I was going to wax a little wroth over the concept art (found here) for THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM, but then I looked up Helm Hammerhand. It is in fact correct that Helm faced a combined force of Dunlendings, Umbar Corsairs, and Easterlings, which would make the Mumakil there at least defensible. And since this show is going to be anime, I can’t really fault them for putting a war elephant in the concept art.
I should also note that I shouldn’t be so cranky about sticking to the text. For starters, there isn’t much text to stick to. And, for that matter, they just demonstrated that they did their homework. And, lastly: war elephants. I should not get in the way of war elephants*. Particularly if there’s a viable path for them being there anyway.
Moe Lane
*This is, I feel, valuable life advice generally.
It appears these guys have the good sense to bring on many of Peter Jackson’s people and cling to those movies’ universe.
It might not suck.
Since when is anime NOT Japanese?
(I cut foreign cultures slack when they don’t grok our legends and myths. But Hollywood is only a foreign culture by choice.)
It’s going to be a real anime film, directed by a real Japanese anime director, using (AFAICT) multiple studios coordinated by Sola Entertainment, a “production management” company for anime. (This sort of arrangement may seem wacky, but is apparently not unusual for anime.) So far, I feel quite positive about the film (but quite negative about Amazon’s Rings of Power series).