



This animated story is a rather joyless and plodding film that has been created by plundering a small piece from Tolkien's epic tales of Middle-earth and seems for no other reason than to continue the LOTR into a franchise. What a mistake that's likely to be if this film is evidence of what's to come. As much as there are admirers of this Japanese animation style it renders the LOTR world into a children's film without anything that a live feature would have done. It's a flat, sometimes boring film that at times sounds like an episode of Game Of Thrones with all the 'northern' accented English voices. In fact I felt short changed that it's an animation at all when these stories, if they are to be made into cinematic film, need to have that epic, fantastical and wondrous feel that came with the original trilogy. Besides, this story of a civil war involving rival factions of the Horse Lords of Rohan is a minor, insignificant one and the film relies on snippets and scenes recreating from the original trilogy just to ground it in the LOTR world at all. A disappointment.