BEFORE: So I have a long history with the "Lord of the Rings" franchise, maybe longer than most. My mom spent some time in a hospital when I was young, don't remember exactly why, but she read the Tolkien books when she was there, and after she said I just HAD to read them, though I probably was a bit young for them, I followed suit. Then we learned that there was a movie coming out based on the books, so that happened in 1978, it was an animated version and we were all very excited. This was the infamous film from Ralph Bakshi, who was also known for some more adult cartoons like "Fritz the Cat" and "Coonskin", then later on "Wizards" and "American Pop". But excitement turned to disappointment in the theater when we got to the end of the movie and we realized they'd only made it through HALF of the three books. It ended in the middle, which is not a cool thing to do. We figured there had to be a sequel coming, and there was, but it took a few years and it aired on TV (1980?) and not in the movie theaters.
Thirty years after THAT, I'd been working for a different animator for a long while, and doing the San Diego Comic-Con run with him once a year - as I'm detailing now on my new Instagram account, in addition to selling stuff and screening films, the Con was a place for my boss to connect with other animators and maybe make some new friends, and in 2010, through a mutual connection, we had Ralph Bakshi in our booth for a day. Well, he really wasn't what I expected, but he was 72 years old by then, and I think his faculties were starting to go, so I didn't have the nerve or the heart to tell him how disappointed my mother had been back in 1980 when she only got to see HALF of "The Lord of the Rings" in the movie titled "The Lord of the Rings".
I know he finished a film called "Last Days of Coney Island" in 2015, but since then the only thing I know that he's worked on is a bunch of clown paintings that are sold on his web-site, and his newsletter usually bombed my work e-mail with disturbing photos of clown art. It's sad, really. He's got to be 87 now and so I'm trying to get my 2010 photos of him posted while I can, before they get lost in a sea of post-mortem tributes.
Then, of course, there were the three live-action "Lord of the Rings" movies starting in 2001 and then the three "Hobbit" movies starting in 2012, but everybody knows about those. Fewer people seem to remember that things started with an animated film back in 1978, and now there's a new animated film, so it seems the franchise has kind of come full circle. I only found out about it when they started e-mailing out screening invites to Academy members late last year.
The voice of Christopher Lee carries over from "Boogie Woogie". It appears they used archive sound of him from the other movies, but that's OK, archive footage counts for my linking, so archive sound should too.
THE PLOT: A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and traitorous lord of Rohan seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces King Helm Hammerhand and his people to make a daring last stand in the stronghold of the Hornburg.
AFTER: It's just kind of disappointing across the board, I mean I guess we should all be glad that there's a push to release new material based on Tolkien's characters, but that said, the story just isn't very good, and I've never been a fan of animé, not Miyazaki even, except for "Astro Boy" I've managed to avoid the entire genre, that is until today. Did we need a story in the animé style set in Middle-Earth? I don't think that we did. Only somebody needed to make one, because if New Line Cinema didn't make any new content by a certain deadline, they were likely to lose the film adaptation rights for all of Tolkien's books. This it true, I'm not making it up, they had to crank out some kind of film quickly or they'd lose the right to make more. So, then, how good could this movie be if they fast-tracked it?
Also, it's based on some footnotes in the appendix of one of the "Lord of the Rings" books, really there was just a list of the kings of Rohan in order, and so some screenwriter probably just picked one with his eyes closed and said, "Well, I guess we're making a movie out of THIS guy's story..." Which doesn't mean that story is going to be terrible, it's just that in no way is it going to feature a major character from the Tolkien-verse, really this is just going to form a rough prequel to the "Hobbit" storyline, since it's set a full 200 years before that.
Oh, sure, there's stuff at the end about Gandalf and Saruman, but those are two wizards who both lived a very long time, so why not tease them in a "Rogue One" kind of way? We see an animated Saruman, long before anyone figured out that he was going to be corrupted by Sauron, while Gandalf is kind of mentioned in passing, two characters say they need to go visit him and let him know they saw orcs going around, hunting for rings.
The orcs are in the film for just a few minutes, but all of the other wonderful races of Middle-Earth that we saw in the main books are notoriously absent. Where are the dwarves, the elves and the hobbitses? Where are the damn dragons? We get one giant eagle in this story and one of those giant elephant-like things, and that's it, except for all the men. Bah, men are boring, it's elves and dwarves that are interesting and exciting - so that's a strange choice, then, just to focus on the Rohirrim, who are the Lords of Rohan. They at least got the actress who played Eowyn in the live-action films to narrate this, and Eowyn was from Rohan, so it makes sense, it could be a character relating a story about her ancestors.
I mean, sure, I'll watch it, once I commit to a franchise I'm in for a penny, in for a pound. But there's really no great earth-shaking story here, just an explanation of how the first Age of Kings ended with King Helm, and inconveniently both of his sons die and his daughter, Hela, isn't given a chance to rule, even though her actions save the entire city of Rohan (or at least all those who weren't off fighting in Helm's army) and she probably would have made a great queen, but you know, sexism and all that, people would rather have a strong male king, so the throne passed to her cousin Frealaf, or Helm's nephew.
Earlier on, Helm had offered Hera's hand in marriage, and a Dunlending lord named Freca showed up with his son Wulf, who happened to be Hera's childhood friend. Wulf wanted to marry Hera, but then she decided instead to marry "none of the above", it happens. But Wulf didn't take it well, and then Freca got into a fist-fight with Helm and Helm killed Freca with one punch, earning him the nickname Helm Hammerhand.
Wulf swears revenge, and invades Rohan years later, and while Helm's army is fighting him off, Wulf's man on the inside tries to kill Hera, but she escapes and leads the whole Edoras city population into a cave stronghold called the Hornburg. Wulf's forces prepare to lay siege to Hornburg, surrounding them during winter and knowing that the citizens didn't have time to stock up on food. They build a siege-tower next to the stronghold.
The wounded King Helm sneaks out at night through a secret exit and kills a few of Wulf's men each night, but when Hera finds out about this, she urges him to stop. They're caught outside, though, and race back to the gates, only to find them stuck. Helm pushes them open to save his daughter, then closed again to make his last stand against the attacking army. There's a big battle and a final face-off to cover the escape of the citizens, but that's basically it.The big "twist" is that the stronghold gets re-named Helm's Deep, and this location is very important again in the second LOTR film, "The Two Towers". All of that to finally land on one giant inside joke. Sorry, but it's just not worth all the effort expended to get there.
What I've been meaning to do is to watch all SIX of the Peter Jackson films, starting with the 3 "Hobbit" movies and then going back to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Obviously I'm very busy with new movies and (soon-to-be) two jobs, but maybe since my November and December movie schedules will be lighter (about 10 films each month) maybe this is the year I can finally sit down and do that. That would take about 8 hours for the theatrical cuts of the "Hobbit" films and another 9 1/2 hours for the "LOTR" films, extended versions would take longer, obviously. But perhaps in November I could do this - Thanksgiving break maybe?
Directed by Kenji Kamayama
Also starring the voices of Brian Cox (last heard in "The Electric State"), Gaia Wise, Miranda Otto (last seen in "The Homesman"), Luca Pasqualino (last seen in "Snowpiercer"), Lorraine Ashbourne (last seen in "Breathe"), Shaun Dooley (last seen in "Saltburn"), Benjamin Wainwright, Yazdan Qafouri, Laurence Ubong Williams (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), Michael Wildman (last seen in "American Assassin"), Janine Duvitski (last seen in "Dracula" (1979)), Bilal Hasna, Jude Akuwudike (last seen in "The Little Mermaid" (2023)), Billy Boyd (last heard in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"), Dominic Monaghan (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker"), Alex Jordan (last seen in "Dream Horse"), Bea Dooley, Elijah Tamati, Will Godber, Calum Gittins (last seen in "Mortal Engines")
RATING: 5 out of 10 broken shields
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