim" clearly means to evoke. From the look of Edoras, the costumes, the designs, and the music, this feels like a proper "LOTR" prequel.

Rohan was the best part of Jackson's trilogy, but there was a lot that was only implied there. The beginning of "Rohirrim" shows the infighting, the resentment toward Gondor, and intricate politics, as we see a proposal/threat from Freca, leader of the Dunlending, who wants to marry his son Wulf to Helm's daughter, preferring to keep the royal family in Rohirrim blood rather than submit to Gondor. After an argument, a fight breaks out, and Helm — who looks like he's 7 feet tall — literally kills a dude with his bare hand in a single punch to the face. It is ludicrous, cheer-inducing, and pure anime.

Granted, all this is part of the canon, as seen in the appendices of Tolkien's "LOTR" novels, but something like Helm's incredible strength just fits with the medium of anime extremely well (with the footage putting the exaggerated expressions and heightened designs to great use). The action looks stellar, too. Not just the fist fight, but a sizzle reel shown at the end of the footage teases big, epic battles, a siege at Hornburg, and fights against oliphaunts.

During a discussion after the footage, director Kenji Kamiyama and producers Joseph Chou and Jason DeMarco highlighted the herculean task of bringing the movie to life, comparing production to fighting their own war of the Rohirrim. Chou revealed they initially thought the movie would have a 90-minute runtime, but it currently clocks in at two and a half hours. Though the animation is mostly handled by Chou's Sola Entertainment, they recruited the help of more than 60 different companies to finish the animation, using everything from performance capture to hand-drawn and computer animation.

According to Kamiyama, a production of this scale, made in such a relatively short time, is unprecedented in Japan (production started in the early part of the pandemic), where it would have taken seven years to make and require dozens of animation directors. DeMarco explained they didn't simply want to make an animated Peter Jackson film (though the influence is clearly there), but instead "make a Kamiyama anime set in that world."

This is clear from watching the footage, which feels like nothing we've seen in Middle-earth since the 1977 "The Hobbit" movie (which is technically an anime made by Topcraft, which was itself later incorporated into Studio Ghibli). By all that we hold dear on this good Earth, I bid Warner Bros. not to let this be the last "Lord of the Rings" anime.

"The Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim" opens in theaters on December 13, 2024.