Kenji Kamiyama and Philippa Boyens on the Making of 'LOTR: War of the Rohirrim'

Turn Tolkien's work into an anime? Place a woman at the forefront of the story? The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is unlike many of its onscreen predecessors in the franchise with its storyline and artistic style, but it's not the first animated rendering of a J.R.R. Tolkien tale. Arriving in US theaters on Dec. 13, the film is an anime production from Warner Bros. Animation and Sola Entertainment.

Pulled from the appendices of The Lord of the Rings novels, War of the Rohirrim goes into the history of Helm Hammerhand, King of Rohan, with Brian Cox voicing the larger-than-life ruler. Directed by Kenji Kamiyama, the movie ventures into Middle-earth to introduce Helm, his family, and the conflict between his kingdom and the Dunlendings. Told with humans at the center -- rather than elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons and men -- the movie hinges on its characters, art style and intentionally dramatic storytelling.

War of Rohirrim is set 183 years before the events in LOTR and takes viewers into Hornburg, where Helm is a legend in the making. His daughter, Héra, and sons, Háma and Haleth, are skilled fighters, and though the characters aren't given glorious shout-outs in Tolkien's written lore, they are central to how all the layers and action play out in this film.

Kamiyama and Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit films, recently spoke with CNET over Zoom and shed light on crafting this original story for the big screen. Edited transcripts of our separate conversations are below but beware of spoilers.

Warner Bros. Pictures

CNET: In bringing this Middle-earth story from book to screen, the unnamed daughter [Héra] is centered, as opposed to Helm or even one of his sons. Other elements of the book version were switched up for the film. Can you talk about what was behind that narrative choice and why you felt it was important?

Boyens: Can I tell you genuinely, she earned her role in being one of the central characters. Even though she is unnamed in the book, when we actually started really examining and looking at the story -- because we did not start there, necessarily, with her as the main character -- Helm is an obvious choice for the main character, of course. And he is a main character in this story. But once you really look at that tale, you understand the conflict starts with her. It's centered around her and this push-pull over who she is supposed to marry. This Lord Freca being presumptuous enough to sort of semi-demand that she marry his son -- and then her father's response being, 'She'll marry whom I choose.' And then you understand: "Wow, what does she think about that? What does she feel about that?" That's really interesting.

Then when you look at the vast expanse of the tale, not all the characters survive this on a very practical level. And you are following someone all the way through to the end. She may well have been one of those characters, and how does she survive it? What condition does she have to overcome? It became kind of self-evident that she was the most interesting of all the characters to write about. It wasn't just the fact that she was a woman. However, having said that, it was quite important to me -- once we made that choice -- that we get it right. And we get it right and make her as authentic a female character within the world of professor Tolkien as we possibly could, number one. And No. 2, that she'd speak to today's young women and make her feel real. 

I have to say, I struggled myself when we were creating this story in the very beginning. I felt like something was missing. I didn't have it, I said to my fellow producers, "We don't got her." It wasn't actually until a young female screenwriter turned up who had a much stronger sense of who this character is. And it was the fact that, I grew up in an earlier time when a lot of women characters on film were either somebody's wife -- especially through the '90s action films -- or they had to be some kind of female representation of what was essentially a male character. They couldn't follow their own path, their own journey. It was always a hero's journey. Well, this is a heroine's journey. We wanted it to feel real, and that's one of the more interesting things that anime can do -- which I found really surprising and I learned in the process of this. So even though this is a fantasy world and these are animated characters, somehow Kenji Kamiyama is like a magician. He manages to make them feel so earthy and gritty and real, and I think a lot of that has to do with what the actors bring to the role as well. 

Helm Hammerhand in LOTR: War of the Rohirrim.

Warner Bros. Pictures

CNET: Kenji, you have so much experience as an artist, mangaka and anime director, yet War of the Rohirrim is set in Tolkien's Middle-earth. What was your approach in creating a balance in this film for fans of anime and fans of Lord of the Rings?

Kamiyama: When you talk about the balance between the two, that's actually the challenge because that's something I initially thought when taking on this project -- there are so many fans of the world of Peter Jackson's franchise for The Lord of the Rings, and equally, Tolkien's fans. So when it comes to making a new way of expression by way of anime this time around, the first thing I thought to myself was, "Are they going to be happy with our film? Are they going to be satisfied?" 

That's something I needed to overcome. Even though it's the anime format, we needed to make it connect to Peter Jackson's trilogy. That's something I wanted all the fans to feel by watching this movie. But having said that, because there is a commonality between our movie and the Two Towers live-action movie -- some of the scenes are set in the same place even though the time is set 200 years before the trilogy -- we could share the same artists from the live-action movie. That way, you can get the audience to feel these two universes are connected. That's something I was initially focused on.

CNET: This movie has hand-drawn art, and the film captures details like the characters' emotions, the sounds of flies buzzing and light shining on Helm as he stands in the snow. What are some of your favorite scenes in the film?

Kamiyama: In terms of looking at the movie as a whole, what I wanted to express and that was brilliantly realized on film was that finale battle scene between Héra and Wulf. They come face to face, and we are wondering which one is going to win. Actually, if you look at the background, the dark sky is gradually getting brighter and brighter until the morning dawn, and gradually, the morning sun comes through. By the time Héra won that battle, the sky becomes slightly brighter with the morning shining. She's standing in front of it. That particular scene -- that was something I'd say I wanted to create and was brilliantly realized as I imagined.