The Hero of Time is a fan-made film based on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. If your first assumption about a film like this is that you must be a fan of the Zelda games to enjoy/appreciate it, then you would be correct. But you must also be the type of viewer who has already had the bar set low from previous expectations. What I mean is that if you've never seen a movie that seems like it was put together by a bunch of art school students and drama class non-actors, you will think it's garbage.
With that being said, a TON of time and effort was clearly put into this thing. The special effects are good and the music is remarkable. George R. Powell spent over a year recording the 90+ min. score and it's truly amazing.
The locations used for filming present a surprisingly decent fantasy world setting for Hyrule albeit some nit-picky things like the inclusion of "Give us this day our daily bread" on the Church/Cathredral in almost every shot of the temple. But overall, the setting is very good.
The casting was a mixed bag and I'll get to the main problem in a little but first I'd like to award some praise to the guy who played Ganondorf. His facial structure was perfect for the part and his costuming (as well as the costumes for most of the other characters) were above average. Princess Zelda was pretty and not too shabby with the acting although some will/have disagreed on this. The tubby Asian guy as the Goron was just a terrible idea. As a matter of fact, this is one of quite a few things that really pull you out of the setting and into an art class screening of your friends who just made a movie. "LOL look at Harold, he's a big Goron with dirt on his face". The guy just doesn't care and it's obvious. They would have been better off just leaving the non human-like characters out of the movie.
Now to the biggest thing pulling the movie down.. Link! David Blane's acting is terrible. His lines are terrible. His hair looks stupid. And the fact that he is also the producer really makes it seem obvious that he gave himself the leading role when quite a few of his friends playing the other characters probably would have been better suited. He just overall sucks, and makes the movie seem like much less than what it should be. EVERYBODY I know who has seen this agrees that he is the worst thing about the movie and since he's the main character and the hero we all played as and came to love in the games, its a major blow to the film's reception and overall reputation. Not to mention that makeup!
Now for everything bad about this there is something surprisingly good and the overall plot and execution of the Ocarina of Time translation to live-action film is very admirable. More important to consider is the fact that so much went into this film and so little came out of it in the end, and I don't mean the movie itself. Not only was no money made, nobody really cared. This has been out for over a year and still has yet to receive 5 ratings on IMDb. Sure, the Zelda fan-sites reviewed it over the year's time, but even they were harshly critical. But the biggest kick in the teeth was from Nintendo themselves. They demanded that the film be taken off the internet completely despite the fact that is was being distributed for free and absolutely no profit was involved at all. I will have to admit that I lost quite a bit of respect for Nintendo because of this. Regardless, it's not hard to find if you look, and the people who really want to see it will probably find it if they search the internet good enough.
In the end, it's all about appreciation and while it's an easy target for (severe) criticism, the fact that it exists at all is one thing. But the fact that we got a genuine epic that is almost 2 hours long and sincerely dedicated to something Zelda fans have grown to love over the years makes this film something special that I suspect will draw more attention in time. Until then, it's another one of those "underground of underground" type things that makes it all the more cooler to those of us who know about it and think it's pretty damn awesome.
