How ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Warfare of the Rohirrim’ adapts two pages of Tolkien lore into a complete film

The Lord of the Rings: The Warfare of the Rohirrim is an enchanting experiment in adaptation. It isn’t adapting a novel of J.R.R. Tolkien’s, however fairly two pages from his Appendices, which lay out the final nice stand of considered one of Rohan’s most famed kings, Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Succession‘s Brian Cox).

On this part of the Appendices, Tolkien writes {that a} rival lord named Freca (voiced by Shaun Dooley) proposed that his son Wulf (voiced by Luke Pasqualino) marry Helm’s daughter. Not solely does Helm reject the proposal outright — he additionally kills Freca with one mighty punch. (His title is Hammerhand for a motive.) Wulf vows vengeance and spends the subsequent few years assembling a mighty military. Then, he takes the town of Edoras, and pushes Helm and the Rohirrim again to the Hornburg, the place an extended, merciless siege awaits.

It is a fantastic story, one which sees Helm singlehandedly terrorizing Wulf’s males till his final breath. However to make it right into a full-length movie, screenwriters Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou (who took over from authentic writers Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews) needed to make some modifications from the unique textual content, increasing on it in some locations, and reducing it in others.

To study extra about The Warfare of the Rohirrim‘s adaptation course of, Mashable spoke with Gittins and Papageorgiou in regards to the option to middle Helm’s daughter Héra (voiced by Gaia Sensible), the position of The Lord of the Rings‘ Éowyn (Miranda Otto, returning in voiceover) as narrator, and extra.

Helm’s daughter Héra — unnamed in Tolkien’s work — takes the lead in The Warfare of the Rohirrim.

When you may suppose two pages of fictional historical past is not so much for writers to attract from, Gittins and Papageorgiou disagree.

“It’s actually so dense,” Papageourgiou informed Mashable in a Zoom name alongside Gittins.

Gittins added: “It’s Tolkien! The strength of his world-building means there’s always going to be a thread that pulls another thread that pulls another thread.”

One of many threads from the unique textual content The Warfare of the Rohirrim pulls on is that of Helm’s unnamed daughter, talked about simply as soon as in Tolkien’s writing. (“Do not look for tales of her in the old songs,” Éowyn tells us in her opening narration. “There are none.”) It was producer Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote The Lord of the Rings films and can also be Gittins’ mom, who steered that the movie dive into what her story may appear like. In any case, the battle between Wulf and Helm begins on account of a wedding proposal involving her.

“We felt Tolkien really did place her at the heart of this conflict,” Gittins stated. “It is her story in large part. A lot of this war is because of her. And once we got our heads around that, it became very exciting to see what we could do with this character, and see what we could bring to the table with her.”

Héra’s involvement permits The Warfare of the Rohirrim to additional flesh out Helm’s dynamic together with his family, in addition to pay tribute to Rohan’s shieldmaidens. Nevertheless it additionally solves a little bit of a logistical drawback when it comes to carry The Warfare of the Rohirrim ahead following Helm’s closing sacrifice.

We felt Tolkien actually did place [Héra] on the coronary heart of this battle.

“When you look at the text, you know the fate of Helm Hammerhand. You know it’s epic, and it’s tragic, and it’s iconic, but it didn’t really give us an ending,” Gittins defined. “The value at stake, the Rohirrim, are still behind those walls in the Hornburg. You can’t just leave them there. So who can see this story through for us?”

The reply grew to become Héra, the one considered one of Helm’s youngsters whose destiny is left unsure within the Appendices. Bringing her to the forefront allowed The Warfare of the Rohirrim to discover a brand new type of warfare within the latter a part of its siege sequence.

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“We get to see the defense of the Hornburg from a nontraditional general or leader or commander,” Papageorgiou stated.

The Warfare of the Rohirrim reveals us a unique type of assault on the Hornburg — with some callbacks.

The Warfare of the Rohirrim shouldn’t be the primary time Lord of the Rings followers have seen the Hornburg below assault. That honor falls to the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers, a sequence so monumental that something remotely resembling it has some large sneakers to fill.

“That is untouchable in the films,” Gittins stated.

So how would The Warfare of the Rohirrim convey one thing new to an assault on the Hornburg? By focusing in on the brutal, months-long attrition of the siege. (For comparability, the Battle of Helm’s Deep lasts one night time.) Because the Lengthy Winter rages on, Helm leaves the Hornburg nightly and fights his means by elements of Wulf’s camp. In the meantime, Wulf has his males construct a siege tower that may ultimately breach the partitions of the hold.

“It was exciting for us to go into that space in a deeper way,” Gittins stated. “What we found really cool was that there’s suffering on both sides in the stalemate, and at some point it’s going to break. There is this great horror that begins to unfold where the Rohirrim are seeing their impending doom.”

“There’s this sense of a ticking clock,” Papageorgiou added.

Wulf’s presence on the Hornburg is a deviation from Tolkien’s work, the place he stays on the throne in Edoras till his defeat by the hands of Helm’s nephew Fréaláf (voiced by Laurence Ubong Williams). Right here, although, his vengeance drives him to pursue Helm and Héra all the best way to the Hornburg himself, intensifying the standoff. It additionally brings the ultimate conflict between Fréaláf and Wulf’s males to the Hornburg, as an alternative of leaving it in Edoras.

Fréaláf and his military’s arrival on the battle echoes Gandalf and Éomer’s arrival at Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers — they even experience down the identical hill! In the meantime, Héra’s concept to distract Wulf with a duel (a brand new addition to the story) calls to thoughts a smaller scale of Aragorn’s plan to attract Sauron’s eye away from Frodo in The Return of the King. However these aren’t the one references to the unique Lord of the Rings trilogy that Gittins and Papageorgiou added to The Warfare of the Rohrrim.

The Warfare of the Rohirrim brings Éowyn again … as a narrator.

Tolkien’s appendices are offered as easy histories. The Warfare of the Rohirrim provides a twist to that by presenting its story as a story informed by Éowyn. It is a becoming alternative, provided that Héra is principally Éowyn 2.0. Each are headstrong daughters of Rohan’s king throughout a time of disaster, every determined to assist their individuals even when their fathers’ protectiveness could maintain them again.

“We knew we would need to draw inspiration for [Héra] from somewhere, and we asked ourselves the question, ‘Who would have paved the way for the likes of Éowyn?'” Gittins stated. “So it just felt like a really natural fit, given that we’d drawn so much inspiration from Éowyn to Héra, that we use Éowyn as a narrative device as well.”

Éowyn’s narration frames the movie as a narrative handed down by generations, in a alternative that Papageorgiou stated “spoke to the storytelling aspect of the Rohirrim culture.”

There’s an added layer of myth-making right here. Since this story is now legend, any of its exaggerations or deviations from Tolkien’s textual content might merely be considered because the legend warping and altering with every telling.

How does The Warfare of the Rohirrim match into the broader context of Center-earth?

Éowyn is not the one acquainted face — or actually, voice — popping up in Warfare of the Rohirrim. Saruman (voiced by the late Christopher Lee in a line taken from archival footage) makes an look at Fréaláf’s coronation, simply as he does within the Appendices. However we additionally get a touch at one other wizard from The Lord of the Rings: Gandalf. He writes to Héra on the finish of the movie, hoping for extra details about the orcs she encountered stealing rings behind the Hornburg.

Gandalf’s inclusion was one other concept of Boyens’, in an effort to gesture out to the broader world of Center-earth, and in addition present a counterpoint to Saruman’s cameo. “If you’re going to introduce the dark, you have to introduce the light as well,” stated Papageorgiou. “You can’t have Saruman without Gandalf.”

The wizards are simply a few of many Lord of the Rings particulars Gittins and Papageorgiou incorporate into Warfare of the Rohirrim. Additionally current are the ring-stealing orcs, the Nice Eagles, and a runaway Mûmakil (or Oliphaunt), every a touch on the struggle to come back, in addition to proof of Tolkien’s huge, interconnected legendarium.

“Even the smallest detail will launch a geopolitical rabbit warren of investigation,” Papageorgiou stated. “That’s actually the hard part. It’s not a question of, ‘How did you make this number of paragraphs into a feature film?’ It’s more, ‘Well, how didn’t we make six films?'”

The Lord of the Rings: The Warfare of the Rohirrim is now in theaters.