Movie Review – Eragon (2006)

Overall 1.5 / 5.0 (don’t bother)
No Gay Content

Quick disclosure: I have never read the book, so I can only comment on the movie.

Which comes across like “Harry Potter” meets Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonriders of Pern” meets “Star Wars,” all the while trying to be “Lord of the Rings.” Being derivative can work if the film takes the best from its predecessors and recycles them in an engaging and/or fresh way. “Eragon” does not.

The basic story: Long, long ago in a land far away, an evil Dragon Rider betrayed the other Dragon Riders, killing them all. The evil Galbatorix (John Malkovich) then became king. The story begins with a teenage Eragon (Ed Speelers), who finds a dragon egg. Together, Eragon and his dragon Saphira (voiced by Rachel Weisz) are the last hope to defeat evil forever!

Sound familiar? The similarities with “Star Wars” range from correlating characters to story points and even to specific scenes!

• First, we have the orphaned farm boy who’s actually the last of a magical, mystical kind of warrior … well, last except for the Bad Guy. Thus: Eragon = Luke, Jedi Knight = Dragon Rider
• Then the orphaned farm boy meets up with a Jedi Master, er, I mean, former Dragon Rider, who’s hiding out but then agrees to accompany the boy and tutor him. Brom (Jeremy Irons) = Obi Wan Kenobi
• Meanwhile, we have an evil emperor / king, but the real villain is his magical lieutenant. Galbatorix = the Emperor, Durza (Robert Carlyle) = Darth Vader
• Although it should be noted, the evil king in “Eragon” does take on some of Darth Vader’s résumé; specifically, he’s the traitor who killed all his fellow magical, mystical warriors. So really, the story takes Darth Vader and the Emperor, mixes them together, then splices them apart, and suddenly we have Galbatorix and Durza. Darth Vader is way, way cooler than any of them.
• And where would we be without an imperiled princess (”Save me, Eragon, you’re my only hope!”)? Arya (a very bland Sienna Guillory) = Leia
• The orphaned farm boy then joins up with rebels in order to oppose the Emperor, I mean, Galbatorix. Rebel Alliance = the Vardan
• Finally, as I mentioned, the two films even share specific camera shots. For example, a scene of Eragon looking wistfully over a field while the sun sets strongly recalls a similar shot in “Star Wars” of Luke overlooking the sand dunes while the suns set

This movie suffers from the same problem as the movie version of “Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire” (2005): it tries to cram a 544-page book into a 2-hour movie. The result mashes important scenes together without giving the relationships and events any time to be developed, fleshed out, and given meaning. Thus, the development that occurs in the movie is stilted, unnatural, and unbelievable. Supposedly, Eragon matures over the course of the film, but how can the viewer really know that? Giving the book the benefit of a doubt (since I haven’t read it), I’m going to assume that screenwriter Peter Buchman just did a terrible job of adapting the story to the screen.

I have a great idea for a drinking game for this movie. Frankly, heavy drinking during the movie would probably help. So here it is: every time someone tells Eragon that he’s the most important person in the world, that he’s more important than so-and-so, or that he needs to save himself first, take a drink. This movie is all about adolescent wish fulfillment, about the desire and/or belief that you’re the center of the universe. It’s tempting for me to attribute this to author Christopher Paolini rather than the movie, considering he famously wrote this book as a 15-year-old, but again, since I haven’t read the book nor met Paolini, I can’t say.

I do wish the movie hadn’t taken itself so seriously. A tongue-in-cheek approach would have worked much better, giving us a film that would be fun to watch instead of painful.

Jeremy Irons provided the only good acting, although he wasn’t given a lot to work with. (** Moderate spoiler warning regarding Brom’s history and what happens to him in the film: skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know **) For me, the most powerful and poignant scene shows Brom flying on Saphira, but that scene only conveyed emotion to me because I supplied the details myself. In other words, I’ve read Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonriders of Pern” series. In her books, dragonriders and dragons form a unique, powerful bond. When a dragon dies, it devastates the dragonrider. I projected this knowledge to Brom, and voila! I had an emotional moment. If I hadn’t read McCaffrey’s work, the scene would have just been another underdeveloped sequence of camera shots, as evidenced by the blank stares I got when discussing this scene with friends.

Regarding the other actors: Malkovich didn’t even try. He had something like six lines total, all of them corny. You could just tell he was tabulating his paycheck in his head for his one day of work.

Speeler’s acting was passable. In fact, I might even say he did a good job considering he has zero previous professional experience. He can be charming on screen, but mostly his one-note portrayal of an adolescent know-it-all irritated me. Of course, that’s the way the movie was written and directed.

Carlyle’s role was way too caricatured. Because of the similarities to Star Wars, I found myself craving a Darth Vader figure, but Durza smacks of Trying Too Hard. It’s unfortunate too, because Carlyle has demonstrated he can do much better.

Of course, many different people come together to make a movie. Actors are important, but they can only do so much with a bad script. If they’re really good, they might be able to compensate for poor direction (Irons was the only one who accomplished this). None of them can do anything about crappy editing.

On the positive side, the film has great special effects. Which it should, given that director Stefen Fangmeier comes from a visual effects background.

Naturally, the final scene sets up the sequel, turning “Eragon” into a 104-minute trailer for the second movie.