The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim 4K 2024 Ultra HD 2160p

An anime prequel to The Lord of the Rings. The story is set 183 years before the original trilogy and tells of the Battle of Helm's Deep between the Rohirrim people and the Dunlanders.

User Review

“The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” is more like a pie with filling in the form of fanservice thrown on top. Thrown on carelessly, but thickly, richly and masterfully. So that fans and fans of the Universe would understand exactly for whom and why this whole enterprise was conceived. If to peel off this layer of fanservice from the pie, then under it there will be a usual such, stale and not very tasty shmata, which without a connection to the famous franchise and take that few people would want to take it. A layer of potential plot development, which on paper looked very appetizing and interesting, but in its screen realization looks poor, faded, local. Like the pilot for a season of an animated series that we're unlikely to ever see at all.

The story, which is built entirely on repetitions of what has already been done before, is designed to expand the franchise, but in the end it becomes clear that the offshoot that the authors propose turns out to be much weaker than what has already been filmed and written. Jackson even managed to make a rather pompous trilogy based on a children's book about the adventures of a hobbit. Kamiyama, having at his disposal a whole warlike and proud people, filmed about him some chamber cranberry. Everything falls on the shoulders of the content, which once worked (and is still capable in the hands of a skillful storyteller), but here for some reason is not too impressive, lost in itself, because the desire to stuff everything and more does not make the 'Rohirrim War' more large-scale and vivid. We never see the promised war. And what we have is akin to a domestic clash of quarreling neighbors. Moreover, the heroes often behave illogically and childishly, which does not quite fit with the atmosphere and spirit of the story. But here they managed to shove the Guardian, mumaks, completely out of place orcs and other attributes of the lore. And all this is nothing more than the notorious fanservice for fanservice's sake. When you don't have a good interesting story, you're left to stuff it with everything that worked somewhere and once upon a time. And it doesn't matter that the story here is different.

Stretched out over two-plus hours, this picture generally falls apart by the second half to the point where it becomes simply uninteresting to watch. Even in the climax, where it seemed to be the right time to set off fireworks, the director leads us by the hand to the curtain and the credits, which are really hard to sit through. Even for a fan. Where we have a dramatic battle, we have chatter and bickering. The fight, which the storyline leads to from the first minutes of the plot, turns out to be a disservice. Every episode from 'The Hobbit' and 'Lord of the Rings' apart from the story looked elaborate and filigreed. Be it the fight between Thorin and Azog from 'The Hobbit', or the scene of Frodo and Sam at the mouth of the Fatal Mountain in 'The CW'.

What's good about this anime? Recognizable music tracks. A couple of charismatic characters who are still spelled out lousy. Even the mighty and very colorful Helm, in the second half, really starts to resemble some sort of parody of the Hulk. The main heroine also receives little development and even after the credits, perhaps, still represents a dark horse for us. The main villain is completely standard and cardboard. Moreover, the story itself seems to suggest some kind of personal chemistry between Wolf and Hera. But the cartoon has big problems with it.

With all the claim to epicness, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” is somehow very unepic and shallow, both for the content on Tolkien's universe, and for an independent genre work with a serious swing. There are some attempts at dramatization, but there is no full-fledged drama. But there is plenty of tedious dialog. There are charismatic characters, but the director doesn't know what to do with them and where to lead them. As a result, the spectacle turns out to be extremely inarticulate and devoid of fascination and entertainment. Weak plot, poor choreography, lack of memorable scenes - all this is not forgivable to the authors. Even as a standalone fantasy anime, this is an unremarkable work. For comparison, check out 'Castlevania', or 'Vinland Saga'. I didn't like it. Perhaps the most devoted fans are able to swallow this, but the general public, familiar with the works of Tolkien and Jackson, this craft is unlikely to promise two and more hours of interesting viewing.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (58.3 Mb/s)
Resolution: Upscaled 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10+
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#English: Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
#English: Dolby Digital Plus with Dolby Atmos 5.1
#French: Dolby Digital 5.1
#Spanish (Latino): Dolby Digital 5.1

Info Subtitles

English SDH, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese (Traditional), Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French (Canadian), French (France), German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Iberian), Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish (Latin American), Spanish (Castilian), Swedish, Thai, Turkish.