There’s a high level of expectation when it comes to release a new The Lord of the Rings movie. And so, selecting a pair of writers who would do Tolkien’s world justice was imperative. Luckily, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim‘s Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou were more than up to task, delivering a beautifully dense and gorgeously literary-feeling film. In celebration of the movie, Nerdist chatted with Gittins and Papageorgiou on what they took from Tolkien’s lore, what aspects of Rohan’s story they grew and evolved, and creating original The Lord of the Rings characters for the story of The War of the Rohirrm. Check out the full interview below.
What about this The Lord of the Rings story made you all feel like it was worthy of adaptation?
Phoebe Gittins: I mean, really, that was a Philippa Boyens call. I mean, she was the one who conceived the idea of using the Helm Hammerhand story. But when we approached the script, we could immediately see why it was a good idea.
Arty Papageorgiou: It’s a story that is about people tearing themselves apart, which I think is kind of unique. Usually, it’s sort of baddies versus goodies, and obviously, you’ve got a bit of that going on, but you do get the sense in this story that things could have been different.
Phoebe Gittins: All the choices that are made. It’s interesting with Héra and with Wulf, that they really inherit this mess from their fathers. And it’s the choices that each one of them makes that lead them down very different paths, and that’s kind of really drew us in as storytellers as well.
The War of the Rohirrim‘s tale takes place over a hundred years before The Lord of the Rings story, as most people know it. But Sauron and his evil are lurking nonetheless. Will the film engage with the Dark Lord at all?
Gittins: Some Easter eggs.
Papageorgiou: What is cool is that idea of playing with the idea that there is that darkness lurking around the periphery. And that was quite a fun part of our process. It’s like what do we choose to include or not to include, and is it an Easter egg, or does it inform our characters? Something like the Long Winter is probably a good example of that. So yeah, no, it’s not in there overly, but I don’t think you can have a Middle-earth story without it being there in and around the side.
Some adaptations have tied Helm Hammerhand to one of the human Rings of Power. Is that anything that you touch on at all in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim?
Gittins: Nope.
Cool. Easy answer! The War of the Rohirrim brings us an earlier story for Rohan. How did you tie it in the Rohan people are familiar with while giving it its own identity at this earlier time?
Gittins: I think the relationship between Helm Hammerhand and this unknown daughter is quite a nice example of that. We have this established character in the text, at least, and then we brought in this new character, this unnamed daughter of Helm. And so getting to kind of look at that relationship was a really exciting part of the storytelling as well.
Papageorgiou: There’s also those sort of classic Rohan traits in our characters, but it was fun being given a bit of space to flesh out what other types of characters would be in and around Rohan. I mean even Háma. It’s not just about Héra’s character, there’s other characters in there, which gave us an opportunity to look at the culture in different ways.
Can you speak a little bit about what you might reveal about the culture of Rohan?
Papageorgiou: That storytelling element, I think is interesting. We open up with Éowyn, with her narration. We’ve got hammers.
Gittins: The Rohirrim are people of song and of stories. So we liked the idea of starting with this narration from Éowyn as if you are sort of sitting around a fire, and she’s leaning in and saying, “Let me tell you a story.” So kind of leaning into that element of the Rohirrim culture, starting straight off the bat perfect.
Papageorgiou: Also looking at Fréaláf and looking at the younger generation and how they’re tackling the coming war. And also Wulf as well. We get to see that side of the Rohirrim as well, all the surrounding people. I mean, they were related in the past. And that’s what we were getting at before, about this story of people tearing themselves apart. So it is what we know, but we were able to be able to investigate it a little bit more deeply.
As far as the characters from the story, do they mostly come from The Lord of the Rings‘ lore or are there also original characters in The War of the Rohirrim?
Gittins: Yeah. We got to add several new characters actually in The War of the Rohirrim, kind of that one would be born out of the other, out of the other, sort of snowball effect.
Papageorgiou: But lore-driven, though.
Gittins: Lore-drive, of course. Of course. We have a good balance of who you expect to see in there, and then some new faces.
Papageorgiou: We dig into the shieldmaiden history a little bit. That’s something that is given a bit of investigation.
Gittins: Absolutely. Looking into that. Thinking about what kind of woman would’ve paved the way for the likes of Éowyn and drawing on her.
Papageorgiou: We’ve got Lief and Old Pennicruik. I mean there’s a few, great and very memorable.
Gittins: And a few new women. Yeah, we brought some girls to the table!
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim releases in theaters on December 13.
