'Lord of the Rings' gets anime makeover

LOS ANGELES

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows the characters Hera, voiced by Gaia Wise, left, and Wulf, voiced by Luke Pasqualino, in a scene from the animated film "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

No elves, no dwarves, and not a hobbit in sight: "The Lord of the Rings" returns to the big screen this month with a new Japanese anime-style movie about the warring men of J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional universe.

Out in theaters Dec. 13, "The War of the Rohirrim" is a prequel that takes place nearly two centuries before Peter Jackson's original Oscar-winning films, which were themselves adapted from Tolkien's fantasy books.

But unlike the first "Lord of the Rings" movies — or the disappointing "The Hobbit" films that followed — there are no magical rings or all-powerful Dark Lords this time around.

"You look at the original trilogy, you're talking hobbits and elves and dwarves and monsters," director Kenji Kamiyama told a recent press conference.

The new film is instead "rooted in human drama and emotion... greed and power," said the Japanese artist, who has previously worked on animated versions of "Star Wars" and "Blade Runner."

Hollywood studio Warner Bros. announced in 2021 that the next "Rings" film would be an anime, a distinctively Japanese visual style and genre that has exploded in popularity in the West in recent years.

Filmmakers scoured the vast, invented histories that Tolkien wrote as footnotes for his beloved novels.

They soon homed in on a brief description of a civil war between a king and a rebellious nobleman.

"It wasn't a case of, 'we've got the story, what form of animation are we going to tell it in?'" said producer Philippa Boyens, who also co-wrote the "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" trilogies.

"The War of the Rohirrim" is set in Rohan, the kingdom of horse-riding, Viking-looking warriors that featured prominently in Jackson's 2002 movie "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers."

The animated movie revisits key locations from that film such as the epic battleground fortress of Helm's Deep and is narrated by Miranda Otto, who played a heroic female Rohan warrior, Eowyn, in Jackson's trilogy.

Jackson himself served as an executive producer for the new film, but "stepped back" from day-to-day involvement, encouraging Kamiyama to put his own anime stamp on the film, according to Boyens.

"Elements of the live-action films creep into the world," she said. But they "crept in very beautifully around the edge."

"Storywise, we obviously wanted to stay true to the Tolkien universe... but at the same time staying true to what we do best which was just to make anime," agreed Kamiyama.