The horse people don’t impress me. Nope. Not at all. I’ve watched your little kingdom for over five hours of movie now and, well, I just don’t dig your strategy. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim takes place 200 years before Bilbo acquires the One Ring, which means nothing except that these mock Vikings have been doing this crap for hundreds of years. Whenever they get in trouble, kingdom-wise, these dudes -and I’m serious here- abandon their land and travel to a massive walled fortress, then stick their collective tongues out and say, “Nyah nyah, you can’t get me here.”
This is strategy?
I mean I get the part where you want to go to a defensible structure if you have to play defense; and your attackers? It’s sheer vanity to attack the Hornberg; that path only leads to sacrificing lives.
But … and I cannot emphasize this enough, *this is not where you guys live*. I mean, OF COURSE you want to defend the stone mountain castle rather than your thatched huts … I’d certainly rather defend a fortress than my house … but that’s not where I live. It’s like, I dunno, suppose Cuba decided to attack Florida and everybody in Florida went and hid in Fort Knox, TN. “Ha ha, you can’t get us here.”
And in the meantime, Cuba invades Florida, takes everything from Key West to Tallahassee and says, “oh darn. You got us, Florida. I guess we’ll just have to stay here. You don’t mind if we enjoy Disneyworld, do you?”
*sigh*
This is one of those cartoons where you can identify the bad guy at first glance. Non bad guy, King Helm (voice of Brian Cox), seems like a just your average beefy medieval Nordic ruler with great hair. He’s hangin’ in his crib when the evil guy shows up – Freca, some sort of underlord; you know this guy is trouble just by the look. Takes about three minutes for him to pick a fight … and then he literally dies from one punch. Geez, pal, underestimate much? Anyway, another guy with great hair, Wulf -Freca’s son- (Luke Pasqualino) vows revenge, even though we all saw what happened.
Yadda, yadda, yadda …
Héra (Gaia Wise), the daughter of Helm and childhood friend of Wulf is defending the Hornburg from the Wulfies. She undermanned, understaffed, and underfed (but she’s not throwin’ away her shot!). The castle will hold until the 
Wulf people build a really big wooden bridge. (Have these people never heard of flaming arrows?) Why doesn’t Wulf just occupy Edoras? That’s where the kingdom is. That’s where the people live. The Hornberg is just a pile of rocks.
And everybody in this entire film looks like somebody auditioning for a hair care commercial.
The Hornberg – aka “Helm’s Deep” from The Two Towers– makes for a better battle artistically; I’ll give it that. It just makes no sense to defend a place without food or comfort. And it takes nothing shy of sheer vanity to attack such a place. Still, I can’t deny there are some nice touches to this film. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is really the story of Héra and how she got to lead the horse people. I quite enjoyed to moment where chose to wear a wedding dress to do battle. And they say these things are single use.
However, there’s just not enough here to love this film. No way. I can see you trying – look! A mad olyphant! Look! A giant sea beast! Why it’s just like Lord of the Rings, right?
No, it isn’t.
Lord of the Rings is as much character driven as it is fantasy, and both overwhelm this cartoon mightily.
There once was princess named Héra
If you saw her, you might stop and stare-a
Not one for compliance
She communes with bird giants
And she’d rather wear a sword than a tiara
Rated PG-13, 134 Minutes
Director: Kenji Kamiyama
Writer: Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins
Genre: Again with Helm’s Deep. C’mon.
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Do you like animated war?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Do you like animated war?
