El Señor de los Anillos: La guerra de los Rohirrim

Story is good. I mean its Tolkien. But animation is so bad. So many problems where they mix 2D and 3D. Textures are horrible. Fake Depth of field, characters floating in the air while walking. Directing mediocre. Voice acting mediocre. Such a shame for such good story. All in all solid 6. If it appeared 20 years ago would be 8 probably. But as Art Director my self I cant over look such rookie mistakes regarding art style, cutting corners by reducing action of a characters and there movement. Comparing to modern Japanese anime this is super bad. As someone who does art, and review art in daily bases this is amberesing for such big budget movie.

I am a long time (40+ years) Tolkien fan, and arguably fall into the category of being hard to please. I saw this film on IMAX and I must say that it looks pretty nice, with the scenery being exemplary. The animation style might put some people off, depending on preference, but I think it holds up. In summary, overall production value is up to expectation for me (picture, sound, voice acting etc).

Now, where it falls short is definitely on the script side, and I join the (growing) crowd who has a hard time understanding why they decided to change the storyline from the book instead of just building on it. I get the motive and all, but it is still a mystery why they decided to go in this direction, despite the fact that they know EXACTLY what will happen when it hits the Tolkien fandom.

Filmmakers could easily have done more or less the same story, including the Hera perspective, but without tampering with the source material and they would have gotten through this in a much better shape.

I guess it is a sign of the times. Sadly.

The Rohirrim War unfortunately, the end result is a film that struggles to engage the viewer, offering a flat and predictable narrative.

The anime-style animation lacks depth and often appears confusing. The character designs also appear generic and unmemorable, failing to leave a mark on the hearts of viewers. The story, centered on the defense of Helm Hammerhand, is a wasted opportunity to explore the internal dynamics of Rohan. The narrative drags on wearily, lacking twists and moments of true emotion. The dialogues are often banal and repetitive, failing to convey the complexity of the characters and their motivations.

The film suffers from slow pacing and excessive length. Many sequences are unnecessary and artificially dilate the duration, boring the viewer. The lack of pace and memorable moments makes it difficult to remain involved in the story.

The lack of originality and courage in the narrative is the biggest flaw of this feature film.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Rohirrim War" is a film that disappoints on every level. The boredom, the flat plot and the uninspired animation make this film a disappointing experience for fans of the saga. A wasted opportunity to explore a fascinating period of Middle Earth.

The lesson here is that it is dangerous to monkey around with Tolkien. Unless you have something that will enhance the story, without mangling it, you will make a lot of people very angry, and angry people don't put their bums on cinema seats.

It is also not a good idea to make the characters do absurd things every 30 seconds or so. The audience are not going to react well to being faced with ridiculous, or improbable situations all the time. They will grumble to their friends about them, and those friends will decide not to bother seeing it.

I am a big anime fan. I think it's fantastic, and I watch a lot of it. It is NOT a good idea to have a film like this directed by an anime director. Anime has a different perspective to story telling. Another reviewer said that he found it strange that people just stand around when someone is in danger. Quite often that is the way that anime scenes are filmed. One defender, one attacker, or even when there is only one defender, and there are a lot of attackers. One attacker at a time, like they are taking turns.

Héra's costumes were frequently a little wrong for the same reason. The style was out of character with the universe it was in. There were also some ragged areas of the animation, where it looked like something from a decade or two ago.

I won't be watching it a second time.

The good thing is: animation is good and buitifully made.

All the rest is awfull. The plot is unbelievebly stupid and predictable at evey turn. It lacks any coherence and depth, grown man behave like five-years-old, the authors do not posses the essential minimum understanding of medieval warfare to make the audience take the battles a bit seriously.

The pratagonist is a Mery Sue to the extreme, she is the smartest, the fastest, the bravest and the strongest, she always have the best solution to any tactical or political problem. Well, actually her ideas are naive and shallow, but all the rest on the set are so incredibly dumb that hers seems to pass.

The movie is a waste if time, it comes nothing near the original and just rides on its name.