“We can’t ruin Tolkien’s books”: Lord of the Rings author Philippa Boyens on the War of the Rohirrim
News

“We can’t ruin Tolkien’s books”: Lord of the Rings author Philippa Boyens on the War of the Rohirrim

Posted on by Amelia Pressman

“Professor Tolkien said in his letters that sometimes the most compelling story is the untold story.”

That’s what Philippa Boyens told me when I recently interviewed her about the new animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, for which she was a producer and story co-writer. She is also credited with co-writing the Peter Jackson film trilogy The Lord of the Rings.

It started, of course, with JRR Tolkien’s epic fantasy book series. Over the years, adaptations followed, first on radio, then in cartoons, before Jackson finally brought the realm of Middle-earth to a worldwide audience with his acclaimed films. Since then, adaptations have continued, with the latest version being the anime-style The War of the Rohirrim, which looks into a previously unknown chapter of Tolkien’s world.

The film delves into Tokien’s appendices to fill in some gaps in the history of Middle-earth, and is also clearly set in the Peter Jackson version of Tolkien’s fantasy world. In my conversation with Boyens and executive producer Jason DeMarco, we discussed how they cracked the code to telling a brand new Lord of the Rings story while managing to stay true to not only Tolkien, but also Peter Jackson.

Telling an Untold Tolkien Story

The War of the Rohirrim is the latest project based on Tolkien’s popular fantasy series and attempts to flesh out an aspect of Middle-earth’s history that the author barely touched on in his original works. In this case, the starting point was the story of the rulers of Rohan from the Lord of the Rings appendices, particularly Helm Hammerhand, voiced by Brian Cox in the film. Of course, Helm will be the inspiration for what we know as Helm’s Deep.

Philippa Boyens not only co-wrote Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, but also the Hobbit trilogy with the director and Fran Walsh. She also co-wrote the story for War of the Rohirrim. As she explains, it was initially difficult for her and the team to figure out what story to tell with an animated film.

“There are a lot of stories out there in the appendices, in the world, the stories that aren’t told in the books, all of that,” Boyens says. “It just kind of…it didn’t gel.”

The biggest challenge was how to push Tolkien forward in a way that no one had ever seen before.

It was executive producer Jason DeMarco who suggested switching to an anime-style approach.

“For me, the biggest challenge was how do we bring Tolkien forward in a way that no one has ever seen before, namely as an anime,” he recalls. “Making sure it stays true to Tolkien and the films of Philippa, Peter and Fran and then makes it feel like a real anime?”

After pitching their idea to Warner Bros., the next task was to get director Kenji Kamiyama to work with them. Boyens and DeMarco wanted to make sure they could convince the director of Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and they felt they had an idea he couldn’t pass up wanted.

“It’s an interesting piece of storytelling, even if you just follow the bare bones plotlines of the book,” says Boyens. “And that’s because it starts off huge and pretty epic. In fact, the biggest battle we have, the attack on Edoras, takes place at the end of the first act. And I think that would scare a lot of directors because you end up in this huge epic moment and it’s really shocking to see Edoras in flames. But then the film changes, and it’s really interesting how it becomes this intense kind of siege.”

Channeling Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth

Despite the fact that The War of the Rohirrim is an animated film or takes place some 180 years before The Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is no denying that it still feels like the world we all came from Know and love Peter Jackson films. Of course, this is a story set in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, but the depiction of each book series always leaves room for interpretation from a visual perspective. However, War of the Rohirrim shares a design aesthetic with Jackson’s films, and that was entirely intentional – starting with director Kenji Kamiyama.

“Our director was pretty clear from the beginning that he wanted this film to be firmly grounded in the universe that (Jackson) created,” says DeMarco. “So the first thing we did was reach out to Weta and ask if you had any CG models of the Hornburg? What they did when they were 20 years old. So it took me a while to get it. They also had a lot of adorable physical models and stuff.”

Weta, of course, is the effects company that worked on Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” films, and it was instrumental in the creation of the Middle-earth that most people think of today. In addition to the CG models and models, they were also able to provide the War of the Rohirrim team with a ton of photos and drawings that the film’s background artists and designers could use for reference.

But amusingly, the vast resource of the Weta archives also occasionally caused problems.

“(It was) the kind of thing you only come across when you go into detail, where Kamiyama was trying to block out scenes and asking, ‘Well, where is this room in the Hornburg?’ And then we heard back, “Oh, geographically the inside is bigger than the outside.” It doesn’t really make sense. Do it any way you want,” laughs DeMarco. “So things like this have happened that you would never have imagined because you’re making a movie 20 years earlier and you don’t think anyone will ever visit that place again.”

Another challenge for the War of the Rohirrim artists was to take the 3D designs from the Jackson films and convert them into the anime’s 2D painting style. In fact, Weta was brought in to help design new elements that might not have been in the Jackson films, just to make sure they felt like they fit into the overall world.

“We knew we were approaching people in a very different style than Lord of the Rings, but we still wanted to make them feel at home,” says DeMarco. “And for us, this was a way to do that without having to beat people over the head.”

Ultimately, the artists had to consider not just the where of this story, but also that When.

We thought about what the Hornburg looked like 200 years before you see it in The Two Towers.

“The Hornburg is obviously an old fortress, but we thought about what it looked like 200 years before you see it in The Two Towers?” adds the EP. “Was there something else? What would we change? How do we make it a little less old, but still old?”

Meanwhile, Boyens noticed some familiar traits – and talents – while working with Kamiyama.

“He gave it a much larger scale. So he took everything I was thinking about and expanded it even more, like the long winter and what that means visually,” she says of the anime director. “And then he immediately contrasted it magnificently, in a way that I never would have thought of. My brain was still, “Okay, we’re in this cold, cold shaft.” And then suddenly the sun comes through this frozen scene. This is why you work with a visual master. … But he also reminded me of Peter because he is first and foremost a storyteller and is always looking for the cinematic. Which moment will be visually imprinted in your memory? And that’s why I love working with people like that, because he would throw out ideas and then we would try to figure out how are we going to earn it?”

Héra, the unsung heroine

The film’s narration comes from Miranda Otto, who of course played Eowyn, a shieldmaiden of Rohan, in the Jackson films. She tells the viewer right from the start that even the inhabitants of Middle-earth don’t know this particular story, which is an interesting way for the writers of “War of the Rohirrim” to counteract any criticism of the pass that might come from fans complaining that this is a new story.

“We could tell a story in it that doesn’t change what Tolkien wrote, but still fleshes it out so that it is what it needs to be,” says DeMarco. “I think it was that and a callback in a cool way to say that there are legends about a lot of strong people, strong women who did these things that maybe haven’t been written into history, but that Doesn’t mean they weren’t exciting stories.”

The unsung heroine of this story is actually Helm’s daughter, voiced by Gaia Wise. Unnamed in Tolkien’s work, Boyens and the other authors decided to call her Héra. So when Otto says in his story that you shouldn’t look for stories about Héra in the old songs, it’s because there literally aren’t any.

“I wanted to consciously say to the audience: We know what we are doing here. We know, we understand. Stay with us,” says Boyens. “Because…this is where we work from…is that we don’t change it unnecessarily. Don’t just change something randomly. If we want to change something, we do it for good storytelling reasons. And everything you bring to it makes it feel real, makes it feel authentic.”

Don’t just change something randomly. If we want to change something, we do it for good storytelling reasons.

Boyens says that the story could also be about Héra’s father Helm, or perhaps even Wulf, the story’s antagonist. But she and the writers wanted to be able to end the film on a more hopeful note than the other characters would have.

“I think Tolkien always brings this element of hope to his storytelling,” she says.

The filmmakers also felt it was important to include a character from the original Jackson films, and Éowyn was the perfect choice to tell the story of Héra.

“What (Otto) particularly liked was this sentence: ‘Don’t look for her in the old songs, stories about her in the old songs.’ “There are none,” says Boyens. “She liked that. I think she enjoyed the challenge. … We always said to her, ‘Imagine telling this story to your little son in Gondor or to your ancestor.'”