The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, 2024.

Directed by Kenji Kamiyama.
Featuring the voice talents of Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Miranda Otto, Christopher Lee, Lorraine Ashbourne, Yazdan Qafouri, Benjamin Wainwright, Laurence Ubong Williams, Shaun Dooley, Jude Akuwudike, Michael Wildman, Bilal Hasna, and Janine Duvitski.

SYNOPSIS:

A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord 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.

Despite the enticing novelty of strikingly colorful hand-drawn animation coming across as a blend between Western high fantasy and Japanese anime, director Kenji Kamiyama’s (working from a bloated yet lacking screenplay from the crowded team of Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins, and Arty Papageorgiou, with some of the characters here created by none other than J.R.R. Tolkien) The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is disappointingly clichéd, dull, and bland.

The narrative doesn’t necessarily feel specific to The Lord of the Rings (even if there are some tie-ins, such as orcs looting rings or late, brief appearances from significant characters of the franchise), but more so a tale of war and feminism empowerment that could have been from a separate universe if not for a couple of familiar characters and locales present here. It’s one of those situations where, if one changes around a small number of names, locations, and lore, what’s left is blueprint generic fantasy.

The screenplay is so concerned with action and the ensuing war (which isn’t necessarily inherently a bad thing) that the depth it gives to lead heroine Hera (voiced by Gaia Wise), daughter of Rohan king Helm Hammerhand (a name fans will instantly register, lent the distinct voice of Brian Cox), is that she is wild and rebellious while having an almost-telepathic connection to animals, whether it be her trusty horse or birds she helps in her free time. Once that five minutes of introductory exposition is out of the way, the political intrigue and backstabbing begin, with Helm betrayed by the Dunderlings.

After disagreements about alliances and how to handle an impending “long winter,” giving the feeling that the filmmakers are also going for a Game of Thrones feel, their leader challenges Helm to one-on-one combat, where he dies from one punch. This leaves his son, Wulf (voiced by Luke Pasqualino), a childhood friend of Hera, so enraged that the only thing on his mind is conquest and murder, to such a degree that the childhood friendship is never explored again. Meanwhile, Hera, who doesn’t consider herself a leader, wants to actively participate in defending her land but is quickly shut down by her father, who insists that she is to be protected whether she wants to be or not (which is uncomfortable and socially relevant rhetorical.)

As Wulf continues to start skirmishes and pick off Hera’s siblings (her cousin is also sent away for behaving in a manner Helm disapproves of), the conflict between daughter and father grows until the predictably inevitable occurs. He realizes the error of his ways and encourages her to be the warrior she has always meant to be, even if she is still uncertain about leaving the entire army and Shield Maidens (women who once protected this land when there were no more men soldiers left to do so.) The conversations between Hera and the latter are some of the most interesting segments, preparing the former to step into a larger role.

This is boilerplate material that the filmmakers hope to distract from with near-nonstop action. The problem is that most of those battle sequences are weightless since the characters are still thinly written (which is majorly frustrating, considering we know how compelling and emotionally absorbing stories within this franchise can be.) Even the animation, which is nice to look at, occasionally feels off and sluggish in motion. Unsurprisingly, the story doesn’t become engaging until Hera’s born leadership qualities, bravery, and physicality are put front and center, but that’s also after 90+ minutes of routine fantasy storytelling. The music (courtesy of Stephen Gallagher) is also flat, save for whenever the film pulls out a legacy piece from Howard Shore (and some beautiful ending credits songs.)

Apparently, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim was fast-tracked into production so New Line could hold onto cinematic rights for novel adaptations. The result fits with that information, as much of what’s here feels hastily written and constructed without giving that narrative a second. It ends with a similar narration, mentioning that Hera is still wild and free as she starts on a solo adventure. One presumes a movie exclusively about her, separated from so much other political baggage and family drama, would have provided more refreshingly tantalizing opportunities, yielding something richer and more exhilarating.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

In 2024, do I even need to explain what The Lord of the Rings (henceforth LotR) is? J.R.R. Tolkien‘s deeply iconic and highly influential masterpiece is widely considered among the all-time greatest works of fantasy. And even if you haven’t read the books, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve seen Peter Jackson‘s beloved film adaptations from 2001–2003, or at the very least seen any number of the almost cartoonishly long list of memes it’s spawned. Indeed, the world of these books has been retold and added to with varying levels of success time and time again in the seventy years since The Fellowship of the Ring was first published. And the latest such addition to this club is the franchise‘s first anime (but not first animated) movie, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (henceforth WotR).

Admittedly, there’s not a lot tying WotR to the rest of LotR. One could go into this movie with little or no LotR knowledge at all and be just fine—you’d miss a few winks and nods to LotR, but nothing so huge that you couldn’t understand and appreciate what was going on. They both take place in the same universe, and LotR fans will hear a few familiar names throughout the movie (and get a special cameo at the end), but WotR takes place roughly ~200 years before Frodo ever set his bare feet outside The Shire. Furthermore, WotR is centered on humans first and foremost—in fact, there are barely any non-human characters in the movie at all. Its primary connection and contribution to the world Tolkien built is a specific history on why Helm’s Deep is called, well, Helm’s Deep; a question that, admittedly, I don’t think many (if any at all) LotR fans were actively curious to learn more about, but at the same time, thorough worldbuilding has always been a hallmark of Tolkien, so I don’t necessarily mind that.

If there is anything I mind in this movie, it would probably (and surprisingly) be the animation, which is so gorgeous at times. But then, at others, the mouth flap movements are just off enough that they become noticeable, and when you notice it even once, you can’t really unnotice it. At other moments, too, it’s really apparent that the backgrounds and the people or horses aren’t exactly on the same plane, if that makes sense—the people and horses look very obviously overlaid on the backgrounds, which, stylistically and visually, don’t quite match. Finally, the animation gets a bit rough when something particularly dynamic or high-movement is going on (which, to be clear, is often—there’s a lot of fighting, horse riding, and so on). Director Kenji Kamiyama is no stranger to anime or fast-paced action, so I was shocked that this animation often fell as short of the mark as it does.

Meanwhile, this movie’s greatest strength is one of its main characters: none other than the force of nature that is Helm Hammerhand, who’s brought to life by the legendary Brian Cox—whom ANN recently got to interview, alongside Gaia Wise. He’s exactly the kind of bombastic powerhouse that you love to run into in anime, and Cox—still relatively fresh off the heels of playing screamy-old-man Logan Roy in Succession—can (predictably) match that energy perfectly. As for everyone else, it’s hard to shine your brightest when you have to share a stage with a character who exudes as much hot-bloodedness and charisma as Helm Hammerhand. Not even the other central protagonist of the film, Héra (voiced by Gaia Wise), can quite measure up. Still, both she and Wulf are compelling enough characters—neither commanding the spotlight in the same way that Helm so often does, but also never fully allowing themselves to be swallowed up by Helm’s gravitational pull.

And falling somewhere in the middle is this movie’s story, which feels like a pretty standard-issue revenge affair. Fundamentally, it’s nothing you haven’t already seen played out a million times before—you just haven’t seen it with Helm Hammerhand. But even so, WotR doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. It’s a story that opts to do what it’s doing well rather than to do it in a unique way, which is fine; it just makes it err on the side of forgettability.

WotR probably won’t become a must-watch addition to your LotR marathon any time soon, but it’s still an enjoyable—if a bit underwhelming—adventure movie. Comparing it to other pieces of LotR media feels somewhat like a pitfall, because few franchises simultaneously have as monumental highs and astronomical lows as LotR does. Falling somewhere in the middle of this feels almost inevitable, but “somewhere in the middle” could mean anything when the distance between LotR‘s peaks and valleys is so vast. But at the same time, the fact remains that it is a piece of LotR media—one that pales in comparison to the best entries but is still far from the worst we’ve seen from Tolkien’s world. And even as a standalone piece, it’s a solid adventure movie, but lacks a certain wow-factor—a wow-factor, one can’t help but feel reminded, that’s often present in LotR‘s better entries.

Here we go again.

In Hollywood’s ongoing cheerless attempts to contest the joy of music by cutting stellar classical musicians down to size, “Maria” joins the curt parade of “Tár” and “Maestro.” The new biopic of Maria Callas follows the takedowns of fictional conductor Lydia Tár and larger-than-life Leonard Bernstein with a dramatization of the most compelling singer I’ve ever encountered — live, on recording, on video anywhere. (I’m hardly alone in this estimation.) All three films have this in common: Over-the-top musicians are tragically brought down by their own hubris and turn monstrous. Each is a victim of her or his celebrity — something celebrity-incubating Hollywood happens to be pretty good at.

“Maria,” which began streaming on Netflix this week, focuses on Callas’ reclusive last years when she was, if you care to believe this account, pitifully self-destructive. She had lost her voice and her lover, and she had nothing to live for. She could not recapture the mythic La Callas nor make peace with the woman, Maria. It’s an ignominious tale of woe and quixotic temperament.

The gloomy film begins and ends with Callas’ solitary death. In typical flashback fashion, we witness her decline and delusions as she tries to recapture her voice, the attentions of Aristotle Onassis and the adoration of the public. Flashbacks mix in bits and pieces of documentary footage, glimpsing a few highlights of her life.

Throughout, the improbable Angelina Jolie captures Callas’ style in her dress, her public manner and her movements. She sports to glossy perfection sensational ‘50s and ‘60s hairdos. She’d make a great plastic doll of Callas.

The real Callas was striking in a different way. Her face didn’t have Jolie’s spectacularly exact proportions. In fact, Callas made herself out of what she considered to be an ugly duckling. When she first appeared onstage in the late 1940s, she immediately demonstrated a voice to be reckoned with and a fervent vocal theatricality. But she was a large woman and said to be somewhat awkward onstage. Director Franco Zeffirelli described her as big in every way — big eyes, big nose, big mouth, big body — and compared her to the Statue of Liberty.

Seeing the 1953 film “Roman Holiday” made Callas determined to look like its diminutive star, Audrey Hepburn. Callas lost 80 pounds in a single year. She had already been working with great directors, especially Luchino Visconti, but now she had the physical means to go much further and invent the modern concept of opera as drama. Her voice had lost some of its sheen, and those who disliked her blamed the weight loss, which wasn’t the case. It was, instead, her compulsion to put all of her being into a raging theatrical intensity.

On the surface, Callas had become an icon of elegance, but now she could make her big eyes, big mouth and big voice penetrate like nothing anyone in opera had ever experienced. She transformed not just herself but the art form.

Callas’ career in opera lasted less than two decades and was over by 1965. She was only 42 when she sang her last staged opera performance, a production of “Tosca” at Covent Garden in London. People came up with all kinds of reasons why her voice went so early. Only after her death 12 years later did we learn that she suffered from dermatomyositis, which causes muscle weakness that can affect the vocal chords and likely also led to her heart failure at age 53.

Jolie’s voice has been slightly mixed with Callas’ in such a way that it ever so slightly sanitizes Callas’. Joile’s speaking voice sounds almost like Callas’ but without the hint of Callas’ New York accent. She lacks, crucially, Callas’ disarming smile. None of this might matter so much had director Pablo Larrain concentrated less on supplying glamour shots of Jolie.

The film is called “Maria” for a reason. Callas’ was, indeed, a life of conflicts between the artist who grandly became La Callas and the woman who was Maria. But you need to understand both. She undoubtedly stopped singing because of her physical condition. Still, her greatness gave her a remarkable capacity for transcending biology. Yet her need to become more of the woman she wanted to be drove her obsession with the ultimately toxic Onassis.

I saw just how exceptional the transcendent part of this complex equation could be in her 1974 ill-fated comeback tour with tenor Giuseppe di Stefano. A graduate student at the time, I had a top balcony seat at War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. The acoustics are best up there, and I bought a pair of opera glasses just to see her.

She sounded pretty bad. The voice was gone. But not the intensity, not the presence. This became, in fact, some of the greatest singing I’ve ever encountered. She seemed at the same time superhuman and a super-suffering human. You cannot possibly experience the wizardry of Callas and the music becoming one on the awful underground recordings of the concert found on YouTube and elsewhere.

Better to watch Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film “Medea,” in which Callas stars in a purely acting role. Like Larrain with Jolie, Pasolini was fascinated by Callas’ face, particularly her nose. He scrutinizes her expressivity, its extraordinary power. She no longer needs opera, it’s inside her. Pasolini uses music as though he were filming a Noh play but with masks off. The fact that this film has so little regard in the opera world and even among Callas fanciers demonstrates how, if you pay close enough attention, she remains ahead of her time.

Her radical sophistication and courage were in further evidence in 1974 when she addressed a Verdi musicology conference in Chicago. She appeared dignified, eloquent, unsentimental and downright revolutionary. She had no need to waste her time with musicologists and their talk of neglected early Verdi masterpieces. Knowing what mattered and what didn’t, she suggested that they take the best bits from those operas and make something modern and meaningful. She also blamed Puccini for making singers and audiences lazy, because he wasn’t challenging enough.

A year later, Onassis died, which it is said to have caused Callas to lose interest in life. He had left Callas, whom he never married, to wed Jacqueline Kennedy, but the flame burned in Callas to the end. Her last two years were obviously very difficult, what with drugs, depression and dermatomyositis, all of which come across as tawdry in “Maria.” I wonder whether she became a recluse in part because patients suffering from dermatomyositis are supposed to stay out of sunlight. Her body was failing her.

A more affectionate and fanciful portrait of Callas in those years is the basis of Zeffirelli’s 2002 biopic, “Callas Forever,” starring Fanny Ardant and Jeremy Irons as her agent. Zeffirelli had worked with Callas and knew her well. To best understand Callas, turn to Tony Palmer’s 2007 documentary “Callas,” in which Zeffirelli is particularly illuminating.

All the adoration, the glamour, the high life was, for Callas, a purposeful life of bread and roses. Rather, her art had always been the way she boldly filled such emptiness with incredible meaning. “Maria,” on the other hand, offers little more than pathos and poses.