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We ended up bookending the new year by going out to the movies twice, so my last film of 2024 and my first film of 2025 were both brand new animated pictures -- this however is probably as much similarity as I can draw between The War of the Rohirrim and Flow.

The War of the Rohirrim reminded me of nothing so much as classic Rankin and Bass animated films of my childhood like The Hobbit and Flight of Dragons. Notably, I don't think either of these films is considered to be particularly good, but I loved them very much. I think War of the Rohirrim is probably better and definitely prettier than either of the movies to which I have just compared it, and had it come out when I was a child I also would have loved it very much. As it was, I had a very good time but

genarti and I did somewhat regret that we did not have the theater to ourselves ... apologies to the two guys sitting right behind us ....

The War of the Rohirrim concerns a very heroic princess of Rohan who gets caught in the middle of a long war and brutal siege when she rejects her childhood friend's marriage proposal right before a fight between their dads, in a one-two punch that turns said childhood friend tragically evil. (The childhood friend and his people are all brown-haired and dark-skinned in contrast to the blonde Rohirrim, but not to worry! our heroine has a very heroic dark-skinned cousin and the tragically evil childhood friend has an Honorable Advisor, the movie would like to assure you that it is Not racist and please not to think about it too much.) It is mostly a very normal Heroic Fantasy War Movie with a lot of moments of stirring and tragic heroism and there are only about thirty minutes where I kept catching Beth's eye and then had to completely cover my mouth to stop from laughing.

Ten of those minutes are early on in the film when the heroic princess of Rohan runs into an angry oliphant, and then lures the oliphant into the forest to get COMPLETELY SLURPED UP WHOLE by a stray Watcher in the Water who lives in a pond somewhere nearby. We spend several minutes watching this slurp. The animators really, really loved drawing it. God bless.

Then the next twenty come much later on, during the brutal siege bit of the plot, when our heroine's wounded and elderly royal father, the old king, mysteriously disappears from the siege hall where he is tragically failing to recover from his wounds!! meanwhile, outside, the besieging army whisper tales that the old king's spirit is haunting the troops and murdering people in the night!

Our Heroine, investigating, accidentally finds a secret passage that kicks her out of the fortress onto the freezing hillside where she finds the orcs who are the ones who have in fact been picking off the besieging troops, for unrelated reasons. We also assumed at this point she would tragically find the body of her father ....

BUT NO! Her father is ALSO hanging out on the mountain in the middle of the blizzard! Somehow he lost his sleeves and got incredibly buff! They fight their way back to the front gates to get back inside the besieged fortress .... BUT ALAS. The door is stuck and will only open wide enough to admit her, because her dad is TOO BUFF! So instead he turns around and fights the besieging army and kills like a dozen guys by himself.

ME: STOP praying for my grandpa! you are making him too strong!
BETH: catch these Rohands!

Then he heroically freezes into a grandpapsicle on the mountainside, after which the siege and the plot continues completely as normal.

Anyway. Pretty movie! Fun to watch! I recommend watching it in a situation where you can talk to your friends so you can ask them questions like "why do these elephants have cat-eye pupils, isn't that an evolutionary disadvantage?" and "is she wearing knee-high boots over thigh-high boots?" without bothering anybody else in the theater.

genarti and I also spent a lot of time catching each other's eyes and covering our mouths with our hands while watching Flow, but that was NOT to stop from laughing, that was because a little cat had its EARS BACK and was making SAD SCARED NOISES and we were pretty sure that cat was going to be fine but that did not stop us from being STRESSED.

Flow is a beautifully animated Latvian film about a cat's adventure through a surreal magical flood and its encounters with a variety of other animals along the way, and how they end up helping each other to survive in a transformed landscape. All the animals act exactly like the animals they are, if those animals were just like ten degrees smarter than the average (smart enough to figure out how to steer the rudder of a boat, for ex.) but that aside the Behaviors are really well-observed -- I especially loved every sequence in which one creature tentatively tries to make friends by mirroring another creature's posture.

There are no humans in this movie, although the signs of their presence and absence are felt throughout. There is no dialogue. The animals make animal noises. (Except the capybara, which, according to Wikipedia, makes baby camel noises.) The sound design is really incredible -- I never want to hear a human actor speak out of a cartoon cat again. We had plans to run errands after the movie, but we ended up having to make a detour home first to pet our cats. No regrets.

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EVERYBODY SHOULD SEE FLOW IF THEY CAN (unless they can't deal with cats being stressed but ultimately fine) IT'S JUST SO GOOD

I had other thoughts but they're all completely lost now because I just have to keep giggling at "grandpapsicle," RIP to Helm "Popsicle" Hammerhand

it's really unfair to him honestly because technically he never got to be a grandpa .... and yet .......

that was because a little cat had its EARS BACK and was making SAD SCARED NOISES and we were pretty sure that cat was going to be fine but that did not stop us from being STRESSED.

I may never be up for this movie, but I'm glad it's so good.

Being too heroically buff to get through a door hence a magnificent defeat in battle feels like the sort of thing that could happen in a Norse or Anglo-Saxon saga and probably easier to take in that form.

It's rough when a little cat is scared!!

& this is true and one cannot deny it is probably the way he would have WANTED to go. they will sing songs of him etc

When I petted a capybara at the Buffalo Zoo, many years ago, it cooed like a mourning dove.

PEAK ANIMAL PETTING EXPERIENCE

Oh god.

when she rejects her childhood friend's marriage proposal right before a fight between their dads, in a one-two punch that turns said childhood friend tragically evil
*rolls eyes* I have had my declaration of love tragically rejected several times in my life, but at no point did it turn me evil.

The door is stuck and will only open wide enough to admit her, because her dad is TOO BUFF!
So...how did he get out? And if he freezes to a popsicle, why don't the beseiging troops do so?

For what it's worth, I feel the same, but I also didn't get the vibe that it was her rejection that turned him evil? It seemed very much a signpost but not a starting point. Following along with his (pretty clearly intending treason) father gave me the feeling that we're meant to see both his proposal (at his father's urging) and his later actions against Rohan (and particularly her father) as signs that he does not care about her as a person, just as a symbol. He was evil before he proposed; we just don't know that until some plot and flashbacks provide more clues.

So...how did he get out?

They got out through a one-way secret passage, and then Pops-sicle couldn't get back in once they snuck around to the main doors, due to buffness. Everybody fighting at the doors did, eventually, freeze! Pops is called out as having frozen standing up still fighting, though, so I suspect the others were corpsesicles rather than troopsicles when they reached the freezing point. :D

krait said he got out through the secret passageway! somehow this caused him to lose his sleeves and his powerful muscles could not protect his arms from The Cold. I assume it did not hit anyone else as badly because they all had sleeves and coats.

Thank you for these reviews I was curious about both movies!

You're welcome, I'm glad to have seen both of them!

I saw Rohirrim on NYE and quite enjoyed it. It is very anime, especially in the beginning. Really it's for all those of us who were pissed that PJ bowed to the haters and removed Arwen's scenes at Helm's Deep from the theatrical cut, I think. Also I found the thigh-high boots distractingly incongruent with the rest of the clothing in Rohan? And I think she really should have put the dress on over her shirt too? But these things were explained by it being an anime.

I also think the orcs should probably have name-dropped Dol Guldur instead of Mordor. I can't remember when Mordor was reoccupied without checking the Appendices.

It's very anime and also very 80s fantasy cartoon, somehow, which honestly feels correct ... but I did definitely spend the ENTIRE movie trying to figure out what was going on with her boot situation, and then trying to describe it to people afterwards who very politely humored me while I hunted for screencaps.

I have not seen either of these movies. However....

(1) Athena Scalzi (20-something daughter of John Scalzi, emerging blogmistress of the Scalzi Web presence, and woman of firm opinions in her own right) has commented at length on The War of the Rohirrim, and while I'm in no position to discuss the film on its merits, the review's contrasting opinion strikes me as well-expressed and the ensuing discussion is likewise worth a glance, as a number of the denizens Over There are, ah, mature enough to supply a profitable discussion of the earlier animated Tolkien oeuvre. (I observe for the curious that Ms. Scalzi has not to this point been anywhere near as thoroughly bloody-minded as her comments here might suggest; in fact, I find her writing on food-related subjects extremely vivid, enthusiastic, and well worth following in its own right.)

(2) The Flight of Dragons is a very, very strange cinematic creature, having been simultaneously the film adaptation of an art book (per the film title) and a Gordon R. Dickson fantasy novel (The Dragon and the George). For its time, it is/was visually stunning, but structurally and narratively speaking, it is at best odd.

(3) Purist Tolkien fandom did not receive the Rankin-Bass Hobbit particularly well at the time - it is short, condenses the novel by a good deal, and the animation style is perhaps a bit primitive (in the artistic sense of the word more than the technical) for its own good. However, there has been much praise then and since for the movie's amazing voice cast and for its remarkable score (to the extent there's a split there, it's over the one original song added to Tolkien's own verses by folk artist Glenn Yarbrough). Nowadays, there is a non-trivial segment of Tolkien fandom that strongly prefers the Rankin-Bass Hobbit, short as it is, to its Peter Jackson three-film counterpart.

Edited 2025-01-05 08:57 (UTC)

Both The Flight of Dragons and the Rankin-Bass Hobbit were major features of my childhood, so I'm incapable of assessing them impartially -- but I did force a bunch of my friends to sit down and watch The Flight of Dragons with me a few years ago. None of them were impressed. This did not change my love for it in any way.

Helm fighting everyone in the snow was hilarious I agree. The great-nephew had me watch an episode of "One Punch Man," and his fighting in that scene was VERY reminiscent of that anime! Ahaha.

Still, I enjoyed the movie a lot, particularly the landscapes done. So wonderful.

ETA: Thanks for the Flow rec. I'll try to find it.

Edited 2025-01-05 11:01 (UTC)

jalkdfj;lsdfkj ONE PUNCH HELM; that's absolutely hilarious. It checks out, though.

ONE PUNCH HELM!!!

The Flow trailer looks fun! I'll see if my wife wants to see it this week.

I hope you have a good time if you do!

FLOW was in fact unexpectedly quite low-key stressful! Also very very pretty and sweet and occasionally narratively startling. I am so glad I saw it and want to see it again in the hope that I will be less stressed and can concentrate on all the different things it's doing.

We had plans to run errands after the movie, but we ended up having to make a detour home first to pet our cats. No regrets.

Hard same.

IT'S HARD WHEN A SMALL CAT IS SAD. But yes, we're considering seeing it again as well for similar reasons! I definitely want to pay more attention to some of the thematic stuff about the design of the world on a second watch.

"a little cat had its EARS BACK and was making SAD SCARED NOISES and we were pretty sure that cat was going to be fine but that did not stop us from being STRESSED"

Yeah it's confirmed I will never see this movie, sadly.

It was SO GOOD and yet it was SO STRESSFUL for a movie where I knew -- knew! -- the cat was going to be okay! But the body language are very well done and the mews and so on are real cat noises and so it went right to my heart a lot of the time, even though the cat also spends a lot of time being very realistically napping in the sun or whatever. Not being up for it is so, so fair.

yeah that's so so fair

Her dad who was just recently dying of his wounds is TOO BUFF to get through the door into HELM'S DEEP and DIES HEROICALLY INSTEAD. That is simply... so much...

Flow sounds fantastic. Sweet little cat with its ears back! Want to pet! Perhaps it can snuggle the capybara for comfort....

Everything about that sequence is so much!! There's a part where he's turning to face his foes, and he flexes, and I was one hundred percent convinced that his shirt was going to straight up bust off his chest. In the end it did not but it really seemed likely.

The cat acquires friends! The heart is warmed!! and the thing is you know it will happen it's just in the MOMENT one cannot help but being stressed anyway --

Epic movie reviews! Thanks!

Glad you enjoyed!

I didn't realize the Rohan movie was actually coming out in theaters, I thought it was a streaming only thing, it sounds like a lot.

Flow sounds beautiful but like it could be stressful.

Yeah, we saw it out at Apple Cinema! I think it was a pretty limited run but it was fun to see it in the theater. And Flow is DEFINITELY worth seeing in the theater -- just a gorgeous movie.

War of the Rohirrim was a very fun movie! The animators were all in when it came to seizing the chance to draw an Oliphant vs. Watcher fight scene, and I don't blame them one bit. Who would NOT leap at the opportunity to draw that? It isn't a chance you get often, so seize it! :D

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who had a thought regarding the implausibility of vertical pupils on an animal taller than a horse. (Dear moviemakers everywhere, but particularly fantasy-setting ones: please hire a zoology student when designing your fantasy animals.) Did you and Genarti also laugh out loud when a horse galloped down a 45-degree-sloped staircase? Because as a lifelong Horse Nerd(tm), I definitely did. (Dear moviemakers everywhere, if you are going to animate a movie about people whose Whole Thing is horses, please hire a horse nerd... or at least send your animators to observe some real horses in motion and buy them a few of those 'How To Draw Horses' books aimed at horse-crazy 10-year-olds. Some of the horse roles in this film appeared to be played by beef cattle; someone ought to have cut their feed significantly!)

I'm going to buy it once it's out of theatres, so I can make my non-LOTR nerd friends watch it with me. :D

OH MY GOD I HAD TO WORK SO HARD NOT TO EITHER SPUTTER OUT LOUD OR LAUGH OUT LOUD

One of the first things I said to Becca afterward was "I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY HAD A HORSE GALLOP DOWN A STAIRCASE, OH MY GOD!!" Although I admit, in the very opening scene, I was thinking charitable thoughts about the animation of the horse galloping (it was fine, not incredible, but there are simply so many terrible horse animations out there, and I was pleased they'd crossed the Horses Move More Or Less Like Horses bar for a movie about Rohan)... and then the horse galloped up an uneven rocky slope like it was simply galloping on level ground while the world tilted around it, and I was like, "Ah. Okay. I see." But even that clipping-through-the-boulders nonsense did not prepare me for the STAIRWAY and the BATTLEMENTS and all the other ridiculousness of that scene! I was dying of stifled laughter.

THE BIG BIG SLURP

and yes, we definitely did!! they were Trying Their Best with the horses but god bless, they had no idea how to animate a horse that was doing anything other than crossing Very Flat Terrain. (I also was a bit sad about how little personality the horses had, generally speaking; one would think that in a Rohirrim movie the horses would have more presence as anything other than vehicles and scenery!)

ME: STOP praying for my grandpa! you are making him too strong!
BETH: catch these Rohands!

I CACKLED. Maybe I need to see this movie after all. :D It sounds like the sort of ridiculousness I can enjoy.

Definitely -- ideal to watch with friends and popcorn!

Flow sounds AMAZING.

"Grandpapsickle" LOL!

Flow was so good!! I learned later from Wikipedia that it was all made on open-source software, too, which blew my mind all over again.

Wow!

Do you PROMISE that the cat is ultimately fine??? I don't think I can handle it if not!

Between you and elperian, I think perhaps the Rohan movie is not for me :(. I was so excited, but tbh I think I would strap on my own knee-high boots over my own thigh-high boots and go out to fight the horse animators.

I solemnly swear that the cat ends the movie completely fine and surrounded by friendship!!

I admit that when the horse galloped down the forty-five degree staircase I thought

genarti was going to levitate out of her chair, which, tbh, just added a level of entertainment to the experience for me ....

Thank you for the reminder about Flow! I saw the trailer earlier, thought "hey this looks good" and then... forgot to check when it was actually in theatres here, which turns out to be RIGHT NOW. It's a gorgeous movie and feels like a great study in creating characters without any dialogue whatsoever, and without turning animals into people too (well, maybe very slightly).

Yeah, it feels like it gave the animals just enough of a slide towards personhood to make them believable Characters who have a Narrative Arc without losing any of the essential traits that make them those particular creatures -- a hard balance to hit and not one I think I could ever do myself, but it really nailed it! I'm so glad you ended up enjoying it too.

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