The first trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has been released and discussions about the animated movie from Warner Bros is underway. However, immediate reactions to the trailer have been lukewarm and underwhelming within the first 24 hours. So why is The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim failing to entice both Tolkien fans and the general audience? Could this be an early indicator of a similar reaction when it comes out in theaters?
One could argue that it isn’t fair to judge a movie’s success by the first 24 hours of a trailer’s release. But for a movie utilizing The Lord of the Rings brand, it is definitely worth taking notice. After all, the much-lauded Peter Jackson movies saw unprecedented success with its trailers and, of course, The Lord of the Rings movies in turn.
On YouTube, the trailer for The War of the Rohirrim accumulated 5.3 million views with 65,000 Likes and 8,300 dislikes at the 24 hour mark. While on Twitter, Warner Bros’ official tweet garnered 1.6 million views, 793 comments, 5,200 reposts, and 11,000 likes during the same 24 hour period.
Not exactly stellar numbers for a brand that broke records and became a global sensation.
Compare that to the initial excitement around Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s first season trailers that saw a lot of traction both positive and negative. But, for The Rings of Power, it overwhelmingly received more negative reactions than positive due to the Tolkien fanbase that criticized the show’s non-canonical take on the events and characters surrounding the forging of the rings of power. Then there is the fact that The Rings of Power season 1 failed to retain the general audience, and especially fans of Tolkien, for a number of reasons could be playing into the lack of momentum for The War of the Rohirrim.
Even without the disastrous handling of The Rings of Power potentially curbing enthusiasm for future adaptations of Middle-earth, The War of the Rohirrim trailer presented the immediate problem: Héra. Instead of a story focused on Helm Hammerhand and his nephew Fréaláf, the two main characters of Tolkien’s story, Héra is shown to be the main character and point-of-view for the audience. A huge misstep for an animated movie that now has a female lead rather than a male one.
However, it doesn’t just stop there.
The trailer shows more of how Héra, an unnamed character in Tolkien’s story, is going to take a seemingly very proactive role in the movie. In fact, someone who never read Tolkien or watched the movies might think this was a Disney movie with Héra being portrayed as a modern-day Disney girl boss warrior princess since she talks to the Great Eagles, can fight very well against men physically stronger than her (especially in dresses), and declares herself to be the “fastest rider.” Not to mention that Helm says to her, “My pride. My Joy. You could rule the world.” Which could be an indication that Héra is the oldest child in this adaptation and brings up the question, will the movie try and spin a narrative that Héra is the heir or that she should be queen?
Add to this a supposed romance and friendship between Héra and Wulf, one of the main antagonists, and the movie is turned on its head. The decision to create such a relationship between the two characters is an odd one and could remind people of the disastrous three-way romance in The Hobbit trilogy between Tauriel, Legolas, and Kili.
It’s also a puzzling path to take Héra in considering the animosity between Helm and Freca, Wulf’s father who hates Helm and wanted to marry his son to Héra as a path to the throne he desires. Freca, who gained power and showed disrespect to Helm at every opportunity. Which makes it hard to see Wulf having any genuine feelings for Héra, even if they might have, as the trailer shows, played together as children, most likely whenever Freca finally showed up for the meetings with Helm.
For Tolkien fans, the expectation of seeing a movie about Helm who loses so much to the point that he commits fell deeds, which become legend, has been denied to them. That the exploration of this intriguing character is denied and, in turn, so is the exploration of Fréaláf who saves the survivors and becomes king.
In essence, The War of the Rohirrim is about a girl boss in a male dominated tale.
To have those two POVs taken away and replaced by the unnamed daughter is baffling and a real bait-and-switch that is causing a significant amount of people to lose interest.
A loss of interest, overall, when it comes to the girl boss and female leads in movies and shows. The problem isn’t that there are IPs being created or utilized to showcase female leads, after all, there are a ton of successful IPs which had female leads. It has more to do with the cookie-cutter template being used for all of these modern characters. The masculine, uber powered Mary Sues created such as Captain Marvel and Rey Palpatine, that have to be superior to their male counterparts or men in general such as She-Hulk: Attorney at Law or Ghostbusters (2016).
The girl boss trope appears to be played out and the general audience is tired of them as seen with The Rings of Power’s overwhelming use of such characters. A trope that doesn’t fit well in Tolkien’s Middle-earth where some of the greatest female characters were created. Which makes the approach with Héra more puzzling given what we have seen of her.
And one that both Tolkien fans and the general audience are not interested in.
A claim and outcome that Warner Bros might have already been ready for, given the heavy reliance of The Lord of the Rings movies being used at the start of the trailer for The War of the Rohirrim. Not just The Lord of the Rings, but the sudden attachment of Peter Jackson being associated with the movie.
What metrics or research did Warner Bros see that would result in having to get Peter Jackson to put his name on The War of the Rohirrm is a question that needs to be asked. Because, up until recently, Philippa Boyens, who helped write the screenplay for both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, was at the forefront for promoting the movie and in charge of its narrative direction.
Member berries galore are in this trailer aside from the use of the live action movies at the start of the trailer to Peter Jackson’s name. From the use of Miranda Otto being the narrator, Oliphaunts, a Watcher in the Water, the Great Eagles, and Saruman (Japanese trailer), to making sure that many of the settings, clothing, and items are similar or exactly replicated to what was shown in the movies, and even seeing rings being collected and Mordor being mentioned it is all being used to draw in Tolkien fans. But on the subject of clothing, one outfit Héra is wearing is completely out of place for Tolkien’s Middle-eartth: the skintight outfit she has on in a couple of the scenes.
Problem is, there are far too many unneeded references to The Lord of the Rings movies which probably explains, along with Héra’s arc, the bloated runtime of two hours and 10 minutes for a movie that was originally supposed to be 90 minutes long.
Then there is the decision to make this an animated movie rather than a live-action one. However, it’s not a western-style animated movie, but more specifically an anime movie. While anime is popular and makes money, it still hasn’t caught on with the general public. Even if that weren’t the case, many will suggest that anime isn’t the style to use for Tolkien’s work.
While the anime style looks good, it just doesn’t mesh with the idea of Tolkien and Middle-earth. Obviously, this isn’t the first time that The Lord of the Rings was in animated form. The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Return of the King all had animated versions released in the late 1970s and the animation wasn’t exactly great.
However, for this new animated film, even if people didn’t mind it being anime, we have to ask who is The War of the Rohirrim supposed to have been made for? Tolkien fans? Children? Women? The general audience? There isn’t enough about this movie that intrigues any of these demographics to any great extent
So will The War of the Rohirrim set theaters on fire when it comes out December 13th?
No, it most likely will not.
There is a large portion of Tolkien fans who have been burned, especially when it comes to The Rings of Power which general audiences also didn’t care for. Then there is Héra being the main character for the movie and an audience tired of female-led IPs. Even if there is no competition for The War of the Rohirrim when it releases, it might not matter given the state of the economy and how expensive it is for families to go to movie theaters.
But without the Tolkien fan base to praise and promote The War of the Rohirrim, like it did for the LOTR movies, this charge of the Rohirrim could very well be stopped in its tracks.
Right now, to paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings brand “feels thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
Who knows? Perhaps this could all change with the start of the weekend.
We will have to wait and see.
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