Finishing unfinished tales

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, December 13th.

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Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: moviegoers get the chance to return to Middle-earth.

This weekend, a new animated feature film based on one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s lesser known tales debuts in theaters. Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: A little more than 20 years ago, Warner Bros.’ New Line Cinema and Peter Jackson took J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy masterpiece The Lord of the Rings and adapted its 1200 pages into an epic trilogy that spanned 9 hours and 18 minutes. A decade later, Jackson took the 300 or so pages of The Hobbit and created another trilogy that runs to almost eight hours. And, of course, there are even longer versions of these trilogies, if you can suffer through them. Then a couple of years ago, Amazon and New Line Cinema created a multi-season series called The Rings of Power from a little over 100 pages’ worth of appendices found at the back of Tolkien’s The Return of the King. How many more hours of adaptation can be squeezed out of ever-slimmer page counts? New Line is aiming to find out.

EOWYN: All Middle-earth knows the tale of the War of the Ring. But there are older tales.

The studio’s latest offering is The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, a 2-hour-10-minute animated movie based on a mere two and a half pages from one of Tolkien’s appendices. This definitely sets a new record for runtime-to-page-count ratio.

The film is set on the plains of Rohan, and it takes place 200 years before Jackson’s movies. It purports to tell the story of Helm Hammerhand, the namesake of Helm’s Deep, the fortress that played such a prominent role in The Two Towers. Helm might be king, but the real hero of the movie is his daughter Héra, a headstrong shieldmaiden with fiery red hair.

EOWYN: By her hand, many great deeds were done. But do not look for tales of her in the old songs. There are none.

That voiceover at the film’s beginning serves to warn you that most of what follows doesn’t have much to do with what Tolkien wrote, so don’t bother reading those two and a half pages.

The action begins when an unsuitable suitor named Wulf asks for Héra’s hand in marriage, but neither Helm nor his daughter seem inclined to grant his request.

HÉRA: I have no thoughts of marriage at all. Our fathers speak as if I were not even in the room.

Wulf becomes an implacable enemy of the Rohirrim. He launches an attack, seeking revenge against Helm, Héra and the rest of their family. The Rohirrim resist the onslaught before fleeing to Helm’s Deep where they must outlast a siege during a bitter winter that takes its toll on both sides.

HELM HAMMERHAND: We will paint the dawn red with the blood of our foes.

Even though this film is animated, it’s not necessarily for kids. It’s rated PG-13 for strong violence. But perhaps the most curious aspect of The War of the Rohirrim is the studio’s decision to render it using Japanese animation. Veteran anime director Kenji Kamiyama filmed the actors with motion capture and then used computer 3D renderings as the basis for his 2D hand-drawn scenes. It makes for some interesting imagery, but there’s a visual dissonance between Kamiyama’s Japanese style and the northern European culture of Tolkien’s Rohirrim. While everyone else in the film is garbed in some medieval-ish garb, Héra runs around in an outfit that looks straight out of the futuristic anime Attack on Titan.

So, why would the studio want to make a Lord of the Rings anime?

I suspect New Line’s reasoning went something like this: “Nerds like Tolkien, and nerds like anime; therefore, nerds will love a Tolkien anime.” I have my doubts as to whether this syllogism is sound.

OLWYN: This is your plan?

HERA: I never said it was a good one.

The movie attempts to tie the story to Jackson’s original trilogy, but I can’t imagine passing fans will be tempted to watch an anime about this obscure battle.

HELM HAMMERHAND: Riders of the Mark! Brothers of Rohan! Arise!

And Tolkien die-hards are likely to be offended by the script that takes excessive liberties with Helm’s story. In Tolkien’s two and a half pages, Helm’s daughter doesn’t even get a name, and she certainly isn’t the hero. She’s merely the spark that starts the war. Tolkien’s story is a tragedy without a happy ending, but in this story, Héra saves the day because she’s super awesome.

HERA: I need you. Rohan still needs you.

HELM HAMMERHAND: No, Héra. They need you. You must lead them now.

When writers abandon Tolkien to supposedly improve the story, they usually come up with something much worse. Héra’s adventure in this film feels entirely derivative. It’s like a pastiche of Eowyn’s story from The Return of the King melded with various warrior-princess clichés from other media.

I don’t think New Line really understands who its target audience is with this film, especially all those Tolkien fans who value fidelity over trendiness.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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