Just saw it

that's great to hear!

I saw it Wednesday evening and thought it was on the whole a very enjoyable movie. I expected to not find much in it to enjoy but overall I was very pleased. As always with these sorts of things I left Tolkien at the door and went in with no expectations.

onthetrail wrote:

I saw it Wednesday evening and thought it was on the whole a very enjoyable movie. I expected to not find much in it to enjoy but overall I was very pleased. As always with these sorts of things I left Tolkien at the door and went in with no expectations.

Waiting for the small screen for this unless it ends up at my local independent cinema. I think I'll be more forgiving of the animation on a TV (or smaller screen). I definitely feel the lack of publicity for the movie and limited distribution does point to this having mostly been made to satisfy rights retention for New Line.

The late Stu wrote:

onthetrail wrote:

I saw it Wednesday evening and thought it was on the whole a very enjoyable movie. I expected to not find much in it to enjoy but overall I was very pleased. As always with these sorts of things I left Tolkien at the door and went in with no expectations.

Waiting for the small screen for this unless it ends up at my local independent cinema. I think I'll be more forgiving of the animation on a TV (or smaller screen). I definitely feel the lack of publicity for the movie and limited distribution does point to this having mostly been made to satisfy rights retention for New Line.

I don't think you'll lose much from the shift to a smaller screen. Daylight scenes are quite rough to be fair. As I said I enjoyed it, though I don't believe it really was a movie which needed to be on the big screen at this time. Especially coming up against other movies which are far more interesting visually.

Daughter #1 and daughter #3 took me to see it. Struggled to stay awake the last 30 minutes....boring movie with little to say of any interest beyond action and more action. The animation was reasonably well done in the 'anime expression' and there were a couple of really nice visual nods to the Bakshi adaptation.

Watched it on the small screen over a couple of sittings. The animation wasn't too bad on the 55" TV (basic animated TV-show level stuff, I guess). I can see how it wouldn't be suited for a Cinema screen (or possibly even a decently large TV). I didn't find the story very compelling. Unfortunately, just because a few paragraphs of source-material/back-story exists for the purposes of world-building in a larger story (i.e. LotR), doesn't mean it makes for particularly enthralling storytelling when expanded out (tbh, this goes for some of the things that Tolkien himself expanded on -- yeah, I'm a philistine...).

Definitely not garbage like RoP - more something to watch on a rainy day when you really have nothing better to do and can watch it for free. If I had to pick up some animation to watch, I would pick Tron Uprising over this every time (loved that show! -- Damn you Disney for killing it after one season).

northman wrote:

Daughter #1 and daughter #3 took me to see it. Struggled to stay awake the last 30 minutes....boring movie with little to say of any interest beyond action and more action. The animation was reasonably well done in the 'anime expression' and there were a couple of really nice visual nods to the Bakshi adaptation.

I enjoyed it at the cinema, but when I watched it again I found little to get excited about. I still maintain that it was enjoyable enough, but I found it very shallow.

On your mention of Bakshi, I enjoyed the night time scenes, especially the storm and snow effects, those reminded me of the Bakshi film and I enjoyed that. For the timescale that the makers put it together, I thought that they did well, but overall it lacks depth.

If I had to give it a rating, I would say 3/5 is fair. It wasn't terrible, but has no teeth on repeated viewings.

onthetrail wrote:

northman wrote:

Daughter #1 and daughter #3 took me to see it. Struggled to stay awake the last 30 minutes....boring movie with little to say of any interest beyond action and more action. The animation was reasonably well done in the 'anime expression' and there were a couple of really nice visual nods to the Bakshi adaptation.

I enjoyed it at the cinema, but when I watched it again I found little to get excited about. I still maintain that it was enjoyable enough, but I found it very shallow.

On your mention of Bakshi, I enjoyed the night time scenes, especially the storm and snow effects, those reminded me of the Bakshi film and I enjoyed that. For the timescale that the makers put it together, I thought that they did well, but overall it lacks depth.

If I had to give it a rating, I would say 3/5 is fair. It wasn't terrible, but has no teeth on repeated viewings.

It definitely isn't terrible - and I think anyone who says it is is probably being hyperbolic for clicks (i.e. Nerdrotic, et. all). But definitely not a repeat viewer for me. It is very stylistically choppy. The animation style feels like it keeps changing between shots like a movie that wasn't really finished (almost like the scenes were contracted out to different teams and then no work was done to harmonise things in a final edit -- or weed out material that was glaringly different). Maybe I just don't have enough Anime exposure though (at least not recent stuff - Akira was the best and I see no reason to move on!!!). I still found much to enjoy visually, just not especially "cinematic".

I found the film quite boring, which I hate to admit. I really wanted to love this film and I am a huge anime fan too, but the story felt like butter scraped over too much bread. I was at the Annecy Animation Festival in 2023 when the first look was revealed (my tweets were widely shared at the time), and I had high hopes for it then.

There were just too many parts of the story that were never developed, for example the film never explains why Helm was too proud to call for aid from Gondor, or why Lord Wolf mentions at the end of the film that he thought Hera was always his doom, or why Lord Thorne betrayed Helm.

For context: I have worked in the VFX and animation industry for 27 years and am a Creative Director/VFX Supervisor. Also personally I have made three animated short films that have played in 150 film festivals and won a number of awards. So I think I can speak with some authority when I say that I too found the quality of the animation inconsistent throughout the film, and judging by the credits, there appears to have been at least 10 different studios working on it. It was also at least 30 minutes too long. Better to reduce the length and improve the quality of the remainder. I found the camera work on the 3D shots to have too much movement and not feel natural enough.

One particular annoyance for me was Hera's colour choice for her pant suit. During the night time shots, because her suit was a similar colour as her skin, it made her look like she is wearing only some skimpy bondage underwear as only the dark straps stood out clearly.

I may write another reply with many of the other story problems I saw, or I may just move on and let it all be.