War of the Rohirrim is a mess — but it’s still the best future for Lord of the Rings

It is kind of strange to think of Lord of the Rings as a media franchise. Though there have been many adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, they have really only come from two sources — the Lord of the Rings books and The Hobbit. Whether straight adaptations like the Peter Jackson trilogies, the Ralph Bakshi and Rankin/Bass adaptations, or Prime Video’s The Rings of Power, they all follow the same source material in one way or another. What’s been interesting to see since Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy is how many of the recent adaptations of Tolkien’s work have drawn from the appendices found at the end of the Return of the King book. 

Much as Tolkien used language to craft stories and worlds, he used the appendices to detail the background of the big adventure of The Lord of the Rings and provide a glimpse at the larger history of Middle-earth. Though relatively lacking in narrative, the work Tolkien put into detailing his world in these appendices is a big part of why the published work felt fleshed-out, lived-in, and full of history. Apart from the cataclysmic events Rings of Power is covering, most of the appendices’ contents don’t scream “big-budget blockbuster adaptation.” They’re smaller tales without world-ending stakes, which nevertheless feel distinctly Tolkien-esque.

This brings us to The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, now streaming on Max. It’s the first animated Tolkien adaptation since the Rankin/Bass adaptation of The Return of the King 45 years ago, and the first anime based on Tolkien’s work. It tells a relatively small story about how Helm’s Deep got its name, during one of countless wars between the realms of Men. Even if it failed to make an impact at the box office, War of the Rohirrim leaves behind some important lessons about the best possible future for The Lord of the Rings on screen.

The movie includes some uniquely thrilling anime moments, like Helm Hammerhand killing a guy with a single punch, the Watcher in the Water devouring a mûmak, and also a phenomenal sequence where this impossibly large man that at times looks like All Might from My Hero Academia goes all Ghost of Tsushima on an invading army. It is a small enough story that it doesn’t clash with the legacy of Peter Jackson’s trilogy (except for one cameo, which doesn’t look half bad when translated to this art style), but it nevertheless feels like a Middle-earth story with human drama and fantastical elements.

And yet, by lots of metrics, the movie was a mess the size of Orthanc. Deadline reports that the film was fast-tracked so Warner Bros. could keep the rights to The Lord of the Rings to make the movies it knows fans want, like The Hunt for Gollum. Whether that’s true or not, War of the Rohirrim irrefutably had a short production schedule compared to other animated projects of this size and caliber — as director Kenji Kamiyama said during a presentation at the Annecy Animation Festival in 2024. The results of that rushed production can be felt in every moment of the finished film.

Typically, an anime movie like this might take closer to a decade to make, and involve several animation directors working under one roof. Instead, it was done in a couple of years under a single director, with a whole lot of outsourcing. “It’s kind of unprecedented, and [director Kenji Kamiyama] nearly killed himself doing it,” producer Joseph Chou told IndieWire.

One area where the rushed production is especially noticeable is in the character acting — Kamiyama had to rely on motion capture translated into 2D. A lack of available animators (a big current issue in the anime industry) also meant that the team had to rely on more than 60 animation studios in Japan and abroad to help with the animation, which added a layer of communication difficulties, and didn’t leave much time to fix disagreements and mistakes. 

The results are very clear — the movie was considered a major flop, given how its $20 million worldwide box-office take compared to other LOTR films. (Even Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings did better in theaters — back in 1978.) Granted, Warner Bros. dumped the movie in theaters with virtually no advertising. And War of the Rohirrim’s reported $30 million production budget is a fraction of what any previous Middle-earth project has cost. Still, as a Lord of the Rings film, and as an anime film at a time when theatrical anime releases — even glorified promos for TV series — in America are more successful than ever, The War of the Rohirrim failed. This is likely the one and only chance we had for a Tolkien anime, and Warner Bros. squandered that chance. Still, while this particular movie wasn’t a hit, it is a glimpse at a better future for the franchise than, say, whatever Gollum-led hell awaits us.

First, there’s the stand-alone aspect of The War of the Rohirrim. Unlike every other Middle-earth story, from Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, with its shoehorning-in of both Legolas and the Necromancer storyline, to The Rings of Power giving us an unnecessary Gandalf origin story, The War of the Rohirrim truly feels like a self-contained story that makes the world of Middle-earth feel bigger.

Granted, the lack of world-changing stakes makes it feel relatively unimportant in the larger scheme of things, but that’s the appeal. This story — like much of Tolkien’s appendices — paints a picture of a world that has thousands of years of history, complete with smaller battles and stories that feel important in their era and to their participants, but that eventually pass down to legend and become all but forgotten. 

Rather than filling in gaps from material we’ve already seen on screen — like using a whole movie to explain how Gandalf and Aragorn found out that Gollum said two key words to the forces of Mordor — Warner Bros. should continue shining a light on the many tales that make Middle-earth such an expansive fictional universe. 

Then there’s the animation element. Animation can achieve impossible things that live action can’t replicate. While The War of the Rohirrim adhered to the visuals of the Peter Jackson trilogy, potential future animated movies don’t have to do the same. Animation could give this fictional universe the visual range it deserves.

Through animation, we could actually get a Tom Bombadil movie that’s visually whimsical, rather than trying to make this goofy character fit into a gritty TV show. The Children of Húrin could get a dark, somber animated adaptation in the vein of the great dark animated movies of the ’80s. The story of Beren and Lúthien, its romantic adventure full of danger and suspense and talking animals, is more feasible in anime form than whatever it would look like in live action.

Those three stories alone are so tonally different that they demand visually unique adaptations — something animation excels at. Star Wars: Visions already showed that you can respect a franchise’s recognizable imagery while still drastically reimagining it in animation. Middle-earth should get the same treatment. That’d sell on the screen the kind of huge, distinct world professor Tolkien envisioned — one that can’t just be captured by one visual style or just the big, “main” story.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is streaming on Max now, and is available for rental or purchase on Amazon, Fandango, and other digital platforms.