“Professor Tolkien said in his letters that sometimes the most compelling story is the untold story.”
That’s what Philippa Boyens told me when I interviewed her recently about the new animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which she produced and co-wrote the story for. She also has the street cred of having co-written the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
It started, of course, with J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy book series. Adaptations followed over the years, first on radio, then in animation, before Jackson finally brought the realm of Middle-earth to a worldwide audience with his acclaimed movies. Since then, the adaptations have continued, with the newest take being the anime-style The War of the Rohirrim, which peers into a previously untold chapter of Tolkien’s world.
Diving into Tokien’s appendices to fill in some of the gaps of Middle-earth history, the film is also very clearly set in the Peter Jackson version of Tolkien’s fantasy world. In my chat with Boyens and executive producer Jason DeMarco, we discussed how they cracked the code on telling a brand new Lord of the Rings story while managing to stay true not just to Tolkien, but to Peter Jackson too.
Telling an Untold Tolkien Story
The War of the Rohirrim is the latest project based on Tolkien’s beloved fantasy series that attempts to fill in an aspect of Middle-earth history that the author only barely touched upon in his original works. In this case, the history of Rohan’s rulers from the appendices of The Lord of the Rings was the starting point, specifically Helm Hammerhand, voiced by Brian Cox in the film. Of course, Helm will become the inspiration for what we know as Helm’s Deep.
Philippa Boyens not only co-wrote the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies but also his Hobbit trilogy with the director and Fran Walsh. She also co-wrote the story for War of the Rohirrim. As she explains, figuring out what tale to tell with an animated film initially stumped her and the team.
“There’s many stories out there within the appendices, within the world, the stories still untold within the books, all of that,” says Boyens. “It was just somehow… it wasn’t gelling.”
The biggest challenge was how are we going to bring forward Tolkien in a way that no one has seen before.
It was executive producer Jason DeMarco who suggested pivoting to taking an anime-style approach.
“For me, the biggest challenge was how are we going to bring forward Tolkien in a way that no one has seen before, which is as anime,” he recalls. “Make it feel true to Tolkien and the films that Philippa and Peter and Fran did, and then also make it feel like a true anime?”
After pitching their idea to Warner Bros., the next task was to get director Kenji Kamiyama to sign on. Boyens and DeMarco wanted to make sure they could hook the Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex director in, and they felt they had an idea he wouldn’t want to pass up.
“It’s an interesting piece of storytelling, even if you just follow the bare threads that are in the book,” says Boyens. “And that’s because it starts out huge and quite epic. In fact, the biggest battle we have, the attack on Edoras, is at the end of the first act. And for a lot of directors, I think that would scare them because you land in this huge epic moment and it is really shocking to see Edoras in flames. But then the film changes, and it’s really interesting the way it changes into this intense kind of siege.”
Channeling Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth
Despite the fact that The War of the Rohirrim is an animated film, or that it takes place some 180 years before The Lord of the Rings trilogy, there’s no denying that it still feels like the world we all know and love from the Peter Jackson movies. Of course, it’s a story set in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, but the depiction of any book series is always open to interpretation from a visual perspective. That said, War of the Rohirrim shares a design aesthetic with Jackson’s films, and that was very much intentional – starting with director Kenji Kamiyama.
“Our director was pretty clear from the beginning that he wanted this film to firmly sit within the universe established by [Jackson],” says DeMarco. “So one of the first things we did was reach out to Weta and say, do you have CG models of the Hornburg? Which they did that were 20 years old. So it took a bit of getting. They also had tons and tons of delightful physical maquettes and stuff.”
Weta of course is the effects company that worked on Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, and they were a major force in creating the Middle-earth that most people think of these days. In addition to the CG models and maquettes, they were also able to provide the War of the Rohirrim team with a ton of photographs and drawings that the film’s background artists and designers could use for reference.
But amusingly, the huge resource of the Weta archives also led to the occasional problem.
“[It was] the kinds of things you only run into when you get into the nitty-gritty, where Kamiyama was trying to block out scenes and going, ‘Well, where does this room sit inside the Hornburg?’ And then we heard back, ‘Oh, geographically the inside’s bigger than the outside. It doesn’t really make sense. Work it out however you want to,’” laughs DeMarco. “So there were things like that that happened that you would never have guessed because you’re making a movie 20 years earlier and you’re not thinking anyone’s ever going to revisit this location.”
Another challenge for the War of the Rohirrim artists was to take the 3D designs of the Jackson films and transform them into the 2D painterly style of the anime. In fact, Weta was brought in to help design new elements that might not have been in the Jackson films, just to make sure that they felt like they fit into the overall world.
“We knew we’re coming at people with a totally different style than they’ve seen with Lord of the Rings, but yet we wanted them to feel like they were home,” says DeMarco. “And to us, that was one way we could help achieve that without having to clunk people over the head.”
Ultimately, the artists also had to take into account not just the where of this story, but also the when.
We did think about things like what did the Hornburg look like 200 years before you see it in The Two Towers?
“The Hornburg is an ancient fortress obviously, but we did think about things like what did it look like 200 years before you see it in The Two Towers?” adds the EP. “Was there anything different? What would we change? How do we make it a little less ancient, but still ancient?”
Meanwhile, Boyens noticed some familiar traits – and talents – when working with Kamiyama.
“He brought much bigger scale to it. So anything I thought of, he would take that and expand it even more, like the long winter and what that means visually,” she says of the anime director. “And then he would immediately contrast it magnificently in a way where I would never have thought of that. My brain was still, ‘OK, we’re in this cold, cold duct.’ And then suddenly sun is coming through on this frozen scene. This is why you work with a visual master. … But he also reminded me of Peter because he is a storyteller first and foremost, and he’s always looking for what is filmic. What is the moment here that is going to imprint itself on your mind visually? And so I love working with people like that because he would throw ideas out there and then we would try and think, how are we going to earn this?”
Héra, the Unsung Hero
The narration in the film is by Miranda Otto, who of course played Éowyn, a shield-maiden of Rohan, in the Jackson films. She tells the viewer from the outset that even the inhabitants of Middle-earth don’t know this particular story, which is an interesting way for the writers of War of the Rohirrim to head off any criticsm at the pass that may come from fans complaining that this is a new story.
“We could tell a story within that that didn’t change anything that Tolkien put down, but still fleshed it out to be what it needed to be,” says DeMarco. “So I think it was that and a callback in a cool way to say there are legends of many strong people, strong women who have done these things who may not be written in the histories, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t exciting stories.”
The unsung hero of this story is actually Helm’s daughter, who is voiced by Gaia Wise. Unnamed in Tolkien’s work, Boyens and the other writers decided to call her Héra. So when Otto’s narration says don’t go looking for tales of Héra in the old songs, it’s because there literally are none.
“That was deliberately saying to the audience, we know what we’re doing here. We know, we understand that. Stay with us,” says Boyens. “Because … this is where we work from … is that don’t change it unnecessarily. Don’t just change something arbitrarily. If we’re going to change something, do it for good storytelling reasons. And then anything you bring to it, make it feel real, make it feel authentic.”
Don’t just change something arbitrarily. If we’re going to change something, do it for good storytelling reasons.
Boyens says that the story could’ve also been about Héra’s father Helm, or perhaps even Wulf, the antagonist of the story. But she and the writers wanted to be able to end the film on a more hopeful note than those other characters would’ve taken things.
“I think always Tolkien brings that element of hope to his storytelling,” she says.
The filmmakers also thought that including a character from the original Jackson films was important, and Éowyn was the perfect choice to tell the tale of Héra.
“The thing that [Otto] particularly loved was that line, ‘Do not go looking for her in the old songs, tales of her in the old songs. There are none,’” says Boyens. “She loved that. I think she liked that challenge. … We always said to her, ‘Imagine that you’re telling this tale to your young son in Gondor, or your ancestor.’”
