Review of War of the Rohirrim (2024)

In a crumbling theatre perched on the third floor of a dead mall, alone I watched the new Lord of the Rings film War of the Rohirrim, directed by Kenji Kimiyama, whose body of work I confess I am not familiar with. This wasn't the first Lord of the Rings film I've watched in this very theatre--I have distinct memories of watching The Two Towers here. I loved that film from the moment it started playing, and the desperation felt in that packed house during the Battle of Helm's Deep may have been the first moment I gained an appreciation for the types of media I have today. And so, in service to this legendary moment from my childhood, I paid my $15 for entry to the new film.

It was also partially in service to convenience and an empty schedule; that particular theatre is just a short bus ride from my apartment. My partner was working today, and none of my friends felt particularly interested in going to see it. So, on basically a whim, I decided to check it out on my own, alone in a theatre I remember once being very full, in a part of town that has seen many better days. And what a strange, strange movie it was! I suppose I must address the Oliphant in the room--the fact that this film only exists to pad out Warner Brothers' claim to the Lord of the Rings licence. It's fitting, then, that if the film has a theme, it is about the power of legends to inspire us, and simultaneously about the truth of the people, places, and things which are sacrificed and forgotten in order to imbue the legends with the power to affect people so deeply.

I won't bother going over the entire film--it's too unfocused for a deep read that intends to cover everything. But the basics for those unaware: War of the Rohirrim tells the story of the Siege of the Hornberg, duirng which it will be granted the title of Helm's Deep. In The Two Towers, Helm's Deep has a symbolic strength for the people of Rohan--the keep has never been taken, so long as men have defended it. The story of King Helm Hammerhand provides strength and comfort to the characters we read about in The Two Towers, and this film purports to be the development of that legend.

However, in War of the Rohirrim, we see Helm's Deep as nothing but a tomb. No epic battles happen on its walls, or even in front of which. We barely see men defend it at all. The closest we get to an "epic" conflict is the utter defeat of King Helm's forces at Edoras, betrayed by his own lords and his two sons viciously slaughtered--one in a direct allusion to Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. I won't spoil that particular moment, but if you know Throne of Blood you already know what happens.

Helm, the king of legend, is literally brought to his knees by treachery, and is practically dragged through the gates of the Keep--known in this time as the Hornburg--hordes of Dunlendings at his heels. No honour, no glory, only a sad old man consoled by his daughter and the few refugees which accompany him. He is in no position to wage the large scale combat the film's marketing promised, instead sneaking out at night to raid the Dunlending forces. This is one of the earlier instances of our main theme occurring--the Dunlendings attribute these raids to a "wraith" born of the king's despair. This plotline ends with the King holding the gate for his daughter to retreat back to the castle, freezing to death instead of falling to defeat. This is an iconic part of the legend of Helm's Deep, and the film makes sure we understand the significance of this moment. But behind that legendary moment was real human grief--even if it came from a character who punched a dude so hard he died a few scenes prior. But hey--I already said that this story is unfocused.

But speaking of the King's daughter, I should probably get to speaking about the film's protagonist--Hera, our story's wannabe film maiden. Right away, our narrator tells us that this is not a character of legend; we're basically told outright not to bother plumbing the depths of The Silmarilion or the Appendices for this one. However, in this rendition she is the guiding hand behind the events which will lead to the Helm's Deep legend which we all know. She is not the protagonist of the legend, but she is the protagonist of our story. The Dunlending lord Freca's attempts to win her hand in marriage for his son Wulf are the story's inciting incident. Shame at her rejection is the driving emotion behind Wulf's transformation into the story's primary antagonist--shame which the film goes to great extent to demonstrate the material and metaphorical cost of. Right from the outset, we are told that supplies are very, very limited; limited to the point that objections are raised at the amount of firewood used to keep the injured King's bedchambers from freezing. Hera trades away one of her dead brother's final heirlooms in order to keep the fire lit, the very harp her brother had hoped to use to compose the eventual song of his family's triumph. Heck, she doesn't even win the war in the end. Her contribution to the fight--costumed as the "bride of death"-- is to distract Wulf for long enough that her people can escape out of a secret exit in the mountains while they await her cousin to come to their aid. If this was a focused film, she wouldn't have even been the one to kill Wulf, but the film can't resist the bad-assity of her getting to kill the incel who's been hounding her family for the longest winter of their lives, even if it compromises the film's main theme to a degree. But for the most part, Hera's story is a sacrifice to the broader legend of Helm's Deep. Despite her heroism and pivotal role in the story's events, her role in history is to create the conditions which legends will emerge from.

And I think that's what has got me still thinking about this movie. Like its protagonist, this film is a sacrifice on the alter of "legend." Without it being fast-tracked, the rights to the Lord of the Rings would have passed out of Warner Brothers' hands. A 30 million dollar budget, and it hasn't even made 10 million. This movie will, in all likelihood, be consigned to the dustbin of film history. But, unlike Hera's sacrifice, I'm not sure that the legacy of this film franchise is something that's worth sacrificing for. I'm sure most of you, like me, are sick to death of the "IP-ification" which has gripped popular culture in the first decades of this century. This film was an entertaining one. It deserved more than to be dumped in the ever widening maw of IP. But I suppose it did its job--I've got a tab open in Firefox to order the 4K remaster of the original series. I've had the opportunity to revisit a setting from my childhood, and for a couple of hours it made me forget some of the, you know, issues we have going on right now.

But when I walked out of that theatre where I first saw The Two Towers, I was immediately reminded of those issues. The theatre smells of a bottle depot. There was a bloodstain in the elevator back to the first floor. People were smoking crack in the vestibule to leave the mall. The walk to the bus stop was empty--I saw not a single other person, although I did hear somebody swearing loudly. On the bus, the driver was threatened. I did not intervene.

While I'm not happy about the state of modern media, I think that more than ever we need a reminder of what it takes to tell a story worth remembering. And I guess that's what stuck with me about this movie enough that I was moved to write about it: it reminded me that if we want to live in a legendary time, we have to remember the things which made us want to live in the first place, and we also have to be willing to do the things that will make our own time worth remembering. If the story I remember from my childhood has truly ended, I hope that I can help contibute to the creation of a new one.