About the new anime film Lord of the Rings: Battle of the Rohirrim There is a now familiar argument in some circles about how, or why, a new story could be told from the limited work of LOTR creator JRR Tolkien. based on Tolkien’s AppendixThe new film basically takes basic “facts” from the history of Middle-earth and then fills in some blanks, telling a brand new story about a young woman named Hera that takes place about 180 years before The Fellowship of the Ring.
And we saw that with its release ring of power The Amazon Prime series, which also draws on the margins of Tolkien’s famous work, also has an element of fandom that comes out vehemently against a franchise if they don’t like certain elements, characters, or the way you’re portrayed. Call it toxic fandom, call it a vocal minority, or ignore it altogether, but there’s no denying that the Internet has become a megaphone for voices in a way that it wasn’t when the original Peter Jackson trilogy was released.
Philippa Boynes, who co-wrote the story and produced The War of the Rohirrim, should know, as she also co-wrote Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogy. But he says he and his fellow filmmakers didn’t take those kinds of reactions into account when making War of the Rohirrim.
“I don’t think you can,” he told me recently. “Tolkien didn’t just write books. He’s written a whole mythology of massive, incredible work that’s so detailed and so intricate and works on so many different levels that you can just leave it alone and not touch it. But he himself did not want it. And he himself said that he wanted other minds to come into it, to bring music and art and drama to it. So at some stage he had an idea, because I think what he knew about myth couldn’t be immutable.
As Boynes says, the books aren’t going anywhere, no matter how many spin-offs or new adaptations there are.
“We can do nothing for these books,” the author continued. “These books are going to stand as these masterpieces hopefully until the end of time. We can’t destroy them. So for people who come to you and say, ‘Oh, you’ve ruined it or you’ve ruined it’, what we’ve done is we’ve given you this. presented an adaptation of the work. And some people will come to it and relate to it, and some people won’t. And sometimes the criticism is justified and sometimes it’s not.”
With that philosophy comes strict guidelines about if, how, and when to change things from pre-established tasks: don’t change things lightly, and don’t do it unnecessarily.
“Make sure you know what that reason is and tell a really good story about why you need to make that change,” he said. “If you’re adding, make it as authentic as possible. So we didn’t just draw on Eowyn (from Lord of the Rings) for Hera (a template for that). We drew on women from early English history that Tolkien himself would have been familiar with.
Indeed, Boyne’s quote Æthelflæd As for the inspiration for the character, “Another daughter of kings, her father dies, her husband is killed, her brother is besieged, her people are under attack and she brings them together. And the first thing he shows is their defense. And then once he sets up that defense, he pushes them back. And this is a piece of real history. It was a character we could draw because it felt authentic. So it’s nothing to wake up to, guys, if you’re out there!”
Ha! For more on The War of Rohirrim, watch Boynes and producer Jason DiMarco discuss how Tolkien’s book “Can’t Ruin”.
