[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Time to resurrect this thread once again!

I had a dream about the upcoming War of the Rohirrim film. It was aired on TV and myself, Lommy, and several other 'Downers were watching it (I at least recall Boro and Oddwen).

First thing, it actually was not anime, it was live-action, even though somewhat strange. Somebody explained that the anime was scheduled to come in a year, but this was a sort of first-stage version of it, that they first did it with live actors and then they will just "draw over" them and make the anime. When asked why would the film company do that, the conclusion was that likely they wanted to release as much material as possible while they had the rights to Tolkien's works.

The plot was rather unexpected. It actually took place in the aftermath of Helm Hammerhand's death. The main protagonist was some Hobbit (presumably an adventurous Took) who had travelled to Rohan and stumbled upon Helm Hammerhand's daughter when she was bathing in a small pond in the middle of a forest (Fangorn?).

Now, the problem was that there apparently existed a law in Rohan that if somebody sees the princess naked, he should be sentenced to death. That was what the princess demanded once she realised that the Hobbit had seen her.

Dream logic insert: the Hobbit in question was at the same time sort of Frodo/Merry, and he was played by Daniel Radcliffe. The princess was sort of Éowyn and was played by Miranda Otto, but clearly a younger version of herself (she looked like she was about 16).

This is to also explain what happened next: Éomer appeared and tried to both placate his sister and also to explain to the Hobbit that this was just how their law worked and told him to simply cooperate. He was very much trying to mediate, but maintained that the law had to be respected. He showed the Hobbit some old parchment where the law was recorded.

The Hobbit read, in what I understood was to be some old Anglo-Saxon language, something that sounded like: "...arfhaed matté wytha."

"Does it mean you are going to boil me alive in hot tea-water?" the Hobbit asked, clearly not having understood a single word.
"Why would you think that?" Éomer asked, confused.
"Well, here it says 'maté'."

Then Éomer and Théoden (who had also appeared from somewhere) proceeded to explain that the only way for the Hobbit to save his life was to fulfil three tasks prescribed by the law. If he manages to do them faster than the Princess, he shall be exonerated.

I don't remember all of the tasks. The second one was a ploughing contest. There was a small plot of land (maybe 10x10 m), the Hobbit and the Princess were each given a plough and using them, they were supposed to unearth some root vegetables that grew there. Frodo/Daniel Radcliffe (I was very conscious of him looking like that at that point) did not seem to be very lucky, the Princess had found maybe four vegetables already while he found none. I thought that this was stupid because clearly the main hero had to survive, so they could not make him lose, but I saw no way he could win. Then he suddenly unearthed a large cluster of the root vegetables at once.

Then the dream shifted for the last time. We were watching it from the outside on some small TV, and the film turned into a trailer of sorts. There was Saruman who looked exactly like Gandalf, and we concluded that this was because in times of old, when he was still 'good', he did look like Gandalf, or at least close enough that people mixed them up.

Then there were several shots of Hobbits as adventurers. Very non-canon. One shot included a Hobbit with tiny fairy-wings, wielding two daggers, twirling them epically in mid-flight and then stabbing them into the back of some tiny fairy dragon that flew ahead of him. We understood that the wings was one of the ways the Hobbit was going to "level up", a special power he was going to acquire.

When I asked about the fairy dragons and the overall fairy-theme, it was explained to me that the owners of the license also owned the license to other fantasy and sci-fi franchises, and that they were going to introduce subtle crossover elements as they were going to place Middle-Earth into the same multiverse as several other fantasy series, but also Transformers, Star Trek and Magic: The Gathering. One of the last things I recall from the trailer was a dramatic view of a massive Transformer towering against the dark sky filled with lightnings, wielding Captain America's shield, and facing it, bravely, a bunch of tiny Hobbits alongside Chandra Nalaar.

The overall feeling I got from the dream was quite unsettling.