LotR Prequel: Helm Hammerhand and the Battles of Rohan

"But I suspect we are about to get a film about a young woman stifled by the powerful men in her life, who arrange a marriage for her against her will with an awful example of maleness, and she shall have to fight the patriarchy and prove she is just as good as any man whilst single-handedly being the real reason Rohan is victorious in the end, or some other similar nonsense."


Wait..you're not inspired to tears?

{{ Well I'm in tears, of crabbit rage! }}

{{ They previewed 20 mins of it to selected press. Ir sounds terrible!

"...the film will more specifically center around Helm's daughter, Hera...the screening revealed that the newly dubbed Hera would take on a warrior role, forced into a position of leadership following Hammerhand's decisions. The character will call on an all-female tribe of fighters for help, transforming this Lord of the Rings tale into the sort of feminist story the franchise needs.'- Screenrant

 }}

Umm......

Herp-a-derp, what boring nonsense.

Lovely, can't wait to never see it.

Not sure about this

The writing sure lacks subtlety.  And what's she doing prancing around in her skivies like some teenage fantasy fever dream?

It's a shame, much of the look of it is good.  But it will fall with a thunk methinks.

{{ It looks absolutely fucking awful. Is her special power the ability to squeeze into that outfit? }}

I was looking forward to this, but now I've seen the trailer I'm not so sure. Too cartoony for me.

https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2024/08/22/119090-first-look-analysing-the-war-of-the-rohirrims-first-trailer/

Good review

The Japanese trailer is a bit different. And sounds better

It seems better because you can't hear the clunky dialogue.

But I did pick out one word: "Lohan".  

She's got the proper hair color for a Lohan warrior.

I thought my friend had posted a fan trailer when I started this. How tacky, I thought, to start with shots from the movies. When I realized the trailer was genuine, the depth of the producer's need for this to attract Trilogy fans became apparent. There's that damn phrase, "back to Middle-earth", in big golden letters across the screen. Nostalgia is going to keep this filth afloat, and they know it.

Some thoughts:
0:08
The map is labeled with Starkhorn, the mountain. Will it figure importantly in the movie?
On second thought, maybe not. It's also labeled in the zoomed-in standard map of Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor.

0:15
"Back to Middle-earth"
Throw this back on the rubbish heap where you found it, more like.

0:26
Dunlendings, I suppose, standing outside of Helm's Deep, or Suthburg, as the Rohirrim would have called it at the time.

"All Middle-earth knows the tale of the War of the Ring."
Uhh yeah you mean all of our earth. Way to clap yourselves on the back for that one.

0:30
The first shot of oliphaunts. These ones have green flames burning on the ends of poles stuck out from their harness. Elephants can see in the dark, do you think these flames are just for our benefit? Or so the men near them can see. Must be a bit of a hassle to have to climb out there and add more fuel when they start to burn low.
Why are there oliphaunts here? More on this later.

0:38
Some more nostalgia-bait, with Helm Saying the Thing. "Riders of the Mark! Arise!" Yeah yeah...
There's a shot here of four riders riding slowly away from a burning Edoras (probably Edoras). I wonder if there would be any reason that it was the men of Rohan doing the burning here, like a scorched earth thing.

0:43
Meduseld looking very nice, with a supernaturally bright sky behind it.

0:46
A shot of Helm on his throne in Meduseld, with his two sons and his daughter. Note who takes the seat of prominence at his right hand lol.
One of the sons has that stupid side-shave hair-style, and one of the men outside of Helm's Deep had a mohawk. Just an observation.
By the by, Hera is played by Emma Thompson's young daughter. The nepotism is as strong as ever!

0:57
"Our fathers speak as though I were not even in the room. I do not want to marry you."


1:03
#FrecaPunchedFirst

I wonder if we'll even get the exchange of insults, and what kind of stupid alterations they'll make to the pivotal scene in which Helm strikes Freca dead. In this, everyone seems to be watching in a fire-lit circle. You know, just another one of those boxing matches that kings are expected to take part in with fat rich men in their kingdoms!

1:20
A bunch of men with skulls for masks are setting fire to Rohan!
Quite.

"The boy I knew would never wish for war."
"The boy you knew is gone."

Great, so these fools have given Hera and uh Wulf a childhood friendship in which they did such things as play-fought (with daggers! Good toys for children!) and are now driven to war by forces greater than them! BLEEEEEEUUURRRGGGHHHH BARF BARF BARF KILL ME END THE CLICHE PLEEEEEEAAASE

1:23
Why are there oliphaunts in this again??

1:24
"Fire!"
lol, Jackson and Co. still using that classic. Although in this case he might be telling his men to shoot fire-arrows, so perhaps "fire" is not so anachronistic after all! (Last I heard, fire-arrows weren't a thing historically, but whatever.)

1:33
"You know nothing of war!"
"I'm the fastest rider you have!"
I'm sure these lines aren't one after another in the actual movie, but this is a funny comeback.

"You don't know how to sail a ship!"
"I'm the fastest swimmer you have!"
hahaha

1:36
Oh wtf is this crap. Some kind of giga-huge wooden bridge is built in a vertical position, and then dropped onto the Deeping Wall of Helm's Deep? And Hera is there on a white horse by herself?? And there's a man on the end of the bridge when it gets dropped?!??

1:41
"People need hope, Hera."
Hope that they stop making movies! lol

1:45
muh "giant white eagle"
I guess Hera gets to ride the eagle at some point? Oh wondrous heroine, who hath such a mount between her legs!

1:47
Hera getting chased by a wounded oliphaunt, because why not. Why are they in this, again?

1:48
They have an audio clip of Helm saying, "My pride." But how much do you want to bet that this is going to be from a longer line of dialogue in which he apologizes for slaying Freca and bringing about this war? I would put money on it, you just know that it's the sort of thing they would do.

1:50
Oh, never mind. He does go on to say, "My joy. You, could rule, the world!"
Well that's equally cringeworthy anyway. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

1:53
ICE-CLIMBING ALERTA ALERTA whhoooOOOOOP whooooOOOOOP ABANDON SHIP ABANDON SHIP WE HAVE REACHED PEAK RETARDATION SAVE OUR SOULS

Either the good Lord comes back or we need an asteroid, one of the two.

1:58
A shot of the hill that Gandalf and Eomer ride down in The Two Towers. The collapsing bridge of doom figures at the base of it. And then after a shot of Hera riding that same horse along the bridge. Wtf is this bridge about eh???

Side-note: does anyone else feel absolutely fizz-pop-the-top creeped the fuck out by how they do horses' eyes in this modern mass-produced Netflix-style anime? There's something demonic or empty about their eyes. It's been bothering me ever since I watched some of that disgusting filth they labeled "Netflix's Castlevania".

2:03
Helmets are for losers!

2:15
Hum. There's a shot of an orc, I think, handling a bag full of rings. "What does Mordor want with rings?"
I guess the audience would just mass seppuku kill themselves if they ever saw a movie set in Middle-earth that didn't remind them of The Lord of the Rings and THE ONE RING THE ONE RING DON'T PUT ON THE RING FRODO OH NOOOOO
Thank goodness Jackson and Co. are around to safeguard people from straight-up driving off a cliff if they ever WERE NOT bothered by fucking rings in a Middle-earth story.

I forgot to mention that there's a fucking "Watcher in the Water" at 1:50
FUCK!!

And again why are there oliphaunts in this?!!?

I'm going to go check my copy of RotK for answers.
Okay, so apparently there was an invasion of Easterlings four years after Helm slew Freca. This would explain the oliphaunts.
Wulf took advantage of this to invade from Dunland with, well, the Dunlendings but also joined by "enemies of Gondor" who had landed on the coast.
So, these would be Corsairs, from Umbar? Presumably? So we'd expect to see Easterlings with their oliphaunts attacking on one front, and Dunlendings with some Corsairs attacking from another. Something like that.

Wait, no it wouldn't. Sorry to think out loud here. But it was the Southrons, the Haradrim, who had their mumakil. Easterlings do not! Am I going crazy?

What an ass-grab.

Well naturally you'd load up your corsairs with mumakil. What's the point of a corsair if you don't fill it with mumakil?

I never saw enough of a horse to pick up on the dead eyes.  maybe a bit in the Japanese version but too fast to make an impression.

There are worse examples, but this is all I had at hand.

{{ Forest- I wholeheartedly concur and give my crabbit endorsment to your breakdown, all I'd have to add to it, is more swearing! }}

Dunno what to tell you Forest, they're anime horses.  There's other options.


or maybe



but perhaps you were thinking



They've all got more life in their eyes.