A fantasy Star Wars (Eragon (2 DVDs))

Name: Ailran

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Product:	Eragon (2 DVDs)
Date:	16.05.07 (201 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dragon looks superb, fabulous finale

Disadvantages: drags a lot, too much building up, main acting

Eragon, the fantasy book phenomenon that charmed kids (and a fair few adults) the world over finally makes it to the big screen. Following on the heels of Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings Eragon would seem to be a ready made winner suited perfectly for a teenage audience.

17 year old Eragon is a farm boy in a fantasy land akin to that of middle earth in LOTR, where the king rules with an iron fist. The land used to be rules by the Dragon Riders until Brom, the current king, betrayed them and in a massive battle destroyed all the riders and their dragons.
Now there are no dragons or riders. The king has his dictatorship and no one dares argue with him or the viscous creatures he has at his disposal to keep in power.
Eragon starts with the eponymous hero when he is out hunting in the forest. A bright light appears and a large, brightly coloured stone suddenly appears. He takes it home, wondering what on earth it is. To no one watching, it isn’t a surprise to discover that this is in fact a Dragon’s egg.

From that moment on the movie follows the story of Eragon as he learns about his dragon, Serafia (which grows incredibly fast, scenes must have been cut from the book), his connection with it and how the fate of the world now rests on his shoulders… after all he is the first new Dragon Rider in many years!

I found Eragon to be boring and pedestrian, seen it all before, at least for the majority of its running time. It does hot up immensely in its, admittedly, quite exciting finale. The big trouble is being the first book in a trilogy means it has to set up a hell of a lot in this, the first film, and it takes far too long to get going. By the time is has you have almost lost interest. The spectacular finale to the film does liven things up a lot and would make the second adaptation, if it gets made, an interesting prospect.

Eragon also has one of the most annoying lead characters I have had the pleasure of seeing for a long long time! A teenager who thinks he knows everything and yet always does completely the wrong thing when given a choice. Oh he is so annoying you really want to punch him in the face at times, I guess this is what comes of having been created and written by a teenager. As much as I didn’t like the actor in Stormbreaker, another teenage hero novel to film from 2006, the character was a great one.
Eragon the boy is the opposite and in some ways it is down to that that I couldn’t get on with most of the film.
You expect heroes in films to make mistakes and get into danger but normally through their own stupidity not through refusing to take sensible advice from those who know what is going on. As it is most of the fighting comes from Eragon’s stubborn refusal to take advice.
Like I said the biggest problem Eragon has is that it has so much background info to set up, this works in the literary world but not in movie making. A good ¾ of the running time is spent introducing the world, the hero, the villains and the history of the Dragon Riders. It is only the last quarter of the film where things really do hot up, literally when there is two dragon riders on top of their dragons in battle. By then though it is pretty much too late and even though the big climax, very similar to Helms Deep in LOTR, is impressively spectacular. As much as this film didn’t excite me the ending was enough to possibly tempt me to see the sequel, if it gets made, to see if it carries on from where it left off or goes in a backward motion towards mundane again.

The one thing that can be said about Eragon though is that the dragon, Serafia, looks fabulous, it/she is gorgeously rendered in CGI and actually fits in with the real background. CGI is often over used and becomes too easy to ignore as nothing special. Serafia though is how good CGI can look if used properly and with skill. It is almost worth the price of watching alone just to see her flying!

Lastly the one thing that does pop into your head after you have seen Eragon is that it IS Star Wars in a fantasy world. Young farm boy finds something, learns more about his world and becomes one of a near dead breed of man, he is trained by an old practioner and the villain of the piece is a renegade member of said people. There is more but the basic plotline is so similar to Star wars that it is almost impossible not to compare the two.

None of the newer, young stars really amount to much and it is left to Jeremy Irons and Robert Carlsyle to hold the acting fort so to speak, especially when John Malkovich is in full on pantomime mode as the evil king! Malkovich is his normal self and he does work wonderfully as Brom but wow is he over the top in this role.

Summary: A fun viewing for kids, not so much for adults.