With “The Lord Of The Rings” trilogy completed, “The Hobbit” told and more prequel stories being told on Prime Video with “The Rings Of Power,” where does the ‘LOTR’ franchise go next? Well, right now, it’s in an anime direction with “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” which is in theaters now.
Presented by “Lord Of The Rings” producer and filmmaker Peter Jackson, this groundbreaking journey back to Middle-earth is told through the vision and eyes of legendary animation director Kenji Kamiyama (the “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” and “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex” TV series).
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Set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” tells the fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan played by Brian Cox (“Succession”).
But the film really tells the story of his daughter Héra (Gaia Wise, from “A Walk in the Woods”), who finds herself in an increasingly desperate situation when a sudden attack by a ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance, forces the House to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg. Eventually, she must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their total destruction.
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With ‘War of the Rohirrim’ in theaters now, we recently spoke to Philippa Boyens, known as one of the co-writers of all of Peter Jackson’s films and a central member of the current ‘Lord Of The Rings’ creative brain trust alongside Jackson and co-writer Fran Walsh.
‘War of the Rohirrim’ is based on a story she co-wrote, and Boyens also serves as one of the lead producers on the film. During our conversation, she spoke about this new anime feature, its potential future for sequels and additional stories, some details about “Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum,” and whether Viggo Mortensen will star and the entire franchise’s future. Our entire conversation below.
You’re the story, and you’re a producer on this, but who makes the decision that we’re doing this story, and we’re going to do it in anime, and we’re going to do it this way? How does that come together?
Actually, the format came first. So, we’d been talking about making an animated film around 2019; I think Warners came to Fran, Peter, and myself. Pete and Fran were definitely kind of interested in it. I was, to be completely honest, a little bit more skeptical because I thought I needed to know what form of animation to use. When they mentioned anime, this story actually popped into my head almost immediately, and I pitched it to Fran and Pete first. I said, “You know, I think there’s enough there.” And as it turned out, it felt like the right fit. Suddenly, you had the form and the story that would work within that form.
Is it fair to say that you, Peter, and Fran are, for lack of a better word, the ‘Lord of the Rings’ brain trust?
Yes, I would say, so I think. It’s just because we’ve got such a history with Middle-earth, and sometimes I don’t even know why something’s wrong or right, but it’s like we know it. I will go to Fran, “That doesn’t feel right,” and she’ll say, “No,” and we won’t necessarily know why, but it just doesn’t feel authentic to Professor Tolkien to go in a certain direction. We know some things for sure: even if you were potentially making a more commercial version of the story, Héra would have become the ruler. She would have been delivered into that place of power. But that would have been immediately inauthentic to the world of Professor Tolkien. So, it immediately tells you, what does she overcome? What does she win at the end of the story? She wins her freedom.
When I heard it, I was like, “Oh, that seems really natural.”
I think it’s the world of men. It doesn’t involve wizards, per se, so much. It doesn’t include the Rings of Power or Dark Lords. It literally shows you the strength of Professor Tolkien’s imagination and his storytelling, that a very human story exists within these tales.
I’m seeing this, and I’m like, okay, anime, it’s maybe going to be geared a little bit towards children, And then I see it, and I’m like, “Wow, this is pretty serious stuff. Like, this is a real, real drama.”
We didn’t pull back on the language. I have to say, Kenji Kamiyama didn’t want to do that. I think he’s got an instinct, and I suspect he’s right, that kids come to this anyway. And in fact, when I know that they’ve shown it to younger audiences, and they loved it. We did a screening with some animators in San Francisco, and somebody bought their young son, and he stayed behind, came up, and was so excited. And it just thrilled me to see that because I thought, “Wow, we just sparked his imagination with this piece of storytelling,” and he literally said, “I’m going to go and see it again.”
I’m always curious about the way franchises are going. And a lot of the franchises are for people my age. Do you guys think about how to engage the new generation, the next generation? Because I feel that sometimes that’s missing with some franchises.
100%. That’s why I didn’t want to write it. Literally, I know this sounds probably ridiculous, but it’s not that I felt too old. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have done it or I felt too old. It was more that I felt like it needed fresh minds. And to be honest with you, I was a bit stuck with the character of Hera, and it wasn’t until we bought in a young female screenwriter who went, “Yeah, you know, the problem is, she needs to be able to own her fear.” Young women don’t want to see stories about women who are girl bosses or like Xena Warrior Princess. You know, much as I love “Xena Warrior Princess,” by the way, but this is not that story. She immediately sensed that Hera needed to have no agency in the beginning of the story because that’s what she earns, and she needed to make mistakes. She needed to be allowed to be fearful and not know what to do, doubt herself, and understand.
When she says that line, “He’s not going to stop, he will not stop,” she understands his obsession with her and how lethal it is, maybe endangering everyone around her. Still, her answer to that is to use that against him, his obsession for her against him. I thought that was all about fresh minds coming to the storytelling. And that’s the best thing we could do—to bring Paris Paloma singing the end song. She’s fantastic. This brilliant young British singer was just like this injection of energy and a very different vibe from where we started in the ’90s.
There are obviously some great voices in this, and some people are a little bit more known than others. Were you guys picking people? Someone like Brian Cox is such a fantastic anchor; his character is so formidable, and he’s just a presence. But some of the other people, I was like, “I don’t know this voice or this person, but I want to know who this is.”
Yeah, we cast everybody. Absolutely. And we had the freedom to do that. We always cast our own movies, and I think we’ve earned that right because we’ve shown that we presumably know how to do that. But there was a wealth of talent out there for this. They’re all British. It’s a full-on British cast, almost exclusively British. And it was a great joy to work with all of them. And they all threw themselves into it. None of them approached it as, “Oh, I’m doing a radio play.” They’d all learned their lines. They’d gotten underneath the lines; they’d thought about the character. They asked precisely the same questions that any actor who would do a live performance of this character to film would ask. So, I love that about all of them.
There are a few Easter eggs in this, but they’re pretty minimal. They’re pretty small. Tell me about some of that stuff. Are you guys laying breadcrumbs for something else or something more, stories in between, or anything like that?
Yeah, I was actually asked what happened to Hera by a young teen who’d seen the film, and she was like, “What happens to Hera?” I was thinking, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s a good question. I think the breadcrumbs were a nod to the original trilogy fans. But it was also about filling out the edges of it. So we didn’t completely lose some of those magical threads, like wizards, for example. Orcs, for example. The world of Middle-earth was still there; it was, just like I said, around the edges.
Andy Serkis is working on a ‘Rings’ film. I’ve read that Aragorn would be a massive element of that if I can ask about that. Would you have you guys thinking about bringing Viggo back? Are you thinking about recasting?
Honestly, that will be up to Viggo collaboratively, and we are at a very early stage. I’ve spoken to Viggo, Andy [Serkis] has spoken to him, Peter [Jackson] has spoken to him, we’ve all spoken to each other, and honestly, I cannot imagine anyone else playing Aragorn, but it will be completely and entirely up to Viggo. I know Andy wants to work with him, but also, we don’t see this as, like, using A.I. [technology]; this is about digital make-up, and whether Viggo does it or not will entirely depend on how good the script is. And he doesn’t have a script yet. So, to be fair to Viggo, let’s see if we write a good enough role and he can find enough in it to know that it’s a performance he wants to take on. After that, it’ll be between Viggo and Andy to see how that is achieved. If he decides he doesn’t want to do it we would still want him to be heavily involved, like how do we hand this character off. But literally, that decision is several, several months away. He’s got to read the script first, and that’s exactly what I will be working on when I get out of this interview [laughs].
Knock on wood, then, because I would love to see that. However, that idea also sounds exciting in that it’s also filling another corner of time.
Yes, it’s deliberately the bridging film and the story we wanted to tell. It does center on Gollum/Smeagol, so it’s a little bit of an origin story going on, but when you delve into it, as you do with anything Professor Tolkien wrote, you see the layers and layers of story that’s underneath there and how interconnected they all are. It is a tricky story. Because of the fate of several of the characters we already know, you have to use that to your advantage as a storyteller. And actually, one of the scripts that I’m most proud of is ‘The Two Towers,’ which was a story that bridged. Yeah, we won all the Oscars for ‘Return of the King,’ but in terms of the craft of storywriting, ‘Two Towers’ was a more complex achievement,
Well, what are the things that you could explore? What are the other kinds of corners of this universe, or this, you know, age that you can explore?
There’s a lot of [possibilities], when you look at it, there’s a lot of things in there, actually,” she said. “One of the things this [‘War Of The Rohirrim’] story has shown us is that a stand-alone story works really successfully within the world of Middle-earth, and I would genuinely—because I’ve fallen in love with the form—love to see another anime. But that depends on the audiences out there, your audience, and fans of the original trilogy and that vast anime audience. I’m really interested to see what they think. So we’re in the audience’s hands. If there’s an appetite for it, we’ve got more stories. There are many stories left to be told, and some interesting ones. But my preference would be, after ‘Hunt For Gollum,’ would be to look at those stand-alone stories. And then, if we got really ambitious—some epic, particular stories could translate into that more traditional epic trilogy format that was the original ‘Lord Of The Rings,’ the War of the Rings story.
“The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim” is in theaters now via Warner Bros.
