When Warner Bros. approached the filmmaker Peter Jackson and his longtime screenwriting partner Philippa Boyens about making a new animated “Lord of the Rings,” Boyens at first had a hard time wrapping her head around the notion. But when studio executives suggested that the film could be told via Japanese anime — suddenly it clicked.
They could tell a stand-alone story from J.R.R. Tolkien’s appendices about the people of the kingdom of Rohan, which has now become “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” directed by Kenji Kamiyama. Jackson is one of the film’s executive producers and Boyens one of its producers.
“It was that moment of form meeting the story,” Boyens said in a video call. She said she thought anime would be an appealing approach because “it’s a story that ultimately deals with the wreckage of war, and that’s something that Japanese storytelling on film has been really good at telling.”
“The War of the Rohirrim” (in theaters) is the latest and most high profile anime adaptation of a Western franchise to hit screens big and small. In recent years there’s been “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” on Netflix, an anime version of the 2010 movie “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”; a “Rick and Morty: The Anime” for Adult Swim; and “Terminator Zero,” a show set in James Cameron’s “Terminator” universe, also on Netflix. Kamiyama also made an installment of “Star Wars: Visions,” a 2021 anime anthology featuring a galaxy far, far away on Disney+, as well as “Blade Runner: Black Lotus,” a co-production of Adult Swim and the anime streaming service Crunchyroll.
BenDavid Grabinski, one of the creators of “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off,” said in an interview that he sought to tap into some of the artistry of anime that “can feel fresh and different than a lot of the traditional animation coming out of the west.”
The tradition of turning a familiar property into anime is not exactly new — “The Animatrix,” a 2003 collection of short films set in the Wachowskis’ “Matrix” world is seen as one of the forebears of the trend. Still, Jason DeMarco, a senior vice president at Warner Bros. Animation who was a producer of “The War of the Rohirrim” and an executive producer on “Rick and Morty: The Anime,” sees the latest wave of these adaptations as a result of anime penetrating the market around the world, with films like those in the “Demon Slayer” series becoming box office successes.
When DeMarco was brought on board to work on “War of the Rohirrim,” he quickly thought Kamiyama would be a good pick to direct, because of the animator’s experience in the fantasy genre and his work on similar projects involving Western companies before.
“There are some anime directors who would just be like, ‘No, I don’t care what Peter Jackson thinks,’” said DeMarco. But he said that he knew Kamiyama would have the ability to “get what he felt was important and make this movie his,” but also take input from the film’s producers to create something that worked within the franchise.
“The War of the Rohirrim” takes place roughly 200 years before the events of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and has nearly nothing to do with the saga of the Rings of Power. Instead, it tells the story of Héra (voiced by Gaia Wise), the daughter of Helm (Brian Cox), the king of Rohan. Héra must defend her people after they are threatened by a rival, Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), who wants to overthrow her father. (He’s also frustrated she rejected his marriage proposal.)
Speaking through a translator — who also happened to be one of the film’s producers, Joseph Chou — Kamiyama said that he immediately felt pressure when he was offered the gig of directing the feature. That was in part because the story being told required a lot from his animators who needed to create vast amounts of soldiers as well as horses — a staple of the Rohan community. There are “not a lot of animators who are motivated to draw horses,” Kamiyama said.
On top of that, working within Hollywood came with time constrictions to meet planned release dates, Kamiyama added. But he knew that this was a unique opportunity for anime to reach an even wider audience.
“That kind of an outlet is not just an opportunity for me as a filmmaker but it’s a groundbreaking new thing for Japanese anime,” he said.
As for seeing the characters rendered in anime style, Boyens (who is also credited with the film’s story) said they “started to feel really right.” However, she did have one critique of the early design for Héra: Her breasts were too big.
“We were thinking practically: This girl’s got to ride that horse and fight,” she said, adding that the director was OK with the change. “Kamimaya was wonderful. He laughed.”
The vibrancy of the visual language of anime, which exists on a heightened plane, not bound by rules of logic, is a good fit for Tolkien’s work, DeMarco said.
“In the Tolkien books, people like Helm punch someone and kill them with one punch, they are known for fighting with their bare hands, it’s high fantasy,” he said. “Anime, especially in action sequences, is not afraid to dial up the unreality and not worry about, ‘Can this guy actually jump 20 feet in the air?’”
Plus, Boyens thinks Tolkien would have approved, based on how he furnished his living space at Oxford. “The first thing he bought was some Japanese prints,” Boyens said. “So it made me go: Maybe this was meant to happen.”
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