This movie came out at a weird time for everyone involved.

Peter Jackson and company wrapped up their “The Hobbit” trilogy ten years ago (!!!) with the firm and solid promise that it was the end of his tenure adapting the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. To which everyone looked at “The Hobbit” trilogy and agreed that it was for the best. After those underwhelming movies and the Mortal Engines fiasco of 2018, Jackson has apparently retreated from Hollywood filmmaking, content to leverage his vast CGI resources and experience toward documentaries.

(Side note: Yes, I know Jackson didn’t direct Mortal Engines, but he was heavily involved as a producer and the movie was sold on his name.)

As for “The Lord of the Rings” itself, that franchise has gone through significant ups (the ongoing TV series on Amazon Prime) and downs (the Gollum-centric video game) in the past decade. But of course the most crucial event came in August 2022, when Saul Zaentz Enterprises had sold off the entire “Lord of the Rings” IP to the Embracer Group. That was a year before this same Embracer Group famously bought up every video game studio and media IP they could get their sticky hands on, only to shutter companies and lay off workers en masse after a failed business deal left them over $2 billion in debt.

Speaking of incompetent business decisions and billions of dollars in debt, Warner Bros. Discovery.

What can I say about the Zaslav era that hasn’t already been said? Over the past four years — hell, ever since Zack Snyder got offered the job to direct Man of Steel — it’s been one self-inflicted black eye for Warner Bros. after another. And no, I don’t want to hear about how Barbie was a world-conquering success, those box office grosses were singlehandedly neutralized by the financial losses of The Flash. Things haven’t gotten much better for WBD in 2024, the year in which Zaslav went back on his promise to never write off another near-completed movie and burned Coyote vs. Acme. And then came the catastrophic box-office bombs of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1, and Joker: Folie a Deux, all of which further cemented WBD as an industry laughingstock. Even now, WBD is catching flack for the botched release of Juror No. 2, a film universally lauded as one of the year’s best films by all twelve people who’ve seen it.

So here we are with The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, an animated Lord of the Rings spinoff that got greenlit and fast-tracked in Summer 2021. From start to finish, the studio executives made a huge freaking deal about the involvement of Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Phillipa Boyens. This was clearly and explicitly made and marketed as a tie-in to the original classic film trilogy. Cut to three years later, and the film got released to the bare minimum of promotion.

My best educated guess as to what happened: WBD saw that the rights to “Lord of the Rings” were up for grabs and they rushed this movie into production to cement their public association with the property and make the best use of what they owned of the IP. (You’ll recall WBD tried something similar under near-identical conditions with Wonka.) Then the Embracer Group deal happened, WBD crunched the numbers, and decided they didn’t want to be part of something that would increase the value of the property under someone else. But the movie was too far along to be canceled by that point and WBD couldn’t get away with burning another movie. So they buried the film and gave it the least possible release, presumably writing off the taxes on the financial losses instead of the whole movie.

All of that aside, what’s the story? Well, we lay our scene in Rohan, roughly 200 years before Bilbo’s 111th birthday. I feel obliged to mention that this is very much a Rohan-centric story, to the point where we don’t get any dwarves or elves or hobbits. The rings of power are only obliquely hinted at, Sauron is barely mentioned in passing, and there’s no magic here unless you count the outlandish superhuman strength of King Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox).

That said, it’s not like the film is entirely cut off from the rest of the franchise. This is clearly set in the same continuity as the Jackson films, with musical score and production design all painstakingly authentic to the original film trilogy. We’ve also got Miranda Otto reprising Eowyn as our voice-over narrator, and Christopher Lee poking his head in for a last-minute cameo through an archival clip.

(Side note: No, I am not calling him “the late Christopher Lee.” He’s not dead, he’s sleeping. Give him a century, maybe two, and he’ll be back.)

I might further add that the giant eagles play a small yet crucial role in the plot, and we get a brief action scene with a few errant orcs (voiced by none other than Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan). Also, we get to see an oliphaunt fighting a Watcher in the Water. I didn’t even know I wanted that, but I’m sure as hell glad we’ve got it! But I digress.

This is the story of Hera (Gaia Wise), princess of Rohan and daughter to the aforementioned King Helm. An expository voice-over helpfully tells us that her mother died giving birth, and Hera grew up to be a warrior princess who could ride a horse before she could walk, yet she’s sheltered by her overbearing father… you get the idea. The plot kicks off with a rumor that Hera is set to be married off to a prince of Gondor (whom we never meet), and nobody particularly likes the idea of a royal union between the two rival kingdoms.

Enter Wulf (Luke Pasqualiano), childhood friend to Hera and prince of the neighboring Dunlending hill-people. Wulf’s father (Freca, voiced by Shaun Dooley) proposes a wedding between Wulf and Hera, a more politically amenable match. Trouble is, Hera herself doesn’t want a husband at all and her father thinks that Freca is arranging the marriage in a play for the throne. Long story short (too late!), things escalate until Helm kills Freca in what’s clearly a consensual duel. Beyond all reason, Wulf blames Helm for the death of his father (not to blame the victim here, but Freca was explicitly asking for it), and Wulf gets banished for his attitude.

To recap: 1) Wulf is denied marriage to the woman he’s been crushing on for literally his entire life, 2) Wulf sees his father killed in front of him, and 3) Wulf gets banished from Rohan. Naturally, Wulf is overcome with blind rage and spends the next few years gathering an army of Dunlendings to kill the royal family and burn Rohan to the ground. Thus we have our titular war.

To address the oliphaunt in the room, there are certainly a number of superficial similarities with Theoden’s story arc in “The Two Towers” and “Return of the King”. Theoden and Helm are both kings of Rohan who alienate themselves and repeatedly suffer for their own arrogant pride. Both have headstrong daughter figures who are objectively better at everything than the men trying to keep them down. Both have sons who die tragically unnecessary deaths. (In Helm’s case, that would be Haleth and Hama, respectively voiced by Benjamin Wainwright and Yazdan Qafouri.) Both kings are betrayed by their closest advisors. Both kings make the brash decision to banish a kinsman who comes back to save their asses later on. (In Helm’s case, that’s Frealaf, voiced by Laurence Ubong Williams.)

Yet despite the similar plot and character arcs, it makes a huge difference that we don’t have the hobbits and wizards and dark lords sucking up all the oxygen. The Rohirrim are given center stage here, and the characters take that extra room to go so much bigger. Compared with their counterparts in Frodo’s time, Helm Hammerhand and Hera are practically demigods. They’re given so much more to do and they’re repeatedly proven to be so much more competent that any comparisons are pretty much useless.

Perhaps more importantly, the film has the room to go so much deeper in its depiction of pride. At its heart and core, this is a movie about men who drive themselves and everyone else around them to ruin through their own reckless idiocy. To wit: Helm is so insufferably arrogant and self-centered, and he’s facing an opponent (namely Wulf) who grew up with Helm’s family and is thus intimately familiar with the king of Rohan. The upshot is that Wulf can perfectly anticipate Helm’s every move, secure in the knowledge that Helm is too stubborn and set in his ways to do anything differently, which inevitably results in Helm taking one bloody and humiliating defeat after another.

That said, Wulf is a victim of his own short-sightedness as well. Wulf is repeatedly warned that this war is not sustainable. He keeps up the onslaught far beyond what any rational person would allow. He’s only barely capable of maintaining an army that has no reason whatsoever to go to the psychotic extents that Wulf demands. But precisely because Wulf is so blinded by his own vendetta, Hera (who, remember, is an old childhood friend who knows him all too well, and a woman eternally underestimated by the men around her) is uniquely capable of playing the guy against himself.

Basically put, what we’ve got here is a story about the corruption of power and the downfall of proud men. Moreover, it’s a story about the power of legends and heroes and other symbols of hope, most especially in dark times. In other words, the story is a new perspective on old established themes central to the heart and core of the greater franchise. I dig it.

That said, the pacing is terribly inconsistent — either the action scenes are going at a breakneck pace or the winter siege has ground everything to a frustrating halt. I also found myself frustrated at the superhuman feats of Helm, which strained plausibility even by the liberal standards of this franchise. I could also point out the animation, which might have looked even better if the film hadn’t been so visibly rushed through production.

On a miscellaneous note, I’d be remiss not to mention the supporting cast. Michael Wildmann voices General Targg, who gets the thankless and futile task of serving as Wulf’s conscience/sounding board. Lorraine Ashbourne voices Olwyn, a retired Rohirrim shieldmaiden who’s pretty much whatever the plot needs her to be in the moment. Last and least is Lief (Bilal Hasna), the ineffectual comic relief sidekick.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a tough one to judge. It feels like the studio execs were trying to make a direct-to-streaming film just good enough to serve for copyright shenanigans, while the filmmakers were trying to make a legitimately great work of cinema worthy of the LOTR live-action trilogy. My blood boils at the thought of what these same filmmakers might have accomplished if this movie was given the time and money to deliver on its full potential. Even as it is, they do a damned fine job of pushing the envelope. Hell, a runtime of over two hours is quite ambitious for an animated feature.

Ultimately, these filmmakers took two pages of Tolkien’s liner notes and expanded them into an animated feature that honors the themes and legacy of the greater franchise. For a movie that nobody wanted or needed, it turned out surprisingly well.

It’s tempting to recommend this for a home viewing, but I’d hate to be anyone who saw this for the first time in a living room and wished that they could’ve seen the oliphaunt sequence on a big screen. On those grounds, I’ll give this a tenuous recommendation to go see it now. Especially since it’s not like we’ve got any other cinematic releases to look forward to until Christmas.