2024’s Lord Of The Rings Movie Can Finally Fix The Franchise’s 2 Worst Mistakes

2024’s upcoming animated Lord of the Rings movie, subtitled War of the Rohirrim, can finally fix two huge franchise mistakes from long before the Peter Jackson trilogy. Set to arrive in theaters on December 13, 2024, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim will fill in the backstory of Helm Hammerhand, a legendary King of Rohan and namesake of Helm’s Deep, who has to defend his kingdom against an army of Dunlendings. The new animation takes place 261 years before the events depicted in Jackson’s acclaimed trilogy.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has a lot going for it. Rather than rehashing familiar storylines, it’s exploring an uncharted territory in J.R.R. Tolkien’s sprawling narrative web. Miranda Otto is reprising her role as Éowyn to narrate the film and Brian Cox is starring as Helm Hammerhand. Perhaps the most exciting thing about The War of the Rohirrim is that it’s animated, allowing audiences to see Middle-earth in a whole new visual style. This movie’s animation can make up for The Lord of the Rings franchise’s two biggest mistakes.

War Of The Rohirrim Can Fix Earlier LOTR Animated Movies

Two decades before Jackson would tackle The Lord of the Rings saga in live-action, the books were adapted into a pair of animated movies. Ralph Bakshi directed an animated feature titled The Lord of the Rings in 1978, cramming the events of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers into a 133-minute runtime. Although the film was a modest box office success, it never got a sequel, so Bakshi’s telling of The Lord of the Rings story remains incomplete. However, it did get an unofficial follow-up in 1980.

In 1980, Rankin/Bass and Topcraft produced The Return of the King: A Story of the Hobbits. This was technically a sequel to Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit TV special from 1977, but it served to fill in the rest of the story that Bakshi started with his Lord of the Rings movie. The Return of the King struggled to fit the epic tale of Tolkien’s final Lord of the Rings volume into a 98-minute runtime. Plus, it had to summarize the first two volumes, since it was an unofficial sequel. The result was a rushed, disjointed, unevenly paced mess.

Why The 1978 & 1980 Animated LOTR Movies Failed

Both animated Lord of the Rings movies failed in their own way. Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings animation was an impressively ambitious effort, but it cut out a few key plot points – like the Battle of Dagorlad – that makes the rest of the story confusing, because it’s missing important context. It gets off to a strong start with an appropriately cozy sequence in Hobbiton and there are some really spectacular battle scenes. But about halfway through, as it struggles to condense one of the densest novels ever written, it becomes incoherent.

Rankin/Bass’ Return of the King animation suffered from the same problem, sacrificing crucial story beats (and cohesion) for the sake of brevity. It also has a cutesy animation style and a folk-ballad soundtrack that doesn’t gel with the epic, mythic quality of Tolkien’s writing. Both of these animated Lord of the Rings movies were terrible in their own way, and damaged the idea of animation being a good medium for Middle-earth. All these years later, War of the Rohirrim can fix this perception.

War Of The Rohirrim Needs To Succeed For The Lord Of The Rings’ Future

Thanks to The Lord of the Rings franchise’s previous misfires in the field of animation, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim can’t afford to fail. With its limitless visual possibilities and direct translation of the creators’ imagination to the screen, animation is actually a great way to explore Tolkien’s universe on-screen. Another animated failure would put off future filmmakers – and the studios making nine-figure gambles on their tentpole movies – from utilizing animation in future Lord of the Rings films.

Recent successes like the Spider-Verse movies and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem have reinvigorated the art of big-screen animation and proven that a variety of different visual styles can be used to tell a variety of different stories. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has the opportunity to break the visual potential of Tolkien’s universe wide open, paving the way for a bunch of animated movies diving into unexplored areas of Middle-earth. But if it fails, it’ll end this animation revolution before it’s even begun.

The Lord of The Rings: The War of The Rohirrim

Set before the events of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an animated action-adventure fantasy film that follows a King of Rohan named Helm Hammerhand. When his home comes under siege by Dunlendings, Hammerhand prepares himself and his allies to fight back against them, with the war leading to the eventual establishment of Helm’s Deep.

Director

Kenji Kamiyama

Release Date

December 13, 2024

Cast

Brian Cox , Miranda Otto , Gaia Wise , Luke Pasqualino , Laurence Ubong , Shaun Dooley

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