The Lore Changes in The War of the Rohirrim Explained!

After watching the movie, it was very obvious things were changed, so from my best memory, I've tried to put together everything that was altered for those of you less aware of Tolkien's original writings!

and do not forget to use coupon code THANKYOU5 for 5% off anything we have!

Support Us:

Follow Us:

Chapters:
00:00 – Chapter 1: The Introduction
01:47 – Chapter 2: Tolkien’s Version of the Story
02:58 – Chapter 3: The War of the Rohirrim Version
05:00 – Chapter 4: The Changes in The War of the Rohirrim
09:55 – Chapter 5: The Modernization of Helm’s Story
13:10 – Chapter 6: Conclusion
15:53 – Appendices: Support the Channel

Additional Channels:

Art used in the video in order of first appearance:
The War of the Rohirrim – New Line Cinema
Dark Lore of LOTR - Helm Hammerhand - Sheppi-ArtHouse
Helm Hammerhand slays Freca outside Edoras - The Lord of the Rings Online
Wulf – TurnerMohan
Helm's Deep - Gabriel Dreher
Helm Hammerhand – TurnerMohan
Helm's Death – heavypred
Frealaf defeats Wulf Frecason in Meduseld - The Lord of the Rings Online
Éowyn Before the Doors of Meduseld - Matthew Stewart
Gandalf - Anato Finnstark
Helm Hammerhand – TurnerMohan
Middle earth – Klaradox

Disclaimer:
This video is for educational and entertainment purposes, following fair use guidelines. All artwork is credited to the respective artists. Please feel free to contact us for any credit or removal requests.

Tags:
#TheWaroftheRohirrim #LordoftheRings #Lotr

[grungelives]

Id argue that this movie very much had Helm and his decisions at the forefront and much like Eowyn, Hera while often present was backseated due to her father's decisions. She really only became the sole main character by the last 20% of the film.
I do agree that many of the movies shortcomings come from many references to Peters Trilogy and while nostalgic aren't necessary and this should have gotten more of a chance to stand on its own.
I believe Eowyn saying you wont hear this story in other tales was a smart way of allowing this story in this medium to stand on its own and was done quite cleverly.
All in all i quite enjoyed it

[KeiPalace]

I don't know why they didn't just pull from a literal Tolkien heroine - Haleth, as in, the people of Haleth, a woman who took over her clan when her father and twin brother had died and pulled them together to defeat the orcs and despite the fact that the Elves admired her, she would not take sanctuary with them in the First Age, but remained with her people and became friends with Finrod Felagund.

[AllenReyes-]

Freca wasn't a Dunlanding Lord. He was Lord of Westmarch which is PART OF ROHAN. He and Wulf are Rohirrim. They just have Dunlandish blood, but they are not from Dunland.

[scarecrow]

What I personally liked about the movie, is that Hera isn't truely a sole protagonist. Helm holds a much higher role throughout his runtime and Hera simply pops here and there to contribute. It's until she takes the role of her father when we see her shift from a deuteratagonist to a protagonist, until then the movie didn't make me think she holds a role more important than her father. Which is good, because Helm is still shown as the legend he deserves to be shown as, even if his more humanized here.

[gnomesbigcoat]

I like that we have Eowyn narrating the story. For me, it makes all of the changes more believable because it is a story she is embellishing for her audience, and from how she remembers it being told to her as a child. Maybe Hera's story was told to her by her mother and inspired her to become the woman we see in lotr.

[thevanbeard]

I understand they took liberties. However Hera is Helm’s daughter. Wouldn’t any father be willing to die to elevate his children? And if his sons are dead wouldn’t it then be his daughter? I didn’t see Helm, or the brothers as weak. They all had strong moments. And Hera acting as she does makes sense with how Helm acts. I don’t know. I really enjoyed the movie.

[TarMody]

Changes or interpretations of lore should be judged by context in an adaptation. It is unfair to perceive this as a disrespect to the original work. In this perspective, I think the "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" anime is a very appropriate adaptation of the lore. A Helm narrative through the eyes of the character Hera did not make me feel any loss. On the contrary, it deepened the narrative even more. I think a conservative approach in terms of loyalty to the lore prevents not only this production but all other adaptations from adding depth to the universe.

[thunderstryken]

I would have changed the ending substantially. I think Hera should have been portrayed as the "Bride of Rohan" and "untold martyr". She and Olwyn would have faced off against Wulf who would have killed Olwyn and wounded Hera, but then she deals her shield blow to him to kill him like in the film. After telling Frealof to have mercy she would have succumbed to her wounds in the end. If both her and Olwyn died, then there is really no one who directly saw her great deeds who survived, so it would explain Eowyns comment from the beginning of the film about why there are no songs of her in the old tales. I felt quite without closure when Hera and Olwyn rode off into the sunset at the end of the film. I really would have rather her and her family's story end with death and martyrdom for the sake of the defense of Rohan. Her wedding dress thing and her desire to not marry would have had so much more impact if it was explained that she desired to be wed to Rohan as its protectress, even to the death.

[taotzu]

I did enjoy watching it at the theaters. I hope a 3 hour long extended edition of the movie comes out in a couple months.

[hyliayggdrasil]

Helm Hammerhand dominated every scene he was in, I factually loved him, and Fréaláf, and Hera and her brothers, that whole family is amazing.

It was so good seeing an amazing female character who isn't toxic in a story that doesn't take away from every man around her like.. *not going there*

I really wouldn't say that Hera fits the "modern movie heroine" frankly that would suggest that it banks on everyone around Hera being made less intelligent, toxic, borderline self-destructively incompetent, and having her tell them so, that never really happens at all thankfully.

Fréaláf was the one to suggest avoiding open warfare from what i recall, but he is overruled after someone else plays on Helms pride to get him to go off to open war, its why he is essentially told to go home and hide "go dig trenches and crawl into them, you are no kin of mine."

Hera essentially suggested a compromise because she seemed to lean towards listening to Fréaláf

It was a prideful mistake that Helm made that costs him the lives of two of his children

With Hera.. she is the perfect example for Eowyn to want to model herself after in my view, she wants to fight for Rohan, she loves her family, she loves and protects her people, she is fierce, she is prideful, with Helm Hammerhand as a father she should be..

but she is definitely not overpowered.. in actuality every fight she's in she is peotected by someone else, her horse saves her, her brothers save her, her father saves her, her caretaker saves her, her cousin saves her.

I would actually argue that Helm /is/ the main character, but that you are seeing him the way Hera does, from the perspective of a girl who loves her family, and his scene terrorizing the dunlendings was genuinely scary, having him look like a wraith stalking through the snow killing Rohans enemies.. was freaking amazing.

I loved this movie, the animation was mostly good, near the start it wasn't the best, it seemed like the characters were kind of stiff and sort of floated through their environment a little bit which bothered me, but the animation smooths out and gets better as the movie continues into the actual storyline after the setup

Over all.. i loved this, it made me excited for this setting again in a way that i haven't been since the lord of the rings and the hobbit trilogy, i got to go see it in the theater today with my sister as a Christmas present (T^T love her, i feel so spoiled)

Now i want to go see it again.

[zarkostojanovic]

This was quite refreshing, after the Jeff Bezos heresy. No major interventions into the lore (O.K., the Mûmakils were too much, I'll admit that.); they exploited the gaps in the story. Overall - I'm satisfied.

[Liberater]

thought it was surprisingly good and enjoyed it from beginning to end, and didn't mind most of the changes because I fundamentally don't agree with the criticism that it was unfaithful or deviated too much because I think it fundamentally misunderstands the whole lotr series because Tolkien clearly and repeatedly overtly stated his writings were not an end all be all gospel and he would constantly change things in stories and histories so expanding a relatively small story that still has the core elements of the tale but adding onto it to make it a more emotional and personal story even if it reframes some things and puts more emphasis on other things than the original story had I still think its faithful to the spirit of the series and I just don't think judging not just this movie but any other lotr adaption based on how 1:1 accurate it is to the original is the right way to look at it

[ghostdreamer]

You can’t make Helm or his sons the main character when they die a while before the resolution, and it can’t be Frealaf when he’s away and only comes to the rescue at the end. Hera isn’t a Mary Sue, she struggles and is beaten, and only picks up a sword at the very end.

[TETASARAIVACS]

It would be SO EASY not to break the lore!
They just had to respect the few things Tolkien wrote and said about it. They cannot do even that!

[rangerofthenorth]

Back when the movie was announced, I actually hoped that Helm and Freoluf would be main protagonist, perhaps Freoluf even more because it would be really cool to see that epic, wild, sort of Viking reclaiming of Edoras and slaying Wulf...
we got nothing of that

[horurbardal]

One point worth mentioning that you don't touch upon is that the Appendices are written as a historical annal, penned by Frodo. The version in the appendices are therefore a brief historical summary of an oral tradition, and likely based on whatever Merry picked up from the Rohirrim, while the movie portrays itself as a part of the living oral tradition. Tolkien doesn't delve into the specifics, because it is an annal, and therefore the fleshing out of the story aren't changes, but additions.

Additionally, as others have pointed out, Helm's story could not have been told from his PoV, because he dies before the end of the tale. I disagree that the film tell's Hera's tale. Eowyn is telling Hera's tale, but the film tells Helm's tale from Hera's PoV. Tolkien's Helm is a tragic character, in the sense of the Tragedy genre, and the basis of a Tragedy is that the audience can see what will happen later on as a result of the Hero's actions, but not the character themselves. By making Hera the PoV character from which we see Helm's story, the film can provide us with information that Helm is not privy to, and therefore we can see his errors as errors, which he cannot be reasonably expected to see in the moment. From Helm's perspective, the tale would be Helm having a bunch of people come to him and make demands on how he should rule, based on little to no evidence, and Helm would rightfully tell them to get stuffed, and then random bad things happen. This would have been unsatisfying, whereas us knowing that helm is making mistakes as he makes them, allow us to see his Tragic tale unfold, and makes his final realizations, and the sacrifice he makes once has had them, more impactful, not less.

[celestejohnston]

I liked the story. But as I am writer of LOTR fanfic I welcome a shift in perspective to tell a story. I didn't think of this as a change of Helm's Story. They told the story from a different perspective so it wasn't the history as seen through Helm's eyes but rather Hera's (who is now the named rather than unnamed daughter. Unlike the Amazon series which throws away the legendarium this is expanding it the way good fan fiction does. I think the biggest problem is the animation. It lets the film down.

[daltongillen]

Tbh…. Nothing really changed. OH NO. They made a female character the main character! Gasp! Literally every thing else was basically the same, other than who killed Wulf. But that’s honestly such a trifling thing. I actually think the movie painted Helm in a better light than the two and a half pages about this story written by Tolkien did. The movie writers had more creative flexibility in making an unnamed character the story’s protagonist than they would have if they chose to make Helm or Frealaf the main character, so that’s understandably what they did.
Good film, good adaptation, and I hope to see more

[DPIII]

Over all I really liked the movie. I love Hara & her shield maiden. The main thing I didn't like was how the second son died. How and why did the guards leave him? He was the heir at that point and just as important as the King to safeguard.

Without reading the comments yet I'm sure people didn't like the movie cuz strong woman oh my God, how dare you? 😅

[zakman]

Loved the video and what they changed. Thank you