In 2024, do I even need to explain what The Lord of the Rings (henceforth LotR) is? J.R.R. Tolkien's deeply iconic and highly influential masterpiece is widely considered among the all-time greatest works of fantasy. And even if you haven't read the books, there's a pretty good chance you've seen Peter Jackson's beloved film adaptations from 2001–2003, or at the very least seen any number of the almost cartoonishly long list of memes it's spawned. Indeed, the world of these books has been retold and added to with varying levels of success time and time again in the seventy years since The Fellowship of the Ring was first published. And the latest such addition to this club is the franchise's first anime (but not first animated) movie, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (henceforth WotR).

Admittedly, there's not a lot tying WotR to the rest of LotR. One could go into this movie with little or no LotR knowledge at all and be just fine—you'd miss a few winks and nods to LotR, but nothing so huge that you couldn't understand and appreciate what was going on. They both take place in the same universe, and LotR fans will hear a few familiar names throughout the movie (and get a special cameo at the end), but WotR takes place roughly ~200 years before Frodo ever set his bare feet outside The Shire. Furthermore, WotR is centered on humans first and foremost—in fact, there are barely any non-human characters in the movie at all. Its primary connection and contribution to the world Tolkien built is a specific history on why Helm's Deep is called, well, Helm's Deep; a question that, admittedly, I don't think many (if any at all) LotR fans were actively curious to learn more about, but at the same time, thorough worldbuilding has always been a hallmark of Tolkien, so I don't necessarily mind that.

If there is anything I mind in this movie, it would probably (and surprisingly) be the animation, which is so gorgeous at times. But then, at others, the mouth flap movements are just off enough that they become noticeable, and when you notice it even once, you can't really unnotice it. At other moments, too, it's really apparent that the backgrounds and the people or horses aren't exactly on the same plane, if that makes sense—the people and horses look very obviously overlaid on the backgrounds, which, stylistically and visually, don't quite match. Finally, the animation gets a bit rough when something particularly dynamic or high-movement is going on (which, to be clear, is often—there's a lot of fighting, horse riding, and so on). Director Kenji Kamiyama is no stranger to anime or fast-paced action, so I was shocked that this animation often fell as short of the mark as it does.

Meanwhile, this movie's greatest strength is one of its main characters: none other than the force of nature that is Helm Hammerhand, who's brought to life by the legendary Brian Cox—whom ANN recently got to interview, alongside Gaia Wise. He's exactly the kind of bombastic powerhouse that you love to run into in anime, and Cox—still relatively fresh off the heels of playing screamy-old-man Logan Roy in Succession—can (predictably) match that energy perfectly. As for everyone else, it's hard to shine your brightest when you have to share a stage with a character who exudes as much hot-bloodedness and charisma as Helm Hammerhand. Not even the other central protagonist of the film, Héra (voiced by Gaia Wise), can quite measure up. Still, both she and Wulf are compelling enough characters—neither commanding the spotlight in the same way that Helm so often does, but also never fully allowing themselves to be swallowed up by Helm's gravitational pull.

And falling somewhere in the middle is this movie's story, which feels like a pretty standard-issue revenge affair. Fundamentally, it's nothing you haven't already seen played out a million times before—you just haven't seen it with Helm Hammerhand. But even so, WotR doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel. It's a story that opts to do what it's doing well rather than to do it in a unique way, which is fine; it just makes it err on the side of forgettability.

WotR probably won't become a must-watch addition to your LotR marathon any time soon, but it's still an enjoyable—if a bit underwhelming—adventure movie. Comparing it to other pieces of LotR media feels somewhat like a pitfall, because few franchises simultaneously have as monumental highs and astronomical lows as LotR does. Falling somewhere in the middle of this feels almost inevitable, but “somewhere in the middle” could mean anything when the distance between LotR's peaks and valleys is so vast. But at the same time, the fact remains that it is a piece of LotR media—one that pales in comparison to the best entries but is still far from the worst we've seen from Tolkien's world. And even as a standalone piece, it's a solid adventure movie, but lacks a certain wow-factor—a wow-factor, one can't help but feel reminded, that's often present in LotR's better entries.