Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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191 of 219 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
This could have been a masterpiece., March 14, 2007
Honestly, I wanted to cry as I sat there in the theater watching this movie. What a waste of ten bucks. If you have read the books, and excitedly waited out the release of the movie, you are undoubtably as disappointed as I am. The books had such scope, like a Lord of the Rings junior. There was no way to get everything important shoved into an hour and a half movie. Why not go ahead and make a 2 and a half hour epic? I'd have watched it!!
Here is what you'll miss in the movie:
-The relationship between Brom and Eragon is very underdeveloped, so much so that when Brom dies, you're like, whoopdeedoo.
-Saphira ages from a tiny dragon into just about full grown in one ridiculous moment.
-Eragon's journey with Murtagh is like, 5 seconds long. No Hadrac desert, no bonding. Again, you could care less about Murtagh in the movie.
-The Dwarven kingdom was UNBELIEVABLY disappointing. If you read the book, you probably had quite a vision workded up in your head, with the Star Rose and all. The movie pretty much annihilates all that. And the dwarves themselves are stupid-looking. You can't slap some armor on a guy with a beard and call them a dwarf.
-Arya is an ELF. Did they really go over on the budget that they couldn't even give her POINTED EARS???
-The battle between Eragon and the Shade is like nothing. I was so bored.
Over all, this movie takes a perfectly paced book and puts it into hyperdrive, taking all the wonder and fun right out of it. You'll sit down to watch this movie and all you'll be able to do is watch in horror as they slaughter it. It is a terrible shame. Had they had a larger CGI budget, blatantly copied some LOTR stuff, and had Mr. Paolini perhaps overseen the novel-to-script process, well, maybe he did, but they just shoved some more money at him and he said, "Whatever, I'm alright with you destroying my cool book. Go for it."
Now, if I were to choose one or two things from the movie that didn't totally and completely suck, I will say this:
Saphira, for the amount of CGI that was spent on her, is perfect. She was totally real. The voice of Rachel Weisz is perfect as well. Eragon, Edward Speelers, he was great too. Too bad he had to over-act in order to compensate for the crappy, crappy dialogue and lack of character development.
If they happen to make a sequel, Lord help us. The second book is even more complex and wide-scoped than the first. It will not translate well based on it's predecessor. I say they scrap the first movie, and make it all over, with a bigger budget, and the fans of the book get all editing priveledges. Then we'd have our Eragon come to life, rather than this horrible, mess of a mutilated movie!!
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Two Thumbs Down, December 17, 2006
Eragon- While the actors and special effects were excellent, I couldn't get over the story line. I read and liked the book. They skipped and completely left the story line in the movie so often it was hard to keep up. If I were Chris Paolini I would be furious at how they butchered my story. The dumbest part was when Saphira was first learning to fly. She took off a baby dragon and came back full grown. This book's story was destroyed in the theater. Maybe my expectations were too high as I went to see the movie looking for Lord of the Rings quality and I got a USA up all night with Joe Bob Briggs movie. Had they made this movie 3 1/2 hours long and stayed with the story line it would have rivaled Lord of the Rings. As it is we may never see Eldest in theaters.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Star Wars meets Dragonheart, December 27, 2006
I am the only member of my family who didn't read the books. That said, we all saw Eragon the movie together. It was noted beforehand that I alone had no expectations. The rest of this review is a spoiler, so proceed at your own risk.
I'm sorry to report that none of us enjoyed the movie. It was all about the animation. The story was recycled. The dialogue was inane. They repeated one line at least three times, and I'm told it was never in the books..."One part brave, three parts fool."
This project had the depth and imagination of Ralph Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings", meaning not much. My family (the Eragon fans) were intensely disappointed, outraged and offended. They said it was like taking a novel and condensing it to a four-frame comic strip. I wonder what the author, Christopher Paolini thought? There is mention of elves and dwarves, but you never see them...or so I thought. I was told afterward that the female lead character, Arya, was an elf. The movie never revealed that. At the end, I thought she was Minnehaha the Indian princess.
Personally, I did not hate Eragon as much as the others in my family, but I would not recommend it. I thought that as presented, this movie was a bold-faced rip-off of Star Wars; the king is a dragon-rider who turned against his brethren to gain ultimate power...there is a secret encampment of rebels, waiting for a leader to appear...that leader has no idea he is the chosen, or why...the hero's adoptive family is slain in the search for him by the evil king...the hero's mentor is slain by the evil king's more evil minion. Sound familiar? On and on it goes, a regurgitation of the same old thing. Even the dragons are reminiscent of the worms in Dragonheart and Dragonslayer, nothing innovative.
The computer graphics are very good, but that's about all you'll get in this offering. Given that, even the best of the CGs will remind you of Lord Of The Rings, but not as good.
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