Born of Hope Released

[priell3]

Watch it now. You won't be disappointed.

http://www.bornofhope.com/Welcome.html

[WonderBroad]

I certainly wasn't! It's wonderful.

[Purz]

Very satisfying, super well done for a fan film. Quality music, writing, acting, costumes, and scenery.

Not to sound disrespectful, because I know it was also just a fan film, but I thought this was MUCH better than The Hunt For Gollum. I highly recommend you all give it a watch.

[Boromir ROCKS]

I was very dissapointed..

[priell3]

I was very dissapointed..

Why?

[gentrygary9]

I cant believe anyone would be critical of Born of Hope or Hunt for Gollum! Remember these were totally amateur but in my opinion worthy of praise for achieving what they did. How many of us could of done it? I doubt very few and I am grateful for what they did and honestly enjoyed it.

[Lysanor]

Indeed

What more could one expect from an amateur film? It just goes to show that you can never please everyone.

I loved it.

[Entmooting]

@(Lysanor and gentrygary9)

There are a number of reasons why these productions can, even should, be criticised, and I will give two.

Firstly, they are both incredibly derivative of the Peter Jackson productions, both style and content. There is a large body of people who are not enamoured with Peter's work, and to have it as some default setting is not desirable.

Independent producers should be creating their own, independent interpretation of Tolien's work, not Jackson's.

Secondly, the films are mind-numbingly boring, which is a miracle in itself, considering the source material. In fact, I'm falling asleep remembering them zzzzzz

[WonderBroad]

@Lysanor and @gentrygary9

I agree with you guys. These are amateur filmmakers hoping to become full-time filmmakers, and what they did with a lot of imagination, and little in the way of funding, is nothing short of amazing.

@Entmooting, you said:

>>Firstly, they are both incredibly derivative of the Peter Jackson productions, both style and content. There is a large body of people who are not enamoured with Peter's work, and to have it as some default setting is not desirable.

I am not enamored of PJ's visual style, either, and his work is not the Middle-earth I carry in my imagination, having read the books decades before the films came out. However, in defense, at least, of the director of Born of Hope, she has explicitly stated that she wanted her film to look like PJ's imagery, that she wanted it to fit in as seamlessly as possible with the movies, visually speaking. She achieved that.

>>Independent producers should be creating their own, independent interpretation of Tolien's work, not Jackson's.

While I personally agree with your statement, there's nothing wrong with emulating Jackson, if that's what independent fan filmmakers want to do.

>>Secondly, the films are mind-numbingly boring, which is a miracle in itself, considering the source material. In fact, I'm falling asleep remembering them zzzzzz

That's an opinion of these films, and you are more than entitled to it, but I wholeheartedly disagree. I didn't find them boring at all, and it's because I prefer character work in a film story to an endless barrage of special effects and way-too-drawn-out action sequences.

To each his own, I suppose. I still think, for fan work, both of these films are incredible achievements.

The London Independent Film Festival seems to think so, too. In the category of "Micro-budget feature," they just presented Born of Hope with the "Best Film" award. In my opinion, very well deserved!

[Mithfânion]

Hmm, I agree with the idea that both this film and Hunt for Gollum seem very much based on Jackson's filmn version of Tolkien's books rather than their own interpretation. However, I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.

On the one hand it would be interesting to see a different sort of look to the film; on the other hand, it does look very nice and it's not like we've had that many films of this sort, we take what we can get.

I'll check this one out and see how it compares to Hunt for Gollum ( which was quite good I thought, but you should obviously not compare it to 3 hour blockbuster epics).

[priell3]

I liked Born of Hope much more than THFG. My wife loved it and she is not really a fan of Middle-earth saying it was one of the best movies she's seen.

For those of you that enjoyed the film and the music, the complete BofH soundtrack is available here:
http://www.bornofhope.com/Soundtrack.html

[MithLuin]

Just rewatched this again today. Great stuff! I'd been excited for it ever since I met Kate at the Gathering of the Fellowship in Toronto in 2006.

[Cillendor]

I liked Born of Hope much more than THFG. My wife loved it and she is not really a fan of Middle-earth saying it was one of the best movies she's seen.

I agree. I do not mean to insult the creators of The Hunt for Gollum, but I think they took on too large of a task. It is impossible to create a really good fan film with characters from the actual movies played by different actors. It just doesn't work right. The actors played their parts really well, though. My real area of criticism is that (to my knowledge) I don't remember ever seeing Gollum except at a far distance; otherwise he was in that sack the entire movie. I just didn't like it very much.

Born of Hope, on the other hand, was spectacular. My only complaint with it is that the Orc makeup didn't cover their necks, only their faces. I don't think it would have been that much harder to make-up their necks too. But everything else in that movie was superb. The next time I have a Lord of the Rings marathon, I want to watch that one first.