Eragon [Blu-ray]Eragon [Blu-ray]
In his homeland of Alagaesia, a farm boy happens upon a dragon’s egg — a discovery that leads him on a predestined journey where he realized he’s the one person who can defend his home against an evil king. While it owes much of its appeal and appearance to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Eragon can stand on its own as an enjoyable fantasy for younger viewers. Faithfully adapted from the bestselling novel by teenage author Christopher Paolini, this boy-and-his-dragon tale offers clean, fast-paced family entertainment without compromising the darker qualities of Paolini’s novel (the first in what is known as the “Inheritance” trilogy). The plot centers on 17-year-old peasant farmboy Eragon (played by appealing newcomer Ed Speleers) who discovers a mysterious blue object that turns out to be an egg that eventually hatches to reveal Saphira, a blue-scaled dragon that quickly grows to full-size. According to prophecy, Eragon is destined to be a dragon-rider like those who once protected a benevolent kingdom, thus reviving an ancient conflict against the army of King Galbatorix (John Malkovich), a former dragon rider who turned to evil, now in alliance with a! dark-magic “Shade” sorcerer named Durza (Robert Carlyle). While the movie serves up familiar fantasy elements and offers little if anything new to fans of the genre (or anyone who’s read the books of Anne McCaffrey and Ursula K. Le Guin), it’s visually impressive (especially the dragon scenes, with Rachel Weisz providing the telepathic “voice” of Saphira) and full of timeless wisdom, much of it delivered by Eragon’s heroic mentor Brom (Jeremy Irons), himself a former dragon rider with memories of past battles and hope for Eragon’s future. Add a fair warrior-maiden named Arya (Sienna Guillory) and you’ve got all the ingredients for a worthwhile (if not particularly original) fantasy that points directly to a sequel. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is up to individual viewers to decide. –Jeff Shannon Eragon Extras
Beyond Eragon
Stills from Eragon
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Christopher Paolini talks to us about his book and film inspirations and makes recommendations for fans of Eragon, click here to view the complete list.
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(out of 522 reviews)
Review by S. Ulrich for Eragon [Blu-ray]
Rating:
Honestly, I wanted to cry as I sat there in the theater watching this movie. What a waste of ten bucks. If you have read the books, and excitedly waited out the release of the movie, you are undoubtably as disappointed as I am. The books had such scope, like a Lord of the Rings junior. There was no way to get everything important shoved into an hour and a half movie. Why not go ahead and make a 2 and a half hour epic? I’d have watched it!!
Here is what you’ll miss in the movie:
-The relationship between Brom and Eragon is very underdeveloped, so much so that when Brom dies, you’re like, whoopdeedoo.
-Saphira ages from a tiny dragon into just about full grown in one ridiculous moment.
-Eragon’s journey with Murtagh is like, 5 seconds long. No Hadrac desert, no bonding. Again, you could care less about Murtagh in the movie.
-The Dwarven kingdom was UNBELIEVABLY disappointing. If you read the book, you probably had quite a vision workded up in your head, with the Star Rose and all. The movie pretty much annihilates all that. And the dwarves themselves are stupid-looking. You can’t slap some armor on a guy with a beard and call them a dwarf.
-Arya is an ELF. Did they really go over on the budget that they couldn’t even give her POINTED EARS???
-The battle between Eragon and the Shade is like nothing. I was so bored.
Over all, this movie takes a perfectly paced book and puts it into hyperdrive, taking all the wonder and fun right out of it. You’ll sit down to watch this movie and all you’ll be able to do is watch in horror as they slaughter it. It is a terrible shame. Had they had a larger CGI budget, blatantly copied some LOTR stuff, and had Mr. Paolini perhaps overseen the novel-to-script process, well, maybe he did, but they just shoved some more money at him and he said, “Whatever, I’m alright with you destroying my cool book. Go for it.”
Now, if I were to choose one or two things from the movie that didn’t totally and completely suck, I will say this:
Saphira, for the amount of CGI that was spent on her, is perfect. She was totally real. The voice of Rachel Weisz is perfect as well. Eragon, Edward Speelers, he was great too. Too bad he had to over-act in order to compensate for the crappy, crappy dialogue and lack of character development.
If they happen to make a sequel, Lord help us. The second book is even more complex and wide-scoped than the first. It will not translate well based on it’s predecessor. I say they scrap the first movie, and make it all over, with a bigger budget, and the fans of the book get all editing priveledges. Then we’d have our Eragon come to life, rather than this horrible, mess of a mutilated movie!!
Review by G. M. Handlon for Eragon [Blu-ray]
Rating:
I am the only member of my family who didn’t read the books. That said, we all saw Eragon the movie together. It was noted beforehand that I alone had no expectations. The rest of this review is a spoiler, so proceed at your own risk.
I’m sorry to report that none of us enjoyed the movie. It was all about the animation. The story was recycled. The dialogue was inane. They repeated one line at least three times, and I’m told it was never in the books…”One part brave, three parts fool.”
This project had the depth and imagination of Ralph Bakshi’s “Lord of the Rings”, meaning not much. My family (the Eragon fans) were intensely disappointed, outraged and offended. They said it was like taking a novel and condensing it to a four-frame comic strip. I wonder what the author, Christopher Paolini thought? There is mention of elves and dwarves, but you never see them…or so I thought. I was told afterward that the female lead character, Arya, was an elf. The movie never revealed that. At the end, I thought she was Minnehaha the Indian princess.
Personally, I did not hate Eragon as much as the others in my family, but I would not recommend it. I thought that as presented, this movie was a bold-faced rip-off of Star Wars; the king is a dragon-rider who turned against his brethren to gain ultimate power…there is a secret encampment of rebels, waiting for a leader to appear…that leader has no idea he is the chosen, or why…the hero’s adoptive family is slain in the search for him by the evil king…the hero’s mentor is slain by the evil king’s more evil minion. Sound familiar? On and on it goes, a regurgitation of the same old thing. Even the dragons are reminiscent of the worms in Dragonheart and Dragonslayer, nothing innovative.
The computer graphics are very good, but that’s about all you’ll get in this offering. Given that, even the best of the CGs will remind you of Lord Of The Rings, but not as good.
Review by Gryphon Osiris for Eragon [Blu-ray]
Rating:
I admit that I considered the Eragon books to be entertaining, albeit a bit derivative. They had a certain charm to them about a young lad thrust into events far larger than he could comprehend. However I was disappointed to hear that when Christopher Paolini agreed to let his books become movies he gave up any chance of vetoing any changes that the studio may make.
The result was that the script writers took the rough outline of Star Wars: A New Hope, changed a few names here and there, and titled it Eragon. The end result was a storyline that felt rushed, a plot that wasn’t even developed, sets and make-up that look like they hired the cheapest provider, a script that sounded like a 7th grader’s creative writing project, and a painfully small number of extras needed for scenes that required more than 10 people on set.
The end result was a film that was painful to see, and felt like a total waste of time. My fiancee, who is an Eragon devotee, felt that they had butchered the whole story just so they could churn it out to make a quick buck from the popularity of the series.
If you want to experiance Eragon, read the book, it’s much more involved and doesn’t look like a professional script butcherer has mutilated it.
Frankly, this film looks like a Uwe Boll project with a better budget.
Review by E. A Solinas for Eragon [Blu-ray]
Rating:
“Eragon” wants to be “Lord of the Rings.” It really, really wants to be. In a pinch, it’ll settle for “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” with a dash of Harry Potter.
But those hoping for a spectacular PG-rated epic shouldn’t hold their breaths, because the adaptation of Christopher Paolini’s bestseller is a massive bellyflop. The direction is stilted and plodding, the acting is on par with tree stumps, and the whole thing is uninspired — it never moves beyond “quick cash-in.”
A young woman is being chased through the woods by a band of evil soldiers, trying to recapture a bright blue stone she stole from evil King Galbatorix (John Malkovich), but she magics it away. It’s found in the woods by a young farm boy, Eragon (Edward Speleers), who unsuccessfully tries to trade it for food. But the stone turns out to be a dragon’s egg.
When his home and uncle are destroyed, Eragon escapes with his now-grown dragon Saphira (Rachael Weisz) and a mysterious stranger named Brom (Jeremy Irons), who knows a lot about the Dragon Riders. Now Eragon and Saphira may be the only hope for the land, not to mention the captive elf princess he’s dreaming about, and whom he has to rescue from the evil king.
Dragons, damsels in distress, magic spells, an evil king and his evil wizard, and a Young Hero in the Luke Skywalker mold… well, “Eragon” had a lot of obstacles in front of it from the start. It sounds like the love child of “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings”… except it’s infinitely more clumsy than either of those movies.
And the director doesn’t help — Stefan Fangmeier is horribly crude and clumsy in his directing, with a style that manages to be both stilted and choppy. The scripting is even worse. Expect the most pompous, cliched fantasyspeak imaginable (“It is your fate to be a Dragon Rider. The Varden need a Rider if they are to defeat Durza and the king.” “I didn’t ask for any of this!” “But you were chosen, nevertheless!”).
It’s not surprising, since Fangmeier has never even directed a short film before. His only prior movie work has been for visual effects, which might explain why the CGI for Saphira the dragon is so beautifully detailed and fluid. Wonderful work there. But not enough to make you forget the rest of the movie.
Speleers looks like a deer in the headlights, while Sienna Guillory has all the elegance and magic of hobbit feet, and Malkovich is given the most 2-D villain role of the 21st century. The supporting actors give the only solid performances, miscast as they are — Weisz gives a wonderfully nuanced performance, while Irons is solid as the mentor figure.
“Eragon” has the occasional good performance or moment of excellence — usually from Weisz as Saphira. But the rest of the time, it’s an amateurish example of how NOT to make a fantasy movie.
Review by Haley for Eragon [Blu-ray]
Rating:
But I didn’t love the book. I LIKED it. Very big difference. Though this movie has perhaps two good actors in its cast (Brom and Murtagh, the others are gag-worthy. Especially Galbatorix — his soon-to-be infamous line “I suffer without my stone!” still makes me laugh as I write this. Except it wasn’t a comedic line) and Saphira has the cheesiest and most stilted lines on the planet, and though they cut immensely from the book (the book wasn’t exactly the Masterpiece of the Year, but still, even if I hated a book I like the movie to stick to it. Odd preference, I know) it was still mildly enjoyable (maybe because of the aforementioned hilariously awful “stone” remark, and others.)
SOON-TO-BE INFAMOUS AWFUL LINES:
“I suffer without my stone!” (I’ve already gone into this.)
“I have skills!” (Is this Eragon or Napoleon Dynamite I hear?)
“Into the sky, to fight or die!” (The scriptwriter was probably quite proud of this little corny stupid rhyme that made an otherwise decent scene another laugh-fest for Haley.)
“ARE WE ONE NOW?” (I think that’s how it went. I won’t explain this one. It’s not made any less hilarious by Saphira’s cry of “We are one!”)
So see it, rent it, buy it if it’s in the bargain pile (it will be, this movie is not destined for greatness). I’ll probably buy it, to watch when I’m having a bad day so I’ll laugh reeeeeaaaally hard, and to enjoy the performances of two actors, who happened to be my favorite characters in the books. But two good actors out of such a huge cast…
It is kind of sad.
Rating: Average, but worthwhile because it’s funny. Oh-so-funny.