War of the Rohirrim Features Billy Boyd & Dominic Monaghan Cameos

You won’t pass … unless you’ve seen The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, that is. This article contains major spoilers.

The world of Middle-earth is expanding. Rings of Power brought us one of the greatest tragedies in lore with the fall of Celebrimbor and the creation of the Nine Rings of Poweras well as the upcoming Hunt for Gollum movie waiting to fill in the unnecessary gaps in the story.

That’s what makes War of the Rohirrim so exciting. This is Middle Earth’s first animated project since Rankin/Bass’ 1980’s The Return of the King. The film is also technically a prequel, just like The Rings of Power, but it doesn’t serve as an explanation of a big event filled with cameos and references, but rather a standalone film about a relatively important but not monumental chapter in Rohan’s history. Really, the biggest question this movie answers is “Why do people call Hornburg Helm’s Deep?” and nothing more. It’s certainly a question that needs to be answered, but the feel is different from, say, The Rings of Power’s obsession with spending too much time keeping the audience guessing as to how Gandalf got his name.

That’s what makes War of the Rohirrim so special: even if you don’t know much about Peter Jackson’s trilogy, you can enjoy it as an animated fantasy epic about a princess embracing her role as a warrior and leader in the midst of war. with the mountain tribes. The movie has everything you would expect from a Lord of the Rings movie – fantastical creatures, epic speeches, last minute the ex machina cavalry arriving at sunset to save the daylong sieges with amazing action, and yes, even rings.

Although the constant callbacks to dialogue from Peter Jackson’s trilogy weigh down the film, War of the Rohirrim doesn’t really have any cameos or guest appearances (except the only appearance of Christopher Lee’s Saruman it actually makes sense in the context of the movie). Except there are two cameo appearances by beloved Hobbit actors that you might miss if you were too worried about your second breakfast.

That’s right, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan have surprise roles in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-them movie!

Boyd and Monaghan have worked together extensively since the release of The Lord of the Rings trilogy: make a very fun podcastgo to conventions together and organize a future travel show.

The cameo takes place in the second half of the film, when the people of Rohan take refuge in the Hornburg, when Hera encounters two orcs—Schenk (Boyd) and Wroth (Monaghan)—in snow rings looting corpses. Turns out Treebeard was right, and they were little orcs all along.

Here’s a silly but cool easter egg possible in animation. Instead of, say, bringing back Legolas for absolutely 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 represent the cast for the past two decades. Also, instead of making them reprise their roles despite it being pointless, or even making them play other roles with heavy make-up that breaks the immersion and distracts, just voice two small roles – it is invisible. For the common man, these orcs are two more characters voiced by actors whom not everyone recognizes.

The appearance of the two little orcs in War of the Rohirrim is fine, but what they do near the Hornburg is fascinating and funny. You see, Wrot collects rings from dead tribesmen from the mountains and drops them onto an already full sack. “Why Mordor the Rings?” Vrot asks.

This has absolutely hilarious consequences. At this point in time, roughly 200 years before the War of the Ring, Gollum has had the ring for centuries. Meanwhile, Sauron has spent the last thousand years or so building up his powers once again as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur. All he’s missing is his ring, so of course he’ll send his forces in search of it.

Except that it’s one thing to send his army and the Nine out to find the Hobbit, killing everything they come across, and quite another to send random orcs out into Middle-earth with only the command to collect as many golden rings as they possibly can. they can It’s highly unlikely that they have a description of what the one ring looks like because Sauron wouldn’t want an orc to know they had it and put it on. So the orcs simply collect all the valuables they find and put them in sacks without regard for quality, material or style.

How many hundreds of thousands of orcs across the land are stealing random rings from an honest innkeeper in Bree, a petty lord of Eregion, or maybe even some random kid with a pretend ring made out of a piece of string? There must be a total shortage of rings in Middle-earth, and people randomly learn that their jewelry collections have been inexplicably robbed and no one knows why.

And then what happens to all those rings? There must be millions and millions of rings coming in huge carts to Mordor, with another legion of orcs (who, remember, are also people) is only tasked with the enormous job of sorting through each ring, categorizing them (everyone knows the orcs of Mordor are great at organization), and then testing each ring to find the One before bringing them to the Dark Lord.

Or maybe (and this is much, much funnier) Sauron won’t let them test the rings, so he himself has to put each ring on his own finger (if it even has one) to make sure it’s right – every second of every day for decades , and then centuries. It is not easy to be a former student of Aula.