*The Lord of the Rings: The War to Stay Awake

The War of the Rohirrim is set 183 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and around 123 years before The Hobbit trilogy. It is about the House of Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan, and their fight to stand strong amongst a battle with a house led by a man by the name of Wulf, who seeks revenge for the death of his father. After a sudden attack led by Wulf, House Hammerhand makes one last move by heading towards the stronghold later known as Helm’s Deep.

When I first watched this movie, I was really excited because it simply combines two things that I absolutely love: anime and, of course, The Lord of the Rings. At least when it comes to the animation department, it absolutely delivers. The Japanese-inspired animation is absolutely stunning from start to finish, and you can tell that they were working with both a pretty nice budget as well as some really good artists. It combines both hand-drawn animation as well as computer-drawn animation quite well, where all of the characters and the sort of “flow” and movement of the animation feel very authentic to pieces of anime that are strictly hand-drawn, but the digital stuff allows for some really neat-looking lighting that obviously helps it look and feel modern. There are also plenty of environments, mainly when it comes to the weather, where the film really gets to show off the animation, particularly in the second half.

It also delivers pretty well on the action front. There may not be as much action as you would hope for from a Lord of the Rings movie, but the action we do get is pretty solid. It’s not very inspired action, clearly taking from the other films in the franchise, but it’s still really good nonetheless. The battles are pretty epic; there are a couple of moments with certain large creatures that I won’t name that were definitely highlights, as well as a pretty cool swordfight at the very end.

The first time I watched it, however, I didn’t find hardly anything to really like other than those specific things, and found it extremely tough to get through, and left the film extremely underwhelmed. I wanted to give it a second chance, though, because, I mean, it is an anime Lord of the Rings movie, so it should be pretty awesome. Unfortunately, on this watch, I felt exactly the same as I did before: I just don’t find this movie to be very interesting at all. This mainly has to do with both the story and the characters, one of which is definitely a bigger problem, and I’ll talk about the former first.

The story, while kind of a decent concept, never feels grand enough despite having some pretty grand-scale battles. I found out not that long ago that this film was made simply so that Warner Bros. could keep the rights to this franchise, and it makes perfect sense after having rewatched it. There is very little that is added to the lore of Middle-earth here, and the stuff that is added isn’t significant in any way at all. This could be fine, but at the same time, the story itself isn’t interesting either. The film rushes into its conflict, and for the rest of the entire runtime, the main conflict, as well as all the side conflicts, feel kind of forced to be honest, so I didn’t find myself caring about any of them.

The worst problem, however, is the characters. I haven’t even talked about the main protagonist yet, and didn’t even mention her in the premise, and for good reason. Having our first female-led Lord of the Rings/Middle-earth movie could have been really cool, but it was the exact opposite. Our main lead’s name is Hèra, and the movie starts off immediately by giving her a pretty cool introduction, but that’s literally all that there is to say about her. I literally just watched this movie, and I can’t even really come up with any meaningful ways to describe her. She’s just “there,” and hardly does anything to impact the plot until the very end. The main antagonist, Wulf, is cool when it comes to appearance, but that’s literally it, as funny as that is, too. Yes, there is a reason given for him to be doing the things that he’s doing, but it feels so rushed when it gives him that reason at the beginning, and barely touches on it again. When it comes to the side characters, I literally have nothing to say about them other than Helm Hammerhand was kind of cool (in moments), I guess.

War of the Rohirrim’s got some pretty abysmal pacing to say the least, too. The first half of it isn’t terrible, as this is where a pretty big battle takes place, and the conflict is introduced, as well as some neat, tiny worldbuilding moments that, again, don’t really add much, but are at least a little bit interesting. However, pretty much exactly once you get to the second half, where the House of Hammerhand is making a stand at the stronghold, the film simply hits the pause button. There is supposed to be a sense of dread and doom as the House of Hammerhand is waiting for the other side to finally be able to attack them, but the characters don’t seem to really care, so neither did I. There is one section that maybe lasts ten or so minutes where I thought it was going to turn into more of a horror film, which felt extremely random but would have made it more interesting, but then it just goes back to being the same again.

The reviews for this movie seem to be on the more “mixed-positive” side, where most people like it, but a bit of a smaller portion of people don’t, and I so badly wish I were on the positive side. It’s such a chore to sit through for me, personally, and I probably don’t even see myself ever rewatching it again, even for when I do a Middle-earth marathon. I just hope that the future of this franchise is better and has more interesting stories, because, even though I haven’t delved into the media outside of the movies that have come out recently, I haven’t exactly heard great things.