As we eagerly await Nausicaa of the Valley of the Rings—er, no, I mean Lord of the Rings: War of The Rohirrim, I’m skeptical. On the one hand, while the concept is intriguing enough, we’re just now free of that other really bad LotR adaptation for the next two years, and I’m not eager to revisit the Great Middle-Earth Cash Grab just yet.
So why should we bother giving time and energy to yet another adaptation of Rings when the track record for the last twenty-odd years of Middle-Earth (really, anything post-The Return of the King film) has been spotty, to say the least, and when earlier attempts to animate Tolkien before Peter Jackson’s trilogy were famously forgettable and not that good?
Birdses
Who knows. Maybe Miranda Otto’s (Eowyn) narration will add something? Or maybe, given the presence of Saruman in the film, they intend to A.I. modulate whatever voice actor’s lines with the voice of the unsurpassable Christopher Lee?
At minimum, with a film that includes most of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy writers and director in executive producing roles, and hopefully free of the grotesque studio interference that ruined The Hobbit, the War of the Rohirrim has at least a decent shot at being 7 or 8 out of ten at best. Expect no masterpieces, but maybe also not utter failure.
While I found the dialogue in the trailer contrived (a good reminder that much of the LotR register Rings of Power marred so badly was taken directly from the book in the early 2000s films—yes, even POTATOES), sometimes trailer’s lie! The original trailer that aired in 2001 for The Fellowship of the Ring, for example, is really corny and bad, which is amazing considering the film is the best in its genre. Does this lackluster dialog and underwhelming (albeit beautifully illustrated) trailer herald a mediocre film, or will the horn of Helm Hammerhand sound in the deep one last time?
We’ll see.
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