The best JRR Tolkien adaptations tend to resemble long walks in miserable weather. (To be clear, this is a good thing.) But this weird yet watchable animated foray into Middle-earth history – fast-tracked so that New Line Cinema could hang onto the film rights to Tolkien’s work – feels more like ice skating on a well-tended rink.

It has been almost a quarter of a century since Peter Jackson brought J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy to the big screen. The world of Middle-earth was brilliantly brought to life with the journey of Bilbo Baggins.

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson explains how War of the Rohirrim delves into the lore of The Two Towers' iconic battle of Helm's Deep.

Amazon Prime since 2022 has been doing its own attempt to capture the magic of J.R.R. Tolkein’s wildly popular “Lord Of The Rings” universe with The Rings Of Power, setting it apart from Peter Jackson’s LOTR and Hobbit trilogies,

So you could say that Peter Jackson’s Rohirrim were associated with women taking up unexpected roles even before Miranda Otto’s cry of “ I am no man! ” in The Return of the King. Those legendary riders return triumphant in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,

The War of the Rohirrim is firm proof that this story can thrive in any form, especially when the result looks this good. Director Kenji Kamiyama’s animated foray with The War of the Rohirrim is a worthy continuation of Peter Jackson’s vision.

The film, set 183 years before the events of “The Hobbit,” is a return to Middle-earth that, despite some very earnest storytelling, never supplies much of an answer as to why, exactly, it exists.

CGMagazine learned about the processes of blending familiarity with The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim with director Kenji Kamiyama.