Eragon (2006) Review

My Rating: 2/10

Directed by: Stefan Fangmeier
Genre: Fantasy, Action & Adventure
Runtime: 103 Minutes

Outstandingly flat, boring and too quickly paced! Let me start by saying that I have not read the book and thankfully I haven’t, that would take even more of my time away. Eragon was written by a 15 year old boy, and I will quote rotten Tomatoes consensus of ‘(it shows)’ and is truly a film that obviously clones Lord of the Rings and even Star Wars. The film is full of flat acting, bad dialogue, badly paced narrative and even characters you don’t care about. The film is an utter waste of my time. Many have enjoyed the book, and many hate it. In fact I believe more people hate the book. I have not read the book as I said there, so my opinions are clearly hatred against the film. Apparently several of the chapters are skipped in the film, and actually, that kind of shows. The film’s pace and play-out is completely wrong and is unbelievably boring. So it’s clear that some youngster got a perk of his book being published, and somehow getting a film that just ended up being terrible.

Eragon is a boy who lives on a farm, and actually has magical powers after discovering an egg (a dragon egg to be exact) in the forest one day. The finding of the egg leads him on a predestined journey to become a Dragon Rider and defend his peaceful world against an evil king. Based on the best-selling novel by Christopher Paolini, Eragon tells the tale of the titular character (Ed Speleers), a humble farm boy living in the land of Alagasia, whose life is forever changed when he discovers that he has been chosen to fight the most powerful enemy his world has ever known

Eragon basically does what every other fantasy film has ever done and made it all the worse. It’s a story with fantasy creatures like dragons, elves and new creatures invented in this called Rasak’s (although dull). Well let’s look at the film’s title. Eragon, sounds familiar to Lord of the Rings Aragorn. The story itself truly brings nothing new to the world of Fantasy and it seems Lord of the Rings is the only one that rally gets it right.

My biggest problem with the film is the characters and acting. They characters where flat and possibly even Wooden as the trees of the forest. With absolutely no emotion whatsoever, each character is seemingly meant to have a personality.  I’ve seen more characterisation in a wooden stool. I’m not even stretching the truth the characters are utterly stupid and you won’t care for a moment about them. Now one character that annoyed me was the king and what they did with him. The King is the somewhat guy plotting everything, yet he gets like 5 minutes total screen time in the film. Right at the end of the film the scene fades out making us think its over, then it fades in to seeing the king that maybe the filmmakers forgot about and added later, getting killed by a dragon. What does that mean? A sequel? I doubt it, because it did terrible in the box office. 

Now the dragon thing pissed me off too. In it's first moments from hatching, yeah sure it's cute. About 5 minutes later, it flies away and develops into a fully grown And then there’s the dialogue. As Lord of the Rings fans know, it’s one thing to talk all epic and stuff on the page, and a whole other ball of wax to do it on the big screen in front of everybody. (I’m looking at you, Samwise Gamgee!) It was (presumably adult) screenwriter 

Peter Buchanan’s job to fix that, and I hate to say, he failed. The film has visual effects, like all action, fantasy and adventure films have today and overall it is okay to look at. The camera work was also pretty nice and that I give thumbs up to. However, the dazzling camera work and visuals don’t save this film one bit. With a plot that is monotonous, stupid and wooden characters it isn’t worth your time. Now for the time scale of the film; the film was constantly rushed, and as I said they skipped chapters. The film could have been 3 hours if it wanted to (which wouldn’t make it any better). The direction was terrible no doubt which adds to this film’s lameness. That’s right, I said ‘lame’.

Overall:

You know what? I’ve watched this film twice and 2 years ago I kind of enjoyed the film. Why I will never know, perhaps it was because I was in my fantasy obsession moment. All I can say is I want my time back! If you are a brain dead 14 year old who loves playing Warcraft (not saying all Warcraft players are because I once played it) and like nothing more than fantasy adventures, then this is the film for you. Overall Eragon is one of the worst films I’ve come across, and it is a complete waste of time watching it with it’s dumb plot and most of all, dull characters.

To films with under 3/10

Ratings:

Screenplay/Story: 2.3/10

Characters: 2/10

Direction & Cinematography: 2.4/10

Emotion: 1.6/10- There was emotion?

Visual & Editing: 7/10

Music: 5.5/10

Overall: 2.3/10