---
title: "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim"
year: 2024
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim"
fi1m_score: 55
critics_score: 52
critics_reviews: 25
published: "2026-09-19T12:59:17.209496+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-19T12:59:32.075488+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)

Directed by Kenji Kamiyama · 2h 14m · MPA PG-13 · Animation, Fantasy, Adventure, Action

**Fi1m score: 55** · Critics 52 from 25 reviews

*In a sentence:* Helm’s Deep before it had the name, a king who negotiates with his fists, and a great deal of snow

> Kenji Kamiyama’s hand-drawn prequel has a good king, a decent daughter and a siege that runs out of things to do in the snow. Handsome in stretches, borrowed in others, and not enough of a film to send anyone to on its own.

## Synopsis

Rohan, long before the War of the Ring. Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox) rules from the Golden Hall at Edoras with two sons, Haleth (Benjamin Wainwright) and Háma (Yazdan Qafouri), and a daughter, Héra (Gaia Wise), who would sooner ride the plains and climb after eagles than be married off. Freca (Shaun Dooley), a lord from the Dunlending borders, rides in with his son Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), Héra’s childhood friend, and proposes a wedding to join the two houses. Helm answers with an insult, then with his fist, and Freca dies in the dirt outside the hall. Wulf swears he will have Rohan for it and is driven into the wild. Years later he returns with an army, and Héra must get her people inside the stone fortress of the Hornburg before winter shuts the mountains. Éowyn (Miranda Otto) narrates.

## Review

Kenji Kamiyama has made a 134-minute film out of a few paragraphs. Helm Hammerhand gets a page in the appendices to *The Lord of the Rings*: a quarrel, a death, a hard winter, a fortress that took his name. Philippa Boyens, credited with the story and as producer, has stretched that into a full-length animated feature, and the stretching shows. There is a good ninety-minute film in it. The rest is spent looking at a wall, and at the snow on the wall.

Brian Cox is the reason the first act moves. His Helm is a bull in a crown, a man who greets a marriage proposal with an insult and then with a punch that ends the conversation. Cox gives him a rasp that sounds like a man who has never once been told no, and the animators draw him as he sounds, all shoulders. Shaun Dooley gives Freca enough swagger that the punch feels provoked. When it lands we flinched, and we mean that as a compliment; it is the one moment where a drawn body seems to weigh something.

Gaia Wise plays Héra, the daughter, with a plainness we came to like. She rides, she argues, she climbs a cliff after an eagle, and when the film asks her to lead she does it as someone working it out as she goes. It is a sound idea, a shieldmaiden long before Éowyn, and Miranda Otto is brought back to narrate. The trouble is that four credited screenwriters, Will Matthews, Jeffrey Addiss, Arty Papageorgiou and Phoebe Gittins, have given Héra a stock of speeches about hope and little else to say, and the narration keeps explaining what the pictures have shown us.

The look is split down the middle. The backgrounds are painted with real care: Edoras with its thatched roofs and gilded horse-heads, a grey sky over the Hornburg, torchlight on wet stone. The people in front of them are drawn flatter and move on fewer frames, so that a horse at the gallop looks fine and the rider looks like a paper figure being pushed across the scenery. Mouths drift from the words. Faces hold one expression too long. In a quiet scene this reads as stillness. In a battle it reads as cheapness, and there are more battles than quiet scenes.

Luke Pasqualino voices Wulf as a boy who has been wronged and knows it, and for one scene, when he is thrown out of the hall, there is something in him. The script then makes him a sneer with an army. Michael Wildman’s General Targg stands beside him and doubts him, which is the whole of the part. Once the Rohirrim are inside the Hornburg the film settles into a long winter, and so did we. Snow falls. The horn sounds. Someone counts the food. We were bored for a good half hour, because we could see the film reaching for moments from Jackson’s *The Two Towers*, sometimes shot for shot, and we knew how each would go before it did.

Stephen Gallagher’s score is honest work and it plays one trick we resented. Mostly it is drums and low strings. Then, at chosen moments, it lets in the fiddle theme Howard Shore wrote for Rohan, and we felt it go through us as intended, and then felt cross, because the feeling had been fetched from another film and set down here unearned.

Kamiyama’s *Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex* was patient, talky and sure of what it thought. This is patient and talky. It is shorter and less cluttered than Jackson’s *Hobbit* films, but that is a low bar. Most critics have landed near where we have, split between those glad to see Middle-earth drawn by hand and those who could not stop noticing the tracing.

See it if a painted Edoras is enough for you; it was nearly enough for us for an hour. The 12A allows more blood than you may expect from a cartoon. At home the backgrounds shrink and the shortcuts in the drawing show, so a big screen helps this one more than most.

*Fi1m score 55, published 19 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics find The War of the Rohirrim a competent but unnecessary return to Middle-earth, and the reviews lean negative. Where there is praise, it clusters on the animation and the battle scenes, with several admiring the textured backgrounds and the scale of the fighting, and on the decision to build the story around Héra, a heroine in the mould of Éowyn. Even the sceptics tend to grant that the anime approach gives Tolkien’s world a look it has not had before.

The reservations are about the script. Critics in the middle and at the bottom call the plot predictable, the characters thin and the callbacks to the Jackson trilogy so frequent that the film struggles to stand on its own; several suspect it exists mainly to keep the rights warm. The spread is wide, from Radio Times, which finds it inventive and propulsive, to The Times, which dismisses it as too long and rudimentary. Polygon adds that it repeats the trilogy’s racial coding of its villains.

### Reviews we read (25)

- **Radio Times**, Jayne Nelson (4 out of 5 stars): The critic highlights the seamless animation, inventive direction, and propulsive storytelling in this prequel epic. It singles out Brian Cox's commanding performance as Helm for particular praise while noting some design clashes. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-1xqsul/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim/)
- **Empire**, John Nugent (70/100, inferred): The film is an interesting but jarring anime take on a Tolkien appendix story that sometimes feels like a footnote. It is rescued by muscular action set-pieces and thoughtful themes of female strength and leadership. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim/)
- **Slant Magazine** (70/100, inferred): The critic highlights the visually striking animation and self-contained adventure, praising the focus on a powerful heroine's journey and its fresh perspective within the Tolkien universe. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/lord-of-the-rings-war-of-the-rohirrim-review/)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Frank Scheck (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the plotting predictable and dialogue melodramatic but praises the sumptuous animation as a stunning return to Middle-earth that improves on prior animated adaptations. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review-1236075681/)
- **Time Out**, Dan Jolin (3 out of 5 stars): The review sees the anime-style film as a mostly welcome return to Middle-earth that feels nostalgic yet novel. It praises the appealing lead character Hèra and its self-contained story while noting over-reliance on callbacks to earlier films. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-2024)
- **The AV Club**, Matt Schimkowitz (C+): The critic sees it as an entertaining but slight and inconsequential adventure that follows well-trodden paths, with rich animation undermined by rote mythmaking. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review)
- **The Telegraph**, Chief Film Critic (3/5): The film is a weird yet watchable high-gloss anime prequel that feels more like a rip-off than a true spin-off, though it is more engaging than the Hobbit films. It plucks a tale from the appendices with liberties and tonal clashes but eventually settles into something watchable. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review/)
- **The New York Times**, Maya Phillips (50/100, inferred): The critic calls it a hot-and-cold anime adaptation that serves mostly as an excuse to revisit Middle-earth for fans. She notes it succeeds in recreating the fantasy world in a new format but finds parts predictable with familiar tropes. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/movies/lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review.html)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Zachary Lee (40/100, inferred): The critic views the film as an unnecessary corporate exercise to retain rights, competently made but uninspired and rushed. He praises occasional animated splendor and the focus on heroine Héra but criticizes undeveloped characters and inconsistent dynamism outside action scenes. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim)
- **Screen Daily** (40/100, inferred): The review describes the film as a mediocre stopgap that adds feminist energy via its protagonist but delivers a lacklustre action-adventure. It praises the earnest lead performance while criticizing the limited expressiveness of the hand-drawn animation and overall familiarity. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review/5199800.article)
- **Sight and Sound** (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the film an overly familiar animated adventure that replays signature Lord of the Rings moments through a teen heroine's story. It praises some visually arresting direction and Tolkienesque sequences but criticizes jerky animation, an eroticized heroine design, and mismatched voice acting. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/lord-rings-war-rohirrim-epic-anime-replay-signature-lord-rings-moments)
- **Total Film**, Josh Slater-Williams (40/100, inferred): The film is an uninspired expansion of the most iconic screen take on Tolkien. It fails to fully capture the magic or depth of the source despite its animated battles. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/lord-of-the-rings-movies/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review/)
- **Financial Times**, Jonathan Romney (★★☆☆☆): The film is a lumbering anime derivative with only tenuous narrative ties to the main Lord of the Rings cycle, driven by executive producer Peter Jackson’s name. Backgrounds have impressive textured video-game sweep with a Celtic-Kurosawa flavour, but the overall saga lacks dynamism. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/fb965807-befb-44cb-8009-920b532b269b)
- **IndieWire**, David Ehrlich (30/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a dull and cheap-looking anime prequel, arguing that combining Tolkien appendices with a Studio Ghibli homage fails in execution despite the concept. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review-anime-1235073849/)
- **The Guardian**, Radheyan Simonpillai (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a redundant and joyless spin-off that plunders Tolkien’s appendices without artistic justification or imagination. The animation offers some tactile appeal in its anime style but remains constrained, solemn and lacking personality or inventive fantasy elements. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/dec/10/lord-of-the-rings-war-of-rohirrim-review)
- **Variety**, Peter Debruge (30/100, inferred): The critic describes it as a tiresome deep-cut anime prequel aimed at die-hard fans, not epic enough for broader appeal. He praises the anime style, direction by Kamiyama, and positioning of Héra as a strong female hero in the vein of Éowyn. [Read](https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review-1236243179/)
- **The Times** (20/100, inferred): The critic calls the film pointless, too long and substandard slop, a Tolkien-branded bore that is a slog with rudimentary animation, ropey vocal performances and dull action. It feels like shameless franchise extension from the appendices with little to recommend it. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review-movie-ckhnzqwqb)
- **Polygon**, Susana Polo (75/100, inferred): The critic highlights how the film successfully revives the epic scope, visuals, and human drama of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings while centering a strong female lead, but faults it for repeating the trilogy's problematic racial coding of antagonists. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/lord-of-the-rings/492608/war-of-the-rohirrim-movie-review-peter-jackson/)
- **The Playlist**, Rodrigo Perez (70/100, inferred): The critic calls it a valiant if familiar addition to the LOTR canon that feels adult and engaging, with handsome production values and fervent conviction that will satisfy true fans despite splitting its audience. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review-a-valiant-anime-addition-to-the-lotr-canon-20241209/)
- **Deadline**, Pete Hammond (65/100, inferred): The critic finds the film fairly gripping and compelling in its visual landscape created through motion capture, models and hand-drawn animation, though it does not hit emotionally on the scale of the live-action films. They praise the decision to center the story on a strong female character and note a stirring score that nods to Howard Shore. [Read](https://deadline.com/2024/12/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review-anime-movie-1236197887/)
- **Collider**, Aidan Kelley (6/10): The critic praises the film's beautiful animation and action sequences but finds the story slow, overly expository, and populated by underdeveloped characters, resulting in an average franchise entry. [Read](https://collider.com/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review/)
- **Den of Geek**, David Crow (3/5): The film is the best recent attempt to expand the LOTR universe but cannot quite stand on its own. The critic singles out the gorgeous animation and art direction for praise while noting the story feels derivative and fails to recapture the original trilogy's magic. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review/)
- **/Film**, Jeremy Mathai (6/10): The critic finds it a frustrating mix of great visuals and a disappointing script, praising the stunning 2D animation and anime-style action while noting the inessential prequel feels stuck between extremes with a weak script. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/1730142/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review/)
- **The Wrap** (40/100, inferred): The review calls the film an underwhelming production with hit-and-miss animation (mostly miss) and largely generic performances, though not a complete washout. It singles out the rushed-looking animation quality and shoehorned references to the original trilogy as major flaws that make it feel like a straight-to-video effort. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/lord-of-the-rings-war-of-the-rohirrim-review/)
- **Film Stories**, James Harvey (30/100, inferred): The critic views the film as a derivative, flashy legal exercise with paper-thin characters and plot points copied from the Jackson trilogy, existing mainly to fulfill studio obligations rather than for artistic merit. It offers occasional diverting sound and colour but lacks novelty or deeper purpose. [Read](https://filmstories.co.uk/reviews/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-review-development-obligations-met/)

## Details

- **Director:** Kenji Kamiyama
- **Director:** Kenji Kamiyama
- **Screenplay:** Arty Papageorgiou, Phoebe Gittins, Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews
- **Story:** Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Philippa Boyens
- **Music:** Stephen Gallagher
- **Producer:** Joseph Chou, Jason DeMarco, Philippa Boyens
- **Cast:** Brian Cox as Helm Hammerhand (voice); Gaia Wise as Héra (voice); Luke Pasqualino as Wulf (voice); Laurence Ubong Williams as Fréaláf (voice); Lorraine Ashbourne as Olwyn (voice); Miranda Otto as Éowyn (voice); Shaun Dooley as Freca (voice); Benjamin Wainwright as Haleth (voice)
- **Runtime:** 2h 14m
- **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13
- **Release (the US):** 13 December 2024
- **Genres:** Animation, Fantasy, Adventure, Action
- **Budget:** $30 million
- **Box office:** $21 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCUg6Td5fgQ

## Where to watch in the US

- HBO Max: streaming, uhd
- The Roku Channel: add-on, hd
- Hulu: add-on, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, uhd

*Checked 2026-09-19.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *The Lord of the Rings* (1978): Ralph Bakshi’s rotoscoped Tolkien, rougher and stranger, with more nerve than this.
- *Princess Mononoke* (1997), Fi1m 88: Hand-drawn war between people and the wild, and every frame moves. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/princess-mononoke.md)
- *Ran* (1985), Fi1m 92: Kurosawa’s old king, his heirs and a castle under siege, done properly. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ran.md)
- *The Secret of Kells* (2009), Fi1m 76: Irish animation that draws its medieval world instead of borrowing one. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-secret-of-kells.md)
- *The Northman* (2022): A revenge oath, mud, snow and a father’s murder, with real weight.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim