Born of Hope

Overall Born of Hope is a good movie. It was character driven, accurate and enjoyable. You forget the budget is small once you get taken in by the tale. In no way is it a rip-off of of Jackson's trilogy because it is a historic story from the same land and people......Middle Earth; as well as written by the same visionary author.....J.R.R Tolkien. Since the film isn't plot driven it can seem as if it's not going to twist and climax; however, the story goes on for generations and this film is only an hour long......It does end well. I would like to see more films from the Tolkien books before I'm an old man and was quite pleased to find this one. Give it a try if you have some shred of imagination and don't get bogged down by a lack of shinny things.

This is a film made truly for die-hard Tolkien fans. While meticulously consistent with the story lines established by the author, fans solely of the film will likely be rather bored with it. This exceptionally well-crafted, fan-made, micro-budgeted film, while it takes great pains to share visual continuity with Jackson's films (and does so remarkably well, despite the tiny budget) is long on dialogue and short on action, creating a tone which is more consistent with Tolkien's "histories" (ie, The Children of Hurin, Lost Tales) than to his novels (The LOTR Trilogy, The Hobbit). If you fall into the former category of fans, you'll undoubtedly be pleased by its overall faithfulness to Tolkienian lore, the excellent casting, above-average acting, true-to-Jackson costuming and surprising cinematography and scoring. But if your only experience of The Lord Of The Rings is the films and you're not a fantasy reader, you'll probably think the Orcs look lame and be really bored by it.

Wow. This fan-made film was obviously made with love for the material and a passion that clearly shines through. There are many little details and moments that Tolkien fans will love (and made my heart soar once or twice). It's so nice to see that attention to the detail of Middle-earth's history. It is brilliant for the small budget that was available to the filmmakers, and it dovetails quite nicely with the Jackson movies. I must say that I enjoyed it even more than The Hunt for Gollum (which was also very good). This production had the benefit of not using characters established in the Jackson films, which makes everything much more believable in that universe. And it was much better than most of the drivel produced for television. Kudos to all involved in it! A real labor of love and a remarkable effort.

I was not expecting anything spectacular. How can you when it is only a fan-made independent film? But 'The Hunt for Gollum' was a lot better. Unlike the latter, 'Born of Hope' has an abysmally poor plot. While yes, the plot is at least in existence it does not really go anywhere, so you are not particularly interested in what is going to happen.

The acting was alright, even if it was hard to believe. The narrator was awful though. She ruined it for me.

The effects were good enough, and the costumes and the setting was commendable considering that the film was done on a shoe-string budget.

This is worth a watch, only if you're a fan of The Lord of the Rings. If not, you won't really enjoy it. Having said that, I am a fan and I was bored by it.

I think that considering it's a low-budget film made by without big-name backing it"s not bad at all. Most of the acting is what you'd expect from this sort of thing, with somewhat wooden performances. The fighting scenes are actually rather good, and manage to convey a higher number of combatants than there actually are, without using computer-generated imagery. The Troll is rather pathetic, but I won"t hold it against them...

All in all, I have one major complaint - Beth Aynsley. She can't bloody act, she is very far from being beautiful (and yes, she is supposed to be) and she is the main reason I gave this film 6 stars. I truly cannot comprehend why the director (who BTW acts much better than Aynsley, in addition to being the producer and the director) chose her for the part...