Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim makes elephants terrifying again

I thought I had a handle on oliphaunts. You know, the huge war elephants of The Lord of the Ringsas thrillingly seen in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy? Jackson’s productions brought the creatures to life with terrifying power and made them the centerpiece of one of the trilogy’s most talked about action moments.

I thought I had seen it all when it came to the big tusked battle beasts. Another elephant in the fray? Ho-hum. But The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim proved me wrong. The new animated film, directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Blade Runner: Black Lotus), increases the fear factor for the classic monsters by lowering the stakes.

The first glimpse of an oliphaunt we get in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings is a brief glimpse The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Sam and Frodo see a couple marching in the distance with one Haradrim armyand Sam reacts in surprise. In Tolkien’s own lore, set in the book scene in which this movie scene is set, the oliphaunt is a mythical creature from hobbit nursery rhymes.

But those oliphaunts are really just a taster for Jackson The return of the kingwhere King Théoden and Rohan’s cavalry face a line of attack. Théoden’s men (OK, mostly men) have just beaten back the horde of orcs. But when the beasts arrive, with troops of archers at their backs, their overwhelming presence just as quickly puts the forces of Rohan in the background.

Oliphaunts’ tusks, tied with barbed wire, take out multiple horses with each swing, while their feet trample any remaining horses unharmed. They catch enemy arrows without flinching, until their legs and bellies resemble pincushions, while the archers perched on their enormous saddles retaliate with deadly skill. Even if Rohan’s archers manage to capture a Haradrim soldier riding an oliphaunt, their own warriors may be killed by the falling bodies of their enemies.

It feels like it would take half of Rohan’s army to fall An elephant. Then the enormous corpse becomes the setting for Théoden’s tragic fall and Éowyn’s iconic battle against the Witch King.

But then Legolas shows up and kills one single-handedlywith a single three-arrow shot to the back of the head.

I don’t hate this scene; I look back on it with great pleasure. But it really undermines the threat of the oliphaunt. Legolas slides past the falling trunk like he’s racking up a combo in a Tony Hawk game, and Gimli provides the comical sting: “That still only counts as one!” And it’s certainly the most iconic Oliphaunt moment from Jackson’s trilogy, if only because of the arguing about whether his performance was cool or stupid remains perennially popular among fans.

That’s why I was approached The War of the Rohirrim don’t expect much from his oliphaunts: The return of the king sucked the fear out of them. But The War of the Rohirrim wastes absolutely no time putting it back.

(Ed. remark: The rest of this piece contains some early spoilers for The War of the Rohirrim.)

The film’s first sign that something is truly rotten in the state of Rohan is when our hero Héra (Gaia Wise) takes a leisurely ride with two of her servants: her middle-aged lady-in-waiting Olwyn, and a kind of royal page named Lief . Olwyn and Lief are, at least as far as we know, not experienced warriors, so Héra’s cousin and sidekick Fréaláf tags along, as nominal personal protection for Rohan’s already quite skilled warrior princess.

And that’s when they encounter an oliphaunt. But not alone each oliphaunt: a rabid, foaming at the mouth, covered in open sores, with no attendant in sight.

And with a shock, even I became jaded Rings fan brain turned on. How would this confrontation end? There were no gravity-defying elf warriors around. No army, no shelter and no place to flee to. Two unsuspecting warriors on horseback trying to protect two non-combatants an elephant with rabies? I won’t reveal how it ends, but it gets even wilder from there.

Narratively, the real purpose of the scene is to let the audience know that something is wrong in Rohan, and to put Héra in a certain situation. There are a number of ways the writing team can work War of the Rohirrim could have accomplished that without an oliphaunt. But by turning the film’s first major action setpiece into an oliphaunt action/chase sequence, writer Philippa Boyens and her co-writers made plans for when oliphaunts return later, in their usual martial mode.

HiHéra’s early encounter with the rogue Oliphaunt says: just think how scary these things would be if you didn’t have a wizard or elf around to handle them for you. When the beasts appear as part of an attacking army, Rohirrim viewers are ready to see them as the true threat they pose to Rohan’s mounted soldiers and their isolated wooden palisades: towering, nearly indestructible siege weapons that can run as fast as a horse.

But with only one scene in it The War of the Rohirrim – in the film’s first action scene! — Boyens and her co-writers use Middle-earth’s largest monster to draw viewers into the smaller scope of their film. That’s a lesson many creators could learn in our age of squeezing every last drop out of intellectual property licenses with endless prequels and spinoffs. There is adventure in Middle-earth even without wizards and rings and gods and big, flashy magic. Sometimes all you need for excitement is a change in scale.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is now in theaters.