The story was rushed; it didn’t have any coherence at all, and it failed to establish both ethos and logos. It seemed as if its creators were well aware of this, however, because they invested so much in pathos, I laughed out loud at several points. As an example, every other scene was filled with brass fanfares, and three our of every four lines was a meaningless banality. There wasn’t much dialogue to begin with, and when they drowned what little they bothered to include in this kind of horrendous cliché fests, the result was me considering leaving the theatre before the movie was done, for the first time in my life. And as if this wasn’t enough, the movie was filled with attempts at being witty, every single one failing miserably. I mean, I laughed harder during the major death scene halfway through than I did at any of the “jokes”.
The acting was equally bad. The only actor who managed to deliver his lines with anything even remotely resembling credibility was Jeremy Irons, but Irons can practically pull off anything, so that’s hardly a surprise. The kid who played Eragon himself was bloody awful, even though I’ll concede that this might have been the character’s fault, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more irrational, annoying and boring character than this Eragon fellow. Maybe except from the supporting characters, that is.
Those of you who read my reviews regularly might have noticed that I’m usually very lenient when evaluating movies, and if so, I hope that you will notice also that I rate this piece of horse turd as a 2.5/10, and consider yourselves warned in case you plan on watching it. I might add, though, that those two and an half points was earned solely by Jeremy Irons and some rather nice scenery.
Damn, I’m depressed. This is the kind of baloney that gives fantasy a bad name. Mmm, there the depression disappeared; this movie was too bad to be worth caring about.
Posts
Sorry for reminding you for the movie again, but I got to say this.
Thanks for the warning!
And also, what did your sister mean about it?
11. January 2007 @ 22:07 ( Permalink )
She thought it was a horrible piece of garbage. And she’s read most of the book, and liked it, so…
I think her biggest complain might have been that they dismantled the book completely, rearranging and watering it out so that it in the end became impossible to recognise, if not for the names. But she also agreed with my objections to it, although she thought I should have given it half a grade more or so, because of the nice nature and stuff.
11. January 2007 @ 23:16 ( Permalink )
I thought it was horribly mediocre, filled with holes and logical gaps and banalities, but that it had a lot of wasted potential. Seeing as that’s more or less exactly what my friend with whom I saw the movie said about the book… that’s about as much as one could expect, really.
I agree on Irons, but I feel Carlyle - the guy playing Draza (or was it Druza?) the main villain of the movie, the shade - did a very charismatic and well performed job, too, considering the lines and scenes he were given. Much like Irons, come to think of it - I mean, there were some lines of Irons’ I *cringed* at; and when HE can’t pull a line off, you know it’s horrible. So disgusting dialogue. Lots of pathos, yes. I’ll give them this, though; when they actually did manage landing on the successful side with their pathos, they were rather good. A shame it happened so extremely rarely.
11. January 2007 @ 23:30 ( Permalink )
“I agree on Irons, but I feel Carlyle - the guy playing Draza (or was it Druza?) the main villain of the movie, the shade - did a very charismatic and well performed job, too, considering the lines and scenes he were given.”
Yeah, come to think of it, Carlyle wasn’t too bad, all things considered. He made a splendidly disgusting villain, one I wonder if Malkovich’ll be able to top in the next movie, or if his dragon has to do all that work.
“Lots of pathos, yes. I’ll give them this, though; when they actually did manage landing on the successful side with their pathos, they were rather good. A shame it happened so extremely rarely.”
To use a footbal metaphor: If you take 30 penalty shots, you’ll be remarkably unlucky if you don’t score on at least five of them. Which is to say, I agree here, too — I especially though the final scene where Eragon’s dragon was dying distinguished itself — but when seen in relation to the absurd amount of tries they had, I won’t give them much credit for actually doing a couple of them rights. Particularly not when, as I said in the review, the scene that had the most potential for sad pathos actually made me laugh because of how cheesy it was.
11. January 2007 @ 23:39 ( Permalink )
“The kid who played Eragon himself was bloody awful, even though I’ll concede that this might have been the character’s fault, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more irrational, annoying and boring character than this Eragon fellow. ”
Oh, so Nynaeve, Elayne, half the female supporting cast of WoT, and possibly Richard Rahl, they don’t exist, do they? Or have you just not seen them.
Hey, if you haven’t, that could explain how you like those books so much!
11. January 2007 @ 23:53 ( Permalink )
lolz0r. Really.
Actually, I thought that Eragon (in the movie, of course) was far worse than any of those. Or perhaps it would be more precise to say that he was presented worse. I mean, the only exploration of how he experienced his fate was an outburst of “I didn’t want this!” or something like that. Naturally, that theme has been “explored” almost to death in fantasy literature for at least a century - e.g., it is the core of WoT, and also very prominent in LotR — but I felt that this movie would’ve been better off if they’d just dropped that whole set of problems. Actually, I think letting Eragon send everyone sullen looks and sulk would have been better.
12. January 2007 @ 00:23 ( Permalink )
Basically, I felt the movie felt like someone had read LotR sixteen times too many, and decided to write a book based on a few original ideas added to a simple reproduction of LotR’s simpler sides. Problem was, none of the more original ideas were used properly. Instead of adding the completely redundant romantic-interest-character, they could have made a really interesting subplot on the dragon falling in love with Eragon, or vice versa, with all the complications that would mean. Instead of doing the obvious and letting the Chosen One survive, he should have died in the end of the movie after killing the badguy, making for a *much* more interesting sequel. Etc, etc.
If such opportunities to do something beyond the standard recipe had been followed, it could have been a good movie. And if they could have dropped the dozens of obvious inconsistancies in characters (Bron being able to tell the soldiers to their face that the king will fall but being besides himself with fear to hear Eragon bring up the same topic when they’re alone in his house, for instance), and in plot and internal logic (like horses disappearing and appearing on que, distances being travelled in illogical time, etc, etc), it could even have been very good. But sadly, not so much. Thank the gods for Jeremy Irons, though.
“Ut og fly for å vinne ry!”
I laughed so hard, it was frightening. Even more so for the subtitling actually being an accurate representation of the World’s Cheesiest Line it was in English, too, a line I, thank the gods, can’t remember word for word right now.
12. January 2007 @ 00:58 ( Permalink )
Yep, badly executed formula fantasy, ergo 2.5/10.
Speaking of potential, when Eragon and the dargon arrived at the “secret” hiding place of the “Varden” (yet another cheesy thing; why not simply call it “Warden”?), I couldn’t help but think of how cool it would have been if the Varden separated boy from dragon, lead the dragon to a narrow tunnel in which they speared and killed it, hit Eragon over the head with a blunt instrument, and turned him over to be tortured by Durza (or whatever) — so that the Varden really were nothing but a puppet of Galatorix’ (too much Asterix?), who maintained the illusion of resitance but in reality killing all real opposition. Just speaking of interesting sequels, you know…
12. January 2007 @ 01:17 ( Permalink )
Wow, just thinking of that alternative scene I described above makes me think of The Red Wedding, and thus giving me the shivers.
12. January 2007 @ 01:23 ( Permalink )
Considering your tendencies to rate movies to high, I expect that this film must have been so utterly terrible that one might consider tearing your eyes out while watching it…
I bet I’ll rent it when it just to rant about how awful it was. I love ranting…
12. January 2007 @ 12:19 ( Permalink )
Ranting is usually fun, indeed.
12. January 2007 @ 12:38 ( Permalink )
That alternative was very 1984′y. Not sure what it would leave for sequels, though, ‘cept for the super-fighting-cool-ninja-kid-son-of-a-traitor-person-guy.
12. January 2007 @ 14:41 ( Permalink )
Well, I’d have him survive, of course, and he’d eventually escape from the bad guy’s prison, but then he’d be more humble and brutal, angrier, darker, and, I’d hope, more interesting.
But very 1984′y, that’s true. Didn’t think of that.
12. January 2007 @ 15:10 ( Permalink )
” then he’d be more humble and brutal, angrier, darker, and, I’d hope, more interesting.”
So you’re thinking about pulling a Wesley, only minus the arrogance and plus the dragon?
13. January 2007 @ 00:42 ( Permalink )
The dragon’d be dead.
13. January 2007 @ 02:12 ( Permalink )
Ah.
So humble Wesely.
13. January 2007 @ 14:17 ( Permalink )
*Wesley.
*prays to the allmighty Wes for forgiveness for my typo*
13. January 2007 @ 14:18 ( Permalink )
Har du sett Pans labyrint? Den må du se.
13. January 2007 @ 17:04 ( Permalink )
Terje! Jeg har nå lest slutten av boka, og kan konkludere med at det fantes like lite av den i filmen som resten av historien. Jeg fatter ikke hvorfor de i det hele tatt kalte den filmen “Eragon”, det eneste som stemte var at det handlet om en bondegutt som het Eragon som fant et drageegg med en Safira inni, og en ond konge (som i boka faktisk hadde fått dragen sin drept og derfor ble gal og ond!!!) ville ha dem vervet eller drept og derfor sendte skuggen sin etter dem…. Alven het riktignok Arya, og mentoren Brom, samt at Murtagh dukket opp (på et helt annet tidsrom og en helt annen måte selvsagt). Filmmanerne har ikke engang klart å vedlikeholde plottet i en noenlunde tilgivelsesverdig grad. Så jeg er helt uenig i det du skrev lengre opp: Jeg ville aldeles ikke gitt filmen 3.5, i mine øyne er 2.5 alt for snilt!
(Skrevet fort og i affekt)
13. January 2007 @ 17:14 ( Permalink )
Koselig å se at det er liv i deg, Kleinest. Og koselig å se at du liker boka. (Det står det riktignok ikke direkte, men jeg syns jeg så antydninger til det her og der.)
13. January 2007 @ 18:07 ( Permalink )
Takk for det
Boka hadde også dybde i karakterskildringene som filmen manglet fullstendig, karakterene var greit nok temmelig opplagte, men likevel overbevisende. Varkatten et innslag jeg hadde sansen for 
Planlegger en tur til biblioteket for å låne bok to så fort jeg får anledning.
Jeg likte virkelig boka, den ga meg den avkoblingen jeg trengte etter en pyton eksamensperiode. Boka ga riktignok flere assosiasjoner til Ringenes herre, men jeg synes likevel den hadde originale og selvstendige vrier som gjorde den leserverdig. Spesielt hadde jeg sansen for dragens form for humor
13. January 2007 @ 18:23 ( Permalink )
“Har du sett Pans labyrint? Den må du se.”
I plan on dragging my sister to see that one sometime this week, actually.
“Jeg ville aldeles ikke gitt filmen 3.5, i mine øyne er 2.5 alt for snilt!”
Well, that’s not what you said when we left the cinema.
16. January 2007 @ 14:30 ( Permalink )
“Well, that’s not what you said when we left the cinema.”
Da vi forlot kinoen prøvde jeg desperat å finne NOE positivt å si om filmen, siden jeg aldri har hatt maken til skuffende kinoopplevelse før noensinne (såvidt jeg kan huske), så jeg kommenterte at noen av landskapssettingene var flotte. Men ikke flotte nok til å gi filmen mer enn et plusspoeng, så da er den vel oppe i 1 poeng…
16. January 2007 @ 17:03 ( Permalink )
I picked up SFX to have something to read on the bud home lastt Friday, and found found their review of “Eragon”, in case anyone feels like reading it:
http://www.sfx.co.uk/page/sfx?entry=eragon
21. January 2007 @ 20:26 ( Permalink )
I would like to see a continuation of the topic
20. December 2007 @ 16:08 ( Permalink )
Golly, me too!
20. December 2007 @ 19:17 ( Permalink )
Yeah, whatever happened to this one? Di my sister kill it?
21. December 2007 @ 00:19 ( Permalink )