Eragon

This movie hurts. In so many ways, it just hurts.

When Eragon came out as a book, I was at a point in my life where I would read and watch anything that reminded me of Lord of The Rings. This was just about the times that the movies were coming out and I know Christopher Paolini was in the same mindset. A lot of his influences came from Tolkien and his books. Also as a writer myself, I loved the idea of this young kid writing this fantasy series and it getting so much acclaim.

So then a movie came out. And remember, this was a few years after Return of the King. This was years before Game of Thrones and a lot of people interested in fantasy were aching for another good fantasy film. My friends and I had a lot of high hopes for the movie because in a way, we wanted a similar reaction to the movies that we did to the books. We thought these could be the next Lord of the Rings movies because the books had been that before.

Oh god were we wrong.

Eragon follows the story of the title character (played by Edward Speleers). On a hunt, he comes across a magic blue stone. There's some background to this stone that is kind of explained but all you need to know is that this is a dragon egg.

And eventually a dragon hatches from it.

Of course, like any fantasy, this world is governed by an evil dictator named Galbatorix (played hilariously randomly by Jon Malkovich). Galbatorix killed all the dragons prior to coming to rule and he of course will not stand for any more dragons. He of course sends his henchmen to kill Eragon and his dragon, headed by Robert Carlyle (probably a demo reel for his role in Once Upon a Time) .

Eragon of course is saved by the Obi-Wan Kenobi figure of the story, an old man named Brom (played by Jeremy Irons). His job is to train Eragon to become a Jedi... I mean Dragon Rider.

Their mission: to find The Varden, the resistance against Galbatorix, and for Eragon to become a powerful Dragon Rider while developing a relationship with his dragon Saphira (voiced by Rachel Weisz).

There's a lot of things to say about this movie.

The first is, Jeremy Irons is actually really good in this role. Yeah he looks bored ultimately and I'm sure he's thinking there are better things to do with his life, but the guy is so British and pulls off the medieval look so well that I actually enjoyed a lot of his scenes. Jeremy Irons was the only redeeming part of this movie.

Besides that, everything else in this movie is either lazy, or contrived, or silly.

Even as a kid, I hated the casting of Edward Speleers as Eragon. The truth is, I hadn't seen this guy prior to this film and I haven't seen him in anything since because he's just not good.

Furthermore, Eragon is a stupid character. He's this young whiny punk who is suppose to have some kind of influence from Luke Skywalker obviously because a lot of the storyline from this movie (and the book) are ripped right from Star Wars. And he thinks he's the hot shit. He wants to go out and fight bad guys when he's just been a farm boy. Eragon reminds me of a kid who grew up reading fantasy novels would say if he got put on an adventure like this. He actively seeks out a fight and when his friends die because of his dumb decisions, he doesn't give a shit, he just goes to the next fight. Eragon, is awful.

Now, to be somewhat fair, the script is a freaking mess. Its not 100% the faults of Jeremy Irons, Ed Speleers, Garrett Hedlund, Robert Carlyle, all actors who I think have gone on to bigger and better things. (I didn't include the woman who played Arya because to be totally honest, she does absolutely nothing in this film and she hasn't done anything since, she's awful). But the truth is, nobody is good in this film... Nobody.

And the worst part is, watching the movie now, so many years removed from the last time I read the book, it really makes me question whether or not the book was any good. Its sort of like my reaction when I watched Anchorman 2. That movie was so bad that it made me question everything I knew about Anchorman 1 and whether or not that was a good film or not.

The fact of the matter is, it didn't really feel like anybody was trying that hard with this film. Its almost like people thought that since its a fantasy epic with dragons, and swordplay, that it was obviously going to be amazing. Unfortunately, that's really not the case.

Let's talk about the story itself for a second. What exactly happens in this film?

Eragon gets a dragon egg, it hatches, it grows up. He gets picked up by Brom who becomes his mentor. Brom intends to bring him to the Varden so he can be an asset in the resistance. Eragon decides to go help out this random chick he thought he saw once. And while they save her, Brom is killed, they pick up whoever Garrett Hedlund is, get to the Varden, and have a fight. That is the entire film. Now you may say that's more than enough for a movie. But think about it. There's not much of a reaction to him getting a mutha fucking dragon. There's no reaction to Brom saying, you are going to be the leader of the resistance. There is no feelings which way or the other about the bad guys in this film. This story is what happens when we think that fantasy is all about the sword play and the mysticalness of the environment.

There's no development, there's no feeling, there's definitely no chemistry. My god I know there's suppose to be some kind of romance between Eragon and Arya and dear lord it was bad in this film.

So yeah, you can understand why this movie would make me question the original books because again, this doesn't feel like a story, it feels like a kid taking everything he loved from Lord of the Rings and other fantasy books, wrapping it all together, and calling it original.

I'm not saying this about Christopher Paolini because this is a review about the movie and not the book, but that's how much this movie sucks. It makes you question something that you used to love, and really makes you question if it was actually that good.

Its one thing to say that Eragon was just adapted poorly, but its another thing to possibly say that Eragon was a book that didn't have much to adapt.

Needless to say, its been a rough 24 hours as far as the movies that I have watched (outside of Non-Stop) like this and Terminator: Genisys. Maybe its just been a bad series of films I've watched, maybe its other things, but this movie hurts particularly a lot more because of its representation of something I thought that I loved once.

I'm not totally sure what this movie was trying to be. Its in a similar situation that King Arthur was when it came out. It banked in on the fact that the people watching loved Lord of the Rings, they loved Sword play, they loved the fantasy element of it. However, with Eragon, I don't know if anybody knew who this movie was directed towards. Was this a movie for kids? Was this a movie for the audience who went to Lord of the Rings? Because that's a very different audience right there. Sure there were some kids who went to Lord of the Rings but the majority of the people who liked Lord of the rings were older because the movie was made for them. This movie had a PG rating and obviously couldn't do the giant action sequences the Lord of the Rings fans wanted.

Now I don't know if Paolini intended for this to be that huge fantasy epic that included guys getting heads chopped off, but the audience was just confusing for this film and just ended up hurting the film in the end.

I'm going to stop talking about this film and hopefully find something good worth reviewing. But Eragon is a movie that personally hurt me and I would never recommend it. Now, it is kind of fun to maybe get a beer or two and just bash this movie to pieces (something that I have done) but if you're looking for an entertaining time, you're better off looking somewhere else.

What did you think of Eragon? Comment and Discuss below! You can also let me know on Twitter @cmhaugen24 and follow me to get updates on movie news and reviews and also give me your requests for future movies to take a look at, I will make them priority.

I'll leave you with this. Here's an older video. It takes a lot of scenes from this movie and kind of makes fun of them. Enjoy!