Creating The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

KPop Demon Hunters has the world falling in love with anime all over again. So what if we told you that there was a new anime set in the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) universe, and directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex). You’re either already in full “My Precious” mode, in which case, skip right ahead to The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Or you need a little nudge over the line. If so, read on as we unravel the epic journey behind this film. 

LOTR’s original Éowyn (Miranda Otto), Shieldmaiden of Rohan, narrates this saga from her clan’s history, which is set 183 years before the events of the movie trilogy. The tale begins as Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Succession’s Brian Cox), the ninth King of Rohan, kills the Dunlending Lord of the West March, Freca (Shaun Dooley), for attempting to take his throne by forcing a political marriage between Helm’s daughter, Héra (Gaia Wise), and Freca’s son, Wulf (Luke Pasqualino). Rejected by his childhood friend Héra, Wulf begins a quest for vengeance, forcing Héra and Rohan’s warriors to take a last stand at the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg, which will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep. 

Watch The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim on Showmax from 12 October, along with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. 

“I love the books, but really it was the Peter Jackson movies, the Trilogy, that had a huge impact on me. I went to the opening day of every single movie,” reveals director Kenji Kamiyama. “The story of the War of the Rohirrim really attracted me. It’s a very short story, just a page in the appendices [Appendix A in The Return of the King, Annals of the Kings and Rulers, in the section on the House of Eorl], but it’s very powerful.”

Reuniting the Fellowship

The film drew on the skills and memories of key members of Peter Jackson’s original The Lord of the Rings production team, including the trilogy’s Oscar and BAFTA-winning screenwriter and co-producer Philippa Boyens (who is now Rohirrim’s story producer), renowned Tolkien illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe, WETA Workshop designer Daniel Falconer, who handled weapons, armour and creature design, and LOTR’s chief creative supervisor Richard Taylor. Peter Jackson was also on hand as an advisor, along with co-writer Fran Walsh. New to the team is co-producer Joseph Chou, who worked on the Matrix anime series The Animatrix, as well as producing The God of High School and Ninja Kamui. 

Given how little Tolkien wrote about the War of the Rohirrim, Philippa was starting with nearly a blank slate in the world of Middle-earth. And that’s a good thing … according to Tolkien himself.

“In one of his letters, Professor Tolkien said maybe some of the most interesting stories are the ones that are untold … We went back into the greater world of the books and pulled on all the threads that were in there, including some of the story that happens on the edges,” Philippa says. “The suggestion of doing an anime Lord of the Rings made me think of this particular story. It wasn’t a case of we’ve got the story, what form of animation are we going to tell it in? There was something about this particular story of the Rohirrim that felt intrinsically right for that great tradition of Japanese filmmaking that is anime.” 

Héra who now?

“One of the things that attracted us immediately to the story in the appendices was this unnamed daughter. She is so central to the conflict and yet she remains unnamed. Who she marries may have serious implications for who might end up ruling Rohan. What agency did she have, or could she have had?” asks Philippa.

“We wanted to stay true to the story elements that Professor Tolkien may have turned to, had he expanded on this character – who, by the way, Fran Walsh named Héra for this amazing Icelandic actress, Héra Hilmar, because we had Helm and his sons, Háma and Haleth, we knew it had to be an H. Héra was largely in the hands of two young women, writer Phoebe Gittins and (voice) actor Gaia Wise. You feel her energy. You feel her passion. You feel her fear. She feels real, and I think audiences are going to be drawn to her immediately.”

Phoebe Gittins adds: “It was fun diving back into the books with a sort of historian lens, trying to glean all that we could from the appendices and then looking more broadly at the Rohirrim culture …. Tolkien created one of my favourite characters in Éowyn, and so the thought of expanding on that tradition, and bringing a shieldmaiden to the forefront, was really exciting. But it was also important to us that Héra was her own person; we first discover her in a time of relative peace, and so we were able to play with that freedom. She has a wild edge to her, an adventurer’s spirit full of curiosity and love for the world around her. Also, as the daughter of Helm Hammerhand, we knew she would be raised with a certain skill set, so her arc wouldn’t necessitate training to become a warrior or anything like that. Her story would be one of choices, born out of dire circumstance.”

Drawing it all together

Illustrating and animating the film eventually took the work of over 60 companies around the world. “When I was first asked would you like to take this on, my initial reaction was that it was impossible to do hand-drawn animation because of the number of soldiers on screen, the intricacies of design, the horses,” admits Kenji. “But with WETA, we worked out the process of how to make it happen.”

Producer Joseph Chau reveals, “The ingenious idea that Kenji Kamiyama came up with was to utilise motion capture, highly detailed models, and hand-drawn animation – this allowed us to have, for instance, 2000 horses running in a scene.”

Beyond the labour of animating the film, there was the challenge of making it faithful to the world of LOTR. “In designing the characters, it required a lot of imagination to get into their background, history, what they’ve gone through … For example, why does Wulf have a scar? All of that needed to be established before actually going in and designing, and it was essential that Philippa lead the story development, because she knew the ins and outs of this world. With her guiding us, we were able to shape this story and design each character with the background informing how they would look and how they would be designed,” explains Kenji.

“We were very conscious of the fact that we were part of the Peter Jackson trilogy of Lord of the Rings films,” agrees Joseph Chou. “We were coming in as a prequel to those films. And we did our utmost to try to stay faithful to the text that Tolkien wrote. The art director, Daniel Falconer, who worked on all six films, worked with us to make sure that we stayed consistent. When you see armour, clothes or buildings in our animation, it's basically how we extrapolated from what it looked like in The Two Towers, to what it would look like a couple of hundred years earlier.”

“Lord of the Rings fans should expect something in the great tradition of the best of the live action films … there’s some special little Easter eggs in there that only they will appreciate, and I cannot wait for those to be discovered,” hints Philippa.

Where to see The Lord of the Rings trilogy 

Watch The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim on Showmax from 12 October, along with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. 

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has an age restriction of PG-13, so some parental guidance is advised.

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