The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohrrim has ridden into the world to the sounds of the mighty horns of Rohan. The story, which focuses on Tolkien’s Helm Hammerhand, but also his previously unnamed daughter, now called Héra, brings to life a brand new cinematic The Lord of the Rings journey. Of course, it’s also an anime. Nerdist sat down with the writers of the film, Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou to take a full dive into the creation and story of the The War of the Rohirrim. Among other things, we chatted about bringing Tolkien to anime fans, The Lord of the Rings Easter eggs in the film, making slight deviations from Tolkien’s lore, and building a new kind of hero in Héra.
You can read the full interview below.
Nerdist: I read in your notes that you felt it was really fun to dive into Tolkien’s writing with a historian’s lens. What was the most interesting fact about Rohan that you learned from your deep dive into the lore for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim?
Phoebe Gittins: Off the top of my head, possibly not the most interesting, but something that we really leaned on and wanted to weave into the storytelling was how the Rohirrim culture verbally pass on their stories and how they use song. And I always picture sitting around a fire, and so they weren’t people who wrote, it was all in song oral traditions. And so we really embraced that. We wanted Éowyn obviously to come and be our narrator in that tradition and open the film with her and end the film with her as bookend as if she is, has inherited this story in that tradition, and is passing it on.
Arty Papageorgiou: And it sort of plays into this idea of Helm Hammerhand being a larger-than-life character and the mythology behind him and sharing that rich history and learning from your ancestors.
What was your favorite original edition to the world of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim?
Gittins: I have a soft spot for Old Pennicruik, the character, because I think what she brings is a blend of anime and The Lord of the Rings. She sits really nicely in this unique space that’s been created, and I just love her because she is an old gossip, and she was really, really fun to write.
Papageorgiou: Sort of an oral, traditional, maybe steeped with a little bit less mythology and reverence.
Gittins: And she brought some liberty in very dark, grim times was important.
I found the writing of the movie to be dense in a really lovely way and very literary, very Tolkien esque. Were you consciously trying to blend your styles with Tolkien’s, or did writing in his world just create that kind of prose for you?
Papageorgiou: I think just being such fans of the films, and then I mean having Tolkien’s rich use of language, masterful use of language, and sort of blending those two things together really informed the voice of this film. I think growing up on those films and running round sort of listing off quotes from them, it’s like you can’t help but have the films in your head as you’re writing them.
Gittins: It is really interesting. Truthfully, I wasn’t too conscious of it as we were doing it because I knew we were in such good hands. I knew anything would be flagged immediately by Philippa [Boyens]. So yeah, I wasn’t sort of letting any of that weigh us down, but we certainly went to that part of the Appendices and we really wanted to incorporate what few lines that were there. We really wanted to do our best to get as much of what was on the page actually in the film.
Phoebe, as a young woman, writing a young woman voiced by a young woman, what was really important to you to feature in Héra’s character?
Gittins: Honestly, something that we drew from Éowyn is that we really wanted Héra to be able to be vulnerable and wear her fear openly, have her heart on her sleeve, and not feel like she immediately has it all together or knows how to charge into war. It was very important that she process and be real, be human, have these moments of “I can’t do this.”
A few times in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Héra proclaimed sentiments like “I am a bride to no man.” I know these are echoes of Éowyn, “I am no man,” but to me, pronouncements that have this feeling of elemental queerness to them. Was there ever any discussion of that with Héra?
Gittins: Oh, that’s so interesting. Again, not something we were conscious of probably, but I can see it certainly. Yeah.
I really loved that Héra killed Wulf at the end. I feel that, often, women are expected to turn the other cheek or grant some clemency in the end and are not allowed to kill the way men are. Why was this conclusion important for those two characters?
Gittins: It was important, and it is a departure from the text, a very purposeful one. We felt that it had to be Héra very strongly to see that relationship through to its conclusion. And we really liked the idea that it was ultimately the shield for a few symbolic reasons. We sort of wanted to set that up with Olwyn, the broken shield, the jagged edge. That’s the thing that Héra ultimately uses to take Wulf down. That was all very intentional.
I also loved the dynamic between Héra and Olwyn; they became kind of the past, and the present of Shieldmaidens and Éowyn was the future. How did you build that character and that trinity of Shieldmaidens?
Gittins: Always we were looking to Éowyn for inspiration, and that’s where the shieldmaidens came from, but being able to look at the type of women that paved the way for Éowyn, so, retrospectively, building back was really fun in The War of the Rohirrim. Who led to her being the character that she is?
Papageorgiou: I mean, sort of in developing that character very early on, we were sort of discussing what type of character Olwyn could be. Philippa Boyens mentioned, “You know who would be good if we were lucky enough to get her? Lorraine Ashbourne. And the moment she said that, all these light bulbs started popping off for all of us. So in writing that character, it wasn’t only just “What’s the purpose in the film?” It was almost thinking about what Lorraine could bring to the role.
Gittins: And there is this amazing sort of tradition in some of the lines that we wanted to get in. Again, it’s a piece of storytelling that gets handed down, even within the context of the film, from Héra to Lief. And it shares, in the darkest hours, in the most desperate times, it was the women who held the line. It was the women who took up arms when all the men are slain. And really bringing that to the forefront of the storytelling was something that initially drew us to the project. Getting a chance to do that for the women was what pulled me in, honestly.
Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. There were a lot of different kinds of men and masculinity running around in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, but they all seemed to get taken out by some hubristic flaw that they possessed, even the good ones, in a sense. That was really interesting, that set up and then Héra just rising to the occasion. I felt it was really lovely.
Papageorgiou: We were sort of interested in a different type of leadership. We wanted Héra to be a different type of protagonist, and I think we sort of wanted to show that she’s not leading her people as a power grab. She’s leading her people to ensure their survival, and what different type of leader would that take? And I think her journey is a unique one compared to all the sort of hotheads around her.
Gittins: Yeah, she’s rising to the challenge, but she’s doing it in her own way—and that’s part of Helm Hammerhands’s journey and what he learns in realizing he needs to allow her to make her own choices.
Aside from the orcs we see briefly and our glimpse of Saruman, we didn’t see any of Tolkien’s other races in the The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim except for man. Did you ever consider including elves or dwarves or any other denizens of Middle-earth, or was it really important for it to be just a tale of man?
Papageorgiou: I wouldn’t say it was super important to just be a tale of man, but it didn’t really seem quite right. I feel like this story could hold its own without delving into other types of characters or creatures. This was sort of an extended family drama in terms of the extended family of the people of Rohan. It was sort of like a story about people tearing themselves apart, and apart from a few sort of cameos from some well-loved creatures or orcs or whatever else, it didn’t feel like it needed anything extra. There was enough sort of tension and drama and spectacle and awe within those parameters.
Speaking of Saruman, did you always know you would include him in that scene of Fréaláf’s coronation at the end of The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim? And when did you know you would add in Christopher Lee’s voice?
Gittins: That was, I’m going to say, a Philippa Boyens decision as well. As fans we were like, oh, that’s a good one. That made perfect sense within the storytelling, the lore, and in that moment in time.
So that was a really good one. And what was so, so cool for us, with the blessings of his family, was to be able to, and again, this was Philippa Boyens, this was not us, was to be able find a line. She’s like a Rolodex. We could never have done that. But she sort of constructed a baseline of what it could be. And then incredible people went off and went through the behind-the-scenes stuff. They just went through the archive and painstakingly put this thing together.
Papageorgiou: It’s a special moment.
Gittins: It’s his voice. And that was really special. Amazing.
Papageorgiou: There’s two special moments in The War of the Rohirrim. There’s that, and also the dedication to Bernard [Hill] at the end of the film.
Of course, there will be no small excitement to hear the name of Gandalf spoken in The War of the Rohirrim. How did you decide on that reference, and do you think Héra actually gets to go meet him after she rides off?
Gittins: This is funny—I feel like we’re just constantly saying it was Philippa, but we did inherit a lot. That’s another one that we thought made perfect sense. She’s so good with those Easter eggs and she knows what’s appropriate to bring in.
Papageorgiou: The lore master.
Gittins: The lore master. We lent on her for all of those kind of things. But that was very much as you say about setting up a possibility for this character who can now embrace her freedom and go on these adventures and where is she going to go? Who is she going to see?
Did you imagine any story in Tolkien’s world where maybe there’s a secret Héra running around?
Gittins: I would love to see it.
I really loved that epic fight between the Mumakil and the Watcher in the Water in The War of the Rohirrim. Did you always plan to have a creature fight? And how did you settle on that sort of matchup?
Gittins: That was driven by Kamiyama, and that’s really bringing the anime in, I think. So that was cool for us to lean on him and really kind of get a sense of his vision for all of that. And that was, I think, driven by, “This is one for the anime fans, as well, but how do you make it Tolkien?” There were a lot of things surrounding that. And also, for us, we were focused on Héra. That’s what we thought we could bring to the segment, and absolutely, how would Héra deal with the situation? And how can she use her brain?
Papageorgiou: But also her love of nature.
Gittins: Yes, we wanted her to bring something to the table and to lean on her characteristics. We wanted to give her this love for the natural world, so what would she know? What’s in her skillset? How would she react?
Papageorgiou: But also her love of storytelling and sort of knowing, having that knowledge passed down to her research, that there was Watcher in the Water around there. So yeah, we sort of tried to embed the fight into the storytelling as well as, on top of just being a really cool moment.
And so now that you’ve immersed yourselves in Tolkien so thoroughly, do you have a kind of white whale of The Lord of the Rings stories? Is there a story that you’d love to tell if you could tell anything from the lore?
Gittins: Many. So many, but I don’t think we should give any of them away.
Papageorgiou: We’ll see what’s bubbling.
Gittins: But there really are, there are so many. It’s endless. The world-building, the mythology that comes with this is never-ending, honestly.
Ultimately, what do you hope viewers take away from The War of the Rohirrim?
Papageorgiou: At least for me, it’s just that excitement that I had when I first saw these films in the cinema. I mean, if we can sort of impart that sense of joy and wonder in anyone who gets to see the film, that’s a job well
Gittins: Yeah, and I sort of like the idea that it will bring anime fans into The Lord of the Rings… because I have a younger brother, he’s 15 years old, he’s super into anime, all his friends are, and what Arty’s talking about, I hope that it can bring that for these younger generations as well and steer them towards Tolkien.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is now playing in theaters.
