Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.At the heart of Middle-earth is a singular tale of a hobbit, a wizard, a perilous journey and an omnipotent ring. Since JRR Tolkien published the first instalment of The Lord of the Rings in 1954, its words have not changed. But in the 70 years since, the beloved story has been brought to life on stage and screen with results ranging from laughable to masterful. In December, The War of the Rohirrim will add to Middle-earth’s extensive catalogue. But for the first time, the approach will be anime.The new film will also be the first time a director from Asia has taken on an official Tolkien work. Directed by Kenji Kamiyama — and produced by Peter Jackson, de facto king of Middle-earth cinema — the film takes place 183 years before Frodo, Aragorn and the fellowship began their journey to Mordor. It tells the story, based on Tolkien’s appendices, of Helm Hammerhand — the eponym of Helm’s Deep, the mountainside fortress and setting of the final battle in The Two Towers — and his daughter, here given the name Héra.For most Lord of the Rings fans, Jackson’s turn-of-the-century trilogy is the pre-eminent adaptation. But lesser-known Lord of the Rings iterations, including from northern Europe, the Soviet Union and the US, have entertained viewers since the late 1960s, offering comparatively lo-fi imaginings of Middle-earth’s fantastical characters. The first live-action Tolkien adaptation was a two-episode film that aired in 1971 on Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Television. Sagan om Ringen superimposed actors (and a horse) on to painted backgrounds of The Shire and the Old Forest. Sam, Frodo’s sidekick, trots across the screen in a bright-orange jester’s collar and the “one ring” is the size of a doughnut. The adaptation wasn’t Earth-shattering, but still endures on YouTube. More consequential was Bo Hansson’s soundtrack to that film: a mix of organs and cosmic synth likened to early Pink Floyd which was renamed Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings in 1972 and reached the top 40 of the UK album chart.Lesser-known Lord of the Rings iterations, including from northern Europe, the Soviet Union and the US, have entertained viewers since the late 1960sIn 1991, months before the Soviet Union fell, Leningrad Television aired 114-minute two-parter Khraniteli. Made by theatre actors, the film was broadcast once before it seemingly disappeared. But in 2021, 5TV, the modern successor to Leningrad Television, uploaded it to YouTube, where it has since been viewed 2.6mn times. Georgiy Shtil, who played Bilbo, told Variety: “[Our film] has professional ballerinas, and a lot of songs and poems. The foreign movie doesn’t have that.” Finland’s 1993 Hobitit, meanwhile, features a trio of orcs who could have teleported from a Kiss concert and a Boromir who looks more samurai than Gondorian warrior.If there is an endearing authenticity to these live-action adaptations, there is something of a homecoming in the decision to return to animation. After all, it was Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated Lord of the Rings — the best-known and best-loved of all these early adaptations — that inspired Peter Jackson to pick up the books for the first time. Bakshi used a technique called rotoscoping, in which he shot live-action actors and had animators trace over each frame to create lifelike movement. In response to Jackson’s films, Bakshi has made clear that he felt slighted after not being consulted during their production and has called some of Jackson’s scenes “rip-offs”.Bakshi’s film is respected, but it wasn’t the first. A year earlier, Arthur Rankin Jr and Jules Bass directed an animated version of The Hobbit, featuring stiff movement and elves in unflattering green. And the first animated adaptation came almost a decade earlier in 1967. American producer William Snyder had acquired the rights to adapt Tolkien’s work in the early 1960s for around $15,000. The popularity of Lord of the Rings had exploded in the interim, but Snyder’s rights were about to expire. In order to hang on to them, he had to produce a “full-color motion picture version”.“The film was done purely so [Snyder] could then sell the rights back to Tolkien,” says Matt Graf, creator of the popular “Nerd of the Rings” YouTube channel. “And it shows.”Snyder hired animator Gene Deitch and asked him to create a 13-minute film in 30 days. (“I thought he had been smoking something wilder than his contraband Cuban cigars,” Deitch later wrote.) The slapped-together film fulfilled Snyder’s contractual obligation and he sold the rights back to Tolkien for $100,000, a hefty profit.In recent years, the franchise has released a feast of prequels and series built on copious appendices left by Tolkien. In October, Amazon’s Rings of Power concluded its second season to mixed reviews, and Warner Bros announced that other live-action films are in the works. But Kamiyama’s December debut will be the first animated LOTR film in nearly half a century. Kamiyama has an international catalogue of Tolkien storytelling behind him, with an animation style that has never been used. In that lack of precedent is a creative independence — perhaps the same feeling that early adaptors like Bakshi had all those decades ago.‘The War of the Rohirrim’ is in UK and US cinemas from December 13Find out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
