MOVIE NEWS – The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim anime is not doing too well with critics or in terms of revenue so far…
The Lord of the Rings is entering a new era on the big screen: Amazon Studios is moving forward with the series The Rings of Power, and Warner Bros. Discovery is planning several new live-action films. However, before all this, The War of the Rohirrim arrived in theatres, which is the first large-scale film project in the franchise since Peter Jackson’s trilogies and the first animated film in more than 40 years. Despite the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien’s tales of Middle-earth, the new installment in the franchise has struggled both in terms of reviews and box office results.
The War of the Rohirrim takes place nearly 200 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings and follows the story of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan and the namesake of the iconic location Helm’s Deep. Despite the return of some of Jackson’s trilogy’s stars, including Miranda Otto, and the introduction of a slew of new characters from Tolkien’s world, the film’s arrival was a major disappointment, which is perhaps not all that surprising for several reasons.
First of all, The War of the Rohirrim not only had the lowest CinemaScore of the franchise, but it also had the lowest overall rating of any anime project to hit theatres.
The B-grade puts it below Jackson’s The Hobbit films, which were not as well received as the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as other anime films like The Boy and the Grey Heron and Demon Slayer, which received A- and B+ ratings. The film’s Rotten Tomatoes scores aren’t much better either. Critics gave it a 51% Tomatometer rating, almost 10% lower than The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, which previously had the lowest score of any film in the saga.
The War of the Rohirrim Inherits Some of the Problems
While the new film has an audience rating of 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, which isn’t bad at all, it only made $5 million in its opening weekend in the US. That’s almost 10 times less than The Fellowship of the Ring’s $47.2 million opening in 2001.
The lacklustre reception of The War of the Rohirrim is perhaps not all that surprising, considering the film’s story and why it even exists. When the film was announced, the $30 million anime proposal was put into production to ensure Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t lose the rights to the Tolkien IP. Now that it looks like plans are in place for not only The Hunt for Gollum, but several other live-action films as well, it’s clear that The War of the Rohirrim has finally ensured that those films can still happen.
However, it also raises the question of how successful animated entries in major franchises actually are when it comes to theatrical releases. There have been several popular adult animated series on streaming, proving that there is an audience willing to watch cartoon versions of IPs like The Witcher or James Gunn’s new DCU series Creature Commandos in the comfort of their own homes. However, it seems much harder to get audiences to sit down for an animated film unless it’s from Disney, Dreamworks, or Illumination and aimed at a younger audience. While The Lord of the Rings will undoubtedly prove its worth when the Gollum movie comes out in a few years, it seems like even the biggest franchises may struggle in the current cinematic climate.
Source: Collider, Rotten Tomatoes
