Helm Hammerhand Archives - The Wide Screen

August 24, 2024

Rohan Rises In First Trailer For “War Of The Rohirrim”

Whether he wants to be or not, Peter Jackson is bound to Middle-earth, and no amount of success as a groundbreaking documentary filmmaker will ever put distance between him and the twenty year-old adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings that, both as a result of his indisputable talent and in spite of his worst impulses as a director, is still rightly regarded as a masterpiece by most and as the only “true” iteration of Tolkien’s world and characters by some. His stay in that world could have ended on a high note, with the thirteen Academy Awards he and his crew earned for The Return Of The King in 2004, but Warner Brothers wasn’t satisfied, even if he was, so they got him back for The Hobbit – robbing us of a Guillermo del Toro-directed two-part adaptation of the slim children’s book that would probably have been much better, and saddling Jackson with a mess that would become his to bear the blame for as it bloated into a trilogy of unfocused and almost unwatchable films.

The animated character of Hera in The War Of The Rohirrim, riding a white horse straight towards the camera. She has flame-red hair in a braid, and wears a flowing white gown. She carries a round shield emblazoned with a golden sun. Her horse wears golden armor. — Hera | ign.com

And yet…he’s back again, his name all over the first trailer for the feature-length anime The War Of The Rohirrim (written by Philippa Boyens, Jackson’s co-writer on both the Rings and Hobbit trilogies), which also incorporates footage from Jackson’s films. And this isn’t a one-off, but the first of many prequels to The Lord Of The Rings that Warner Brothers, under the backwards-looking leadership of David Zaslav, is hoping Jackson will produce and help to promote, if not direct. The Hunt For Gollum, featuring the return of Andy Serkis, is already set for 2026. The cynic in me warns that Zaslav’s end goal here is to remake the original trilogy in ten years time with Jackson at the helm once more, starring a digitally de-aged Elijah Wood and an AI deepfake of the by-then 95 year-old Sir Ian McKellen. But I can take some comfort in the fact that The War Of The Rohirrim, at least, is a stand-alone, and the story it tells is removed from the events of The Lord Of The Rings by hundreds of years, and features only a handful of characters and recognizable locations from the films.

Granted, one of those characters happens to be Éowyn, Shieldmaiden of Rohan – voiced by Miranda Otto, who originated the role in Jackson’s films. Her return is admittedly a big factor in my excitement for The War Of The Rohirrim, so I can’t say I’m entirely immune to Warner Brothers’ blatant nostalgia bait, but actresses are so rarely invited to come back to franchises more than twenty years on (one particularly egregious example of this is Julia Sawalha, 55, being told she was “too old” to reprise the voice-role of Ginger in the recent sequel to Chicken Run) that Otto being the nostalgia bait feels significant.

The animated character of Wulf in War Of The Rohirrim, in close-up. He has long dark brown hair, and wears a light brown cloak with a dark brown fur-lined collar. — Wulf | youtube.com

Éowyn serves as the film’s narrator, helping to ease the audience into the history of Rohan and preface the story of the actual protagonist, a woman named Hera (voiced by Gaia Wise) with a similar disposition to Éowyn herself, who was born prior to the year 2754 of the Third Age (for context, The Hobbit takes place in the year 2941, and The Lord Of The Rings between 3001 and 3021). Hera is a non-canonical name for a canonical character, the daughter of Helm Hammerhand, the ninth King of Rohan (voiced by Succession‘s Brian Cox). Tolkien, whose strengths as a worldbuilder did not include fleshing out female characters, writes of her only that her hand in marriage was sought by Lord Freca on behalf of his son Wulf (voiced by Shadow And Bone‘s Luke Pasqualino). Her name, deeds, and dates of birth and death are nowhere recorded, so War Of The Rohirrim has had to invent these and all other details about her from scratch. In the film, she appears to be Wulf’s childhood friend, but the two are estranged after a duel of words between their fathers escalates into a literal duel that ends with Freca’s death at Helm Hammerhand’s hammer hands.

In the war that follows, an army of Dunlendings led by Wulf and based out of the old fortress of Isengard (not yet occupied by Saruman) are joined by Haradrim sweeping across Gondor, no doubt due to Sauron’s meddling. Helm is forced to retreat to a citadel in the White Mountains that he fortifies, which in later days will be known by the name Helm’s Deep (yes, that Helm’s Deep). There, the Rohirrim make what they believe will be their last stand, all through the Long Winter (also probably attributable to Sauron). No spoilers, but it’s a gripping tale even briefly sketched out in the Appendices to The Return Of The King. And animated? It’s nothing short of stunning.

Director Kenji Kamiyama, whose previous work includes Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Blade Runner: Black Lotus and The Ninth Jedi (one of my favorite episodes of the anime anthology series Star Wars: Visions), brings to War Of The Rohirrim the clean and exceptionally fluid animation style that characterizes his output and befits Middle-earth. It is a far cry from Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, which has acquired a cult-classic status for its janky rotoscoping, but also serves as a great example of why rotoscoping, as an animation technique, isn’t in common use nowadays. War Of The Rohirrim, by contrast, feels like it has the potential to raise the bar exponentially for future animated films set in this world (not that any have been announced, but if War Of The Rohirrim is a success, it won’t be long before other stories in the Appendices get the same treatment). And in a rare show of confidence from a studio that has been pretty risk-averse under its current leadership, Warner Brothers is giving it a coveted December release in theaters, on IMAX screens, where it will be going up against Kraven The Hunter, Sonic The Hedgehog 3, and Mufasa: The Lion King, as well as the previous month’s presumably leggy blockbusters Wicked: Part One, Gladiator 2, and Moana 2.

Animated wide shot of the city of Edoras, burning. Four figures on horseback are visible in the foreground, riding away from the city. — Edoras aflame | youtube.com

The big question now is whether audiences will show up for an animated Lord Of The Rings prequel featuring the voice of only one supporting cast member from the original films. The power of Peter Jackson’s name is not as strong as it once was: Mortal Engines, the biggest flop of 2018, was also a Jackson production, albeit unassociated with Middle-earth. And Amazon is hoping to sate nostalgia for Lord Of The Rings with the second season of The Rings Of Power, releasing in just a few days. But there’s no good reason that adaptations can’t coexist, and War Of The Rohirrim draws on a completely different period of Middle-earth’s history than Rings Of Power and visually is more in line with Jackson’s (hugely successful) trilogies. Personally, I haven’t tired yet of seeing these stories brought to life, and I think some competition would be healthy for the franchise, if franchise it has become. We’ll just have to wait and see if general audiences are accepting of the distinction.

Trailer Rating: 8/10

June 15, 2022

Miranda Otto Returns to Middle-Earth To Narrate “War Of The Rohirrim” Anime

When Miranda Otto scored the coveted and contested role of Éowyn in The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers back in 1999, she probably didn’t anticipate that twenty-three years later she’d be asked to reprise the role once more – and that this time around, Éowyn wouldn’t just be a supporting character in someone else’s story, but the star and selling-point of a completely new story set in Middle-earth hundreds of years before the events depicted in The Lord Of The Rings.

For better or worse, we live in a wild world where both Warner Brothers and Amazon Prime have the ability to tell new stories set in Middle-earth (the rest of us will have to wait until sometime around 2050), but as long as they continue to use this power responsibly by fleshing out the stories of Middle-earth’s ancient history found in the Appendices to The Lord Of The Rings, you won’t see me complaining. And that is exactly what Warner Brothers is aiming to achieve with their upcoming feature-length anime film, War Of The Rohirrim, which has just today enlisted Miranda Otto to narrate the epic tale of one of Éowyn’s ancestors, King Helm Hammerhand.

Helm (who will be voiced by Succession‘s Brian Cox in the anime), lived about two-hundred and fifty to three-hundred years before Éowyn, roughly. He was the ninth King of Rohan, and of all the Kings after Eorl the Young by far the most belligerent. In the eighteen years he reigned, he managed to alarm or offend most of his relations, ultimately incurring an invasion of Rohan in the year 2758 that inconveniently coincided with a blight and a resulting famine brought about by the Long Winter, the effects of which were felt all across Middle-earth. Rohan’s enemies took control of the city of Edoras and the golden hall of Meduseld, while Helm and the Rohirrim were forced to retreat to the fortress of the Hornburg in the White Mountains, where they endured a terrible siege for at least five months, probably six or seven. Friends and foes alike froze to death in the heavy snow, people started eating each other to survive – it was not a happy time.

Both of Helm’s sons died in the war, one while defending the doors of Meduseld and the other during the Long Winter…but Helm also had a daughter, and we don’t know anything about her besides the fact that she existed and that four years prior to the invasion of Rohan she was the subject of a brawl between Helm and a local baron named Freca, who unwisely suggested marrying her off to Freca’s own son Wulf (voiced by Luke Pasqualino of Shadow And Bone), at which point Helm “smote Freca such a blow with his fist that he fell back stunned, and died soon after”, which in turn led Wulf to seek vengeance for his father’s death by joining forces with the Dunlendings and planning the assault on Edoras.

The Appendices to The Lord Of The Rings aren’t devoid of female characters entirely, but they’re filled with women like Helm’s daughter who aren’t so much characters as they are placeholders for characters – and even that is a generous description, when you take into consideration all the blank spaces on the family trees where there ought to be women’s names, the dates of their births and deaths, the details of their lives alongside those of their husbands, brothers, and sons (all of whose exploits Tolkien recorded in occasionally excessive detail). These women are implied to have existed…Tolkien just didn’t care enough about any of them to give us more information than that.

But this new generation of writers entrusted with adapting his work do care, or at the very least everything I’ve seen so far from both The Rings Of Power and War Of The Rohirrim gives me the impression that they care about expanding and diversifying the world of Middle-earth to include more women (and not just white women, either) and therefore create more opportunities for actresses in this franchise who might otherwise have a total of three or four roles to choose from. Helm’s daughter, now named Hera (and voiced by Gaia Wise of A Walk In The Woods), will apparently play a major role in War Of The Rohirrim as she leads a resistance movement opposed to Wulf.

Additionally, Bridgerton‘s Lorraine Ashbourne – the wife of Peter Jackson’s close friend and frequent collaborator Andy Serkis – has been cast in a supporting role in the film, although we don’t have any details regarding her character. Serkis may or may not have been involved in getting her the part, but regardless her casting forms another link between War Of The Rohirrim and Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy that now includes Miranda Otto, Jackson’s co-writer Philippa Boyens, and concept artists Alan Lee and John Howe, who probably won’t stray too far from the aesthetics they established for Rohan over twenty years ago that have remained iconic and beloved.

None of this is all that surprising, seeing as Warner Brothers has probably had the entire cast and crew of Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy on speed-dial for the last two decades waiting for just such an opportunity to present itself, but if nostalgia for Jackson’s trilogy is what both Warner Brothers and Amazon will be trying to elicit from audiences throughout their respective marketing campaigns for War Of The Rohirrim and Rings Of Power (and that certainly seems to be the case), then Warner Brothers will have the upper hand in that fight as long as they own the rights to the trilogy and can continue to use all the same imagery and all the same actors without needing to worry about accidentally benefiting their competitors.

Leaving all that aside, who else is just excited to hear Miranda Otto as Éowyn again? I know I am. Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

June 10, 2021June 10, 2021

“The Lord Of The Rings” Anime Will Explore Origin Of Helm’s Deep

In all the hype surrounding Amazon’s upcoming The Lord Of The Rings prequel series (hype that, to be honest, Amazon themselves have done little to stir up on their own with official announcements and news, relying on hardcore fans to drive interest for the past several months), it’s hard to remember sometimes that Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema still own the rights to the actual narrative of J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnum opus, The Lord Of The Rings. The situation is messy, and who owns what exactly is still not entirely clear (whether or not Amazon has permission to draw from Unfinished Tales, for instance, is a matter of heated debate in the Tolkien fandom), but Warner Brothers clearly still has enough to create an entire stand-alone feature-length anime focusing on the ancient history of Rohan.

Honestly, this is a startlingly random announcement to spring on us today of all days, without so much as a warning – Danger! Beware Of Hype Overload! Because I don’t know about you, but my hype levels are accelerating at an alarming rate, and show no sign of stopping. It’s been six years since the last film set in Tolkien’s Middle-earth came out, and that film was The Battle Of The Five Armies, so it doesn’t count. With Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings still only dimly visible on the horizon like the far-distant peak of the Meneltarma rising above the waters of Belegaer, it makes sense for Warner Brothers to capitalize on their long delays by giving audiences a taste for what the OG makers of Middle-earth have been up to in the mean-time. Partnering with the Warner Brothers Animation department for the ambitious project, New Line has already picked out a director in anime veteran Kenji Kamiyama, and a pair of writers in Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, who previously developed Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance. If you remember my feelings on that series, you probably know that their inclusion in this project sends a chill down my spine that I can’t entirely shrug off, but luckily these writers will have help from Philippa Boyens herself.

Boyens is one of the three masterminds behind The Lord Of The Rings‘ excellent screenplay, alongside Fran Walsh and her husband, Peter Jackson. While Jackson’s directing is a huge part of why the films are as good as they are and he certainly deserves credit for his accomplishments, he tends to be propped up on a pedestal by the mainstream media as the sole genius responsible for bringing Middle-earth to life – while Boyens and Walsh, both Oscar-winners, are overshadowed and largely ignored. Both women were instrumental in keeping the films as true to the source material as they could be, as well as creating some of the most iconic original lines of dialogue from the trilogy (some of Boyens’ contributions in that category include “You shall not pass”, a slight but significant deviation from the books, and “A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he late. He arrives precisely when he means to.”) That’s not to say all of her work on the trilogy was perfect – she was apparently responsible for “Meat’s back on the menu, boys!”, according to Grishnákh actor Stephen Ure – but her involvement in the anime is encouraging to me.

Peter Jackson, meanwhile, is presumably still too busy navigating the fallout from a bizarre scandal in his personal life involving a vintage aircraft theft to get involved in the new film, although he apparently gives it his blessing. It’s unclear whether the anime will attempt to stay in line with Jackson’s canon anyway, although it seems fairly likely given that New Line is overseeing this project, not Amazon. That being said, the film, currently titled The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim, will be set a few hundred years before Jackson’s trilogy, so the only area in which it will really be expected to adhere to his canon is in the architecture and design of certain locations.

The War Of The Rohirrim will take place in the kingdom of Rohan during the reign of Rohan’s ninth and arguably its most legendary king, Helm Hammerhand (for comparison, Théoden was the seventeenth king of Rohan, during the time period covered in The Lord Of The Rings). Helm inherited a kingdom very different from the one we saw in the trilogy: mostly due to the fact that Saruman the White had not yet settled in the ring of Isengard, nor consolidated the kingdom’s most ancient enemies into an alliance against the Rohirrim. Helm Hammerhand’s greatest foes were Freca, a powerful tyrant who lived west of Rohan in the region of Dunland, and all of his house. They claimed to be descended from Rohan’s fifth king, although Tolkien’s appendices to The Lord Of The Rings never confirm whether this claim held any weight. Either way, Freca was not very fond of Helm Hammerhand, and sought to gain power in Rohan by means of a politically-motivated marriage between his son, Wulf, and Helm’s daughter.

The marriage proposal fell through (although I won’t be surprised if it’s the central love story in The War Of The Rohirrim anyway) after Helm sucker-punched Freca in the face, killing him, and Wulf seized an opportunity to launch an attack on Rohan while the kingdom’s closest ally, Gondor, was occupied with defending their coastlines against the Corsairs of Umbar. Wulf’s Dunlending army was soon joined by warriors from the lands east of Mordor, and they drove Helm’s armies into the valley where he would fortify the foundations of an ancient Gondorian citadel which became known as Helm’s Deep. Both of Helm’s sons were killed there, but Wulf’s foes never breached the gates of the citadel. That’s an important plot-point in The Lord Of The Rings, so it can’t be altered with too much.

This siege lasted for many months, and coincided with the onslaught of the Long Winter, which left Rohan devastated by famine and blight. Tolkien describes Helm during this time as becoming increasingly dangerous and feral, venturing alone out into the snow to “slay many men with his hands”. Rumors that he had become a cannibal in his madness preceded him and sent his foes scattering whenever they heard the blast of his mighty horn from the walls of the citadel. Even when the cold finally killed him, he was found standing, frozen to death and covered in snow, on the wall. Long after his death, the ghostly echoes of his horn would still sound in the Deep, and his vengeful phantom was believed to rise again whenever Rohan was endangered.

Helm didn’t survive to see the end of the siege on Helm’s Deep, or the day when his brave young nephew Fréaláf ambushed Wulf in the Golden Hall of Meduself and achieved victory over the Dunlendings. But his legacy lived on, inspiring his descendants to great deeds of their own. The anime will have plenty of opportunities to draw parallels to the siege of Helm’s Deep in The Lord Of The Rings, where Helm’s horn marked the turn of the tide against Saruman’s armies of ravenous orcs.

And speaking of Saruman…I know I mentioned earlier that he wasn’t living in Isengard at the start of Helm’s reign, but by its end he had already taken an interest in the affairs of Rohan – assuming he hadn’t already been pulling the strings behind Freca and Wulf’s dissent. At Fréaláf’s coronation ceremony, he first appeared in Rohan and was welcomed by the Rohirrim. And with the Dunlending presence driven from Isengard, he was given free reign over the ancient stronghold and its treasure trove of magical artifacts. This ominous, almost tragic, ending would be the perfect way to tie everything back into The Lord Of The Rings proper.

So yeah, I’m definitely going to keep a close eye on this project. Voice-casting and animation is currently underway, and I’m especially interested to see the style of anime that Warner Brothers goes with, as I think that will be very important: personally, I’d be most excited for something similar to the artwork of Netflix’s Blood Of Zeus and Castlevania anime series’, both of which also come with the violence one would expect from a series following Helm Hammerhand. This could very well end up being the first R-rated Tolkien property, and I don’t know how the fandom will respond to that.

But what say you? Does The War Of The Rohirrim sound appealing to you, and would you look forward to more anime based on The Lord Of The Rings? It’s a “yes” and a resounding “yes!” from me, by the way. Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!