You won’t succeed… unless you’ve watched “The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim”, of course. This article contains Major spoilers.

The world of Middle-earth is expanding. “Rings of Power” gave us one of the greatest tragedies in legend with the fall of Celebrimbor and the creation of the Nine Rings of Powerand there is also the upcoming film “Hunt for Gollum” waiting to fill in the unnecessary gaps in the story.

This is what makes “War of the Rohirrim” so exciting. It is the first Middle-earth animated project since Rankin/Bass’s “The Return of the King” in 1980. The film is also technically a prequel, like “Rings of Power”, but rather than serving as an explanation to a big event, filled with cameos and references, this is a standalone film about a relatively important but non-monumental chapter in Rohan’s history. Indeed, the biggest question the film answers is simply “Why do people call Hornburg “Helm’s Deep?” » » and not much else. Sure, it’s an answerable question, but it seems different from, say, “Rings of Power”‘s obsession with spending way too much time making the audience guess how Gandalf got his name.

This is what makes “War of the Rohirrim” special: even if you have little knowledge of Peter Jackson’s trilogies, you can enjoy it as an animated fantasy epic about a princess coming to terms with her role as a warrior and leader in the middle of a war. with the hill tribes. The movie has everything you’d expect from a “Lord of the Rings” movie: fantastical creatures, epic speeches, last-minute movies. ex machina cavalry arriving at sunset to save the daydurable seats with awesome action, and yes, even rings.

While incessant callbacks to lines of dialogue from Peter Jackson’s trilogy weigh the film down, “War of the Rohirrim” doesn’t really feature any cameos or guest appearances (other than a single appearance of Saruman by Christopher Lee this makes sense in the context of the film). Except there are two cameos from beloved hobbit actors that you might have missed if you were too worried thinking about the second breakfast.

That’s right, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan have surprising roles and you will miss them in the movie!

Boyd and Monaghan have worked together a lot since the release of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy: make a very fun podcastgoing to conventions together and hosting an upcoming travel show.

Cameos occur in the second half of the film as the people of Rohan take refuge in the Hornburg, when Hera encounters two orcs – Shank (Boyd) and Wrot (Monaghan) – in the snow looting corpses. Turns out Treebeard was right, and they were little orcs all along.

This is the kind of silly yet cool Easter egg that is possible in animation. Rather than, say, bringing Legolas back for no reason in “The Hobbit,” this cameo pays homage to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy by bringing back two beloved actors who have continued to portray that cast over the past two decades . Additionally, rather than forcing them to reprise their roles even if it makes no sense, or even having them play other roles with heavy makeup that would break the immersion and be distracting, have them simply voice two small roles is discreet. To the layman, these orcs are just two additional characters voiced by actors not everyone will recognize.

Now, having two little orcs appear in “War of the Rohirrim” is all well and good, but it’s what they do near the Hornburg that is fascinating and as funny as hell. You see, Wrot is seen collecting rings from dead hill tribe members and dropping them on an already full sack. “What does Mordor want with rings?” » asks Wrot.

This has absolutely hilarious implications. In the present day, approximately 200 years before the War of the Ring, Gollum has had the ring for centuries. Meanwhile, Sauron has spent the last thousand years rebuilding his strength as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur. All he’s missing is his ring, so of course he’d send his forces looking for it.

Except it’s one thing to send one’s armies and the Nine in search of a Hobbit, killing everyone they encounter, and a whole other thing to send random orcs scattering across Middle-earth. with the sole command to collect as many golden rings as possible. maybe they can. It is very unlikely that they have a description of what the One Ring looks like, as Sauron would not want an orc to know what he has and wear it. So orcs simply collect every trinket they find and put them in bags, without worrying about quality, material, or style.

How many hundreds of thousands of orcs are there across the lands, stealing random rings from an honest innkeeper in Bree, from a petty lord in Eregion, or maybe even from a random child with a fake ring made from a piece of string? There must be a complete shortage of rings across Middle Earth, with people accidentally discovering that their jewelry collections have been inexplicably stolen and no one knows why.

And then, what happens to all those rings? There must be millions and millions of rings arriving in massive carts into Mordor, along with another legion of orcs (who, remember, are also people) tasked only with the massive effort of sorting each ring, separating them into categories (everyone knows Mordor orcs are good at organization), then testing each ring to find the right one before bringing them to the Dark Lord .

Or, maybe (and this is much funnier), Sauron won’t allow them to test the rings, so he himself will have to put each ring on his finger (if he has one) to see if it is the right one. the right one – every second of every day for decades, then centuries at a time. It’s not easy being a former disciple of Aulë.