Anime as an art form has the power to bring so many stories to life, creatively conveying feelings that humans sometimes struggle to explain with words. Many anime series have had live-action adaptations, such One Piece, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost In The Shell and much more. But, there is a rarity when a well-known live-action film franchise gets an anime adaptation. This is where The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim fits in by richly expanding the Middle-earth universe.
The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim is set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films. It tells the fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan. Due to conflicts with the Dunlendings, Héra, the daughter of Helm, must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their total destruction. The story leads Helm and the survivors to make a last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg—a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep.
Kamiyama has been recently recognized for his anime adaptation of the Blade Runner films with Crunchyroll and Adult Swim’s Blade Runner: Black Lotus. He co-directed the series with Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed), along with the creative director Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo). Kamiyama and Aramaki have worked together on numerous projects now: Ultraman, Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045 and Blade Runner: Black Lotus.
CGMagazine was able to sit down with the director of The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim Kenji Kamiyama to talk about adding in familiarity and refreshing elements to this anime film. He explained how they were able to sift through and use a lot of the original digital shots Weta FX used in both The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy. Even from an audio experience, the score was made with the intention of paying homage to Howard Shore’s work—while still bringing something new with composer Stephen Gallagher at the helm.
Good evening, Kamiyama-san. There are so many iconic shots of Edoras, Rohan and the Rohirrim from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. So, what was the process of highlighting which references you wanted to include in The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim?
Kenji Kamiyama: In the movie, the first half is set in Rohan, particularly Edoras, and the second half is centred around the fortress of the Hornburg—later known as Helm’s Deep. These two locations overlap in The Two Towers. For that reason, we collaborated with Weta FX who worked on this movie’s franchise. We got the CG set from the live-action movie.
When it comes to Edoras or the Hornburg, we utilized the same CG data to recreate the background. That’s why The Two Towers fans get to see it and go ‘oh, this is quite familiar’—even though this was about 260 years ago prior to the story of The Two Towers. So you get to see what it was like back then in the same place, and you can kind of compare the two over time. That’s something that we think [fans] can enjoy watching.
That’s how I felt seeing these locations in an anime format. Visually, it took me back to seeing The Two Towers again. Audibly, it was a pleasure hearing the Rohan theme again. It was like an evolved version in this film, and I love the work of Howard Shore on the previous Lord of the Rings films. But, I also love what Steven Gallagher has done with the music for this movie. How did you want to pay homage with the music in The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim?
Kenji Kamiyama: As you mentioned, we were allowed to borrow the original song by Howard Shore. And with regard to Steven, we had a lengthy discussion about how to utilize the music in order to move the fans. We needed to aim for something musically that we can move the fans emotionally, and that’s something we spent a long time discussing. And not only the original song from the original trilogy, but also the new song written for this film.
It had to be something that could not exceed the expectations of the fans, and would allow the fans to be brought back [from the previous films] to this movie. Not only what type of song that we needed to have, but also at what time should I introduce this music to the screen. That was another thing that we needed to discuss. It had to be sort of the timing that had the most dramatic effect.
That’s something we had an extra discussion on. So we put the music against the images, and then decided to say, ‘okay, maybe we had to [add in the music] slightly later or earlier.’ We adjusted the timing when the music should start in order to have the maximum impact. That kind of process was repeatedly done over the course of the making of this film.
That’s awesome. Thanks again so much for your time!