There was a time in my life when I did a lot of reading. I had a job that required a lot of travel and technology and distractions the likes of which we have in all of our lives these days didn't really exist or if they did, they were so expensive that it was out of reach for most normal humans.
One of the books that I read that I really enjoyed was Eragon because I am a big fan of fantasy and what's not to like about dragons?
I found the book to be a real page-turner and therefore when the movie was announced with a relatively massive budget of $100 million I was hopeful that we would be in for a real treat.
Well, treat we did not get and this movie is just flat out awful. Even though the budget was pretty damn huge, even the CGI -which generally speaking I am not a fan of anyway - looks very fake.
Now I don't remember enough about the book to do a piece-by-piece comparison of what they did wrong but I'll just broadly say that the story presented in the film doesn't really have a lot in common with what happens in the book at all. Other than the names of the characters, there is very little commonality between the source material and what we see on the screen. I suppose if someone hadn't read the book they wouldn't have this to complain about but even if they hadn't, very few people thought this was a good movie.
It has a 16% rating on RT and a similarly bad score on IMDB. I don't know many people who actually saw the film, but those that did either don't remember anything about it or knew that they didn't like it. One guy I spoke to left the theater before the movie was over out of sheer boredom.
While there are plenty of dissappointments in this film, to me the most disappointing was not the poor CGI and the lack of staying true to the book, but rather the extremely poor performance by John Malkovich as Galbatorix.
Galbatorix is supposed to be a ruthless tyrant king who came to power and holds his power with an iron fist. John Malkovich comes across as whiny and weak throughout the entire film and at no point does he seem even remotely dangerous, scary, or domineering. The very last scene of the film where he screams to the sky in anger is one of the most embarrassing moments in my personal film memories.
I think that Malkovich is a mixed bag when it comes to acting and more often than not I feel as though he is one of the most overrated actors in the industry. Perhaps this is why we generally see him doing comedy roles or bit parts.
If you are not familiar with the book, Eragon is basically a near complete rip-off of Star Wars, but told in a fantasy setting. The novel was written by someone who was at that time merely 15 years old and it was a huge success. Part of what made this book so incredible is that it took a home-schooled kid 2 years to write it and it was originally self-published by author Christopher Paolini's parents. It would later get picked up by a huge publisher and achieved global release including being translated into multiple languages.
In the book, Christopher puts a lot of time into making us, the readers, actually care about Eragon, who is a poor child of farmers who has no aspirations of achieving greatness.... you know, just like Luke Skywalker. He is timid, easily frightened, and just by sheer luck encounters a dragon egg and then bonds with the dragon inside that he names Saphira. As a reluctant hero, Eragon doesn't actually want to be involved in the conflict but is drawn into it by Saphira. In a way he was kind of on his way to Tashi Station to pick up some power converters when he accidentally stumbles upon a dragon egg.
The movie doesn't make you care about Eragon at all and Ed Speleers portrayal of him is once again, whiney and borderline annoying. I suppose that it is fitting that his eventual nemesis Galbatorix, is basically the same way.
Should I watch it?
I think it should be evident from what I have written above that if you desire to get involved in Eragon at all, read the book. It flows very well in a Harry Potter type of way and I absolutely loved it. Granted I was a lot younger when I read the book but I think it would still stand up today.
The movie was so ill-received that even though it made a considerable profit of $150 million globally, the plans to make this a trilogy was completely scrapped as an idea because I think they producers felt that they were able to dupe the public on the first time around, but would not be able to do this on any follow-up movies.
At the moment Disney is in talks about making a series out of this and I hope they do. The good news for them is that if they do decide to do this that the bar has been set so incredibly low by the film, that they will almost certainly be able to improve upon it. If you do decide to watch this film, I think you should do so only to see how exceptionally bad it really is. I can almost guarantee that you wont make it through the entire film.
