“Many lords and warriors, and many fair and valiant women, are named in the songs of Rohan that still remember the North.” -from ‘The House of Eorl’ in Appendix A in The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
This line taken from roughly five pages in the Appendices is basically where the writers of The War Of The Rohirrim derived Hera the central character and heroine and daughter of Helm Hammerhand, king of Rohan. She is unnamed in the source material and her caretaker the old Shieldmaiden Olwyn is fictional but is one of the important characters in the movie.
The Rohan source material is rich lore that does provide plenty of storylines worth telling which this film attempted to do. Personally I wish they would of included a nod to this gem:
“Frumgar, they say, was the name of the chieftain who led his people to Eothéod. Of his son, Fram, they tell that he slew Scatha, the great dragon of Ered Mithrin, and the land had peace from the long-worms afterwards. Thus Fram won great wealth, but was at feud with the Dwarves, who claimed the hoard of Scatha. Fram would not yield them a penny, and sent to them instead the teeth of Scatha made into a necklace, saying: "Jewels such as these you will not match in your treasuries, for they are hard to come by." Some say that the Dwarves slew Fram for this insult. There was no great love between Éothéod and the Dwarves.'”
That would of been epic, but nonetheless Appendix A does include much of the content points that the film writers expanded, rearranged or reimagined to create a woman led story-arch that isn’t in the actual LOTR lore.
As a GenXr raised on movies that had great female leads like Ellen Ripley and Noomi Rapace in the Alien franchise and Sarah Connor in Terminator movies, I have no qualms with a strong female lead at the helm. But in the last decade or so the girl boss angle nicknamed M-She-U in the superhero genre has become something that continues to grate and irritate instead of inspire me because it’s often a Trojan horse packed with angsty sociological and cultural machinations.
The War of the Rohirrim had about 5-10% of these triggering issues to me, but overall still had strong masculinity threads that didn’t feel like they were the anathemas of the current manhating screenwriters that seem to be in charge. The “girls-can-do-whatever-men-can-do” thing is a tired drum that continually gives us leaps in logic that make it hard to suspend reality even in these fantasy movies. WOTR had too many of these stretches for me, but it’s the way it must go these days.
I was left dissapointed by the film, though not at the level of the disemboweling I received at the hands of Amazon’s ‘The Rings of Power’ which might be why I am left unimpressed with WOTR, I was hoping to be sewn back up by a LOTR film that had such potential. I wasn’t healed.
Though the movie wasn’t bad, I was bored. There were a few moments that were interesting to me like the Mumakil and some well placed fists by Helm Hammerhand, but overall it wasn’t magical, memorable or moving to me like LOTR. Even The Hobbit movies had many parts that thrilled me and took me to a world I wanted to be even though they suffered with plenty of goofy over-the-top inventions.
Our family that saw WOTR together was predominantly positive with a few criticisms here and there, so it seems our group is reflecting the general audience reactions too.
Most of my other issues are covered in this review: 10 Reasons The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim's Reviews Are So Mixed: https://screenrant.com/lotr-war-of-the-rohirrim-reviews-mixed-reasons/
Basically, The War of the Rohirrim will sit next to or behind the Rankin/Bass animated films in my estimation, good to watch, but nothing like the LOTR films.