When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it's the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; maybe now he'll be able to buy food for the winter for his family. But when the stone turns out to be an egg from which a baby dragon is hatched, Eragon realizes he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself. Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic, and power. With only an ancient sword and the advice of an old storyteller for guidance, Eragon and the fledgling dragon must navigate the dangerous terrain and dark enemies of an Empire ruled by a king whose evil knows no bounds. Can Eragon take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders? The fate of the Empire may rest in his hands.

Based on the best-selling novel by Christopher Paolini.

I understand the fact that rarely does a movie entirely live up to a really good book simply because of the fact that our imaginations can sometimes be grander than anything they can do with CGI our mind’s eye can produce a better picture than they could ever hope for. I understand this as I have a really good imagination and when I read Eragon I pictured all the fantastic scenes and the marvelous world of fantasy where Dragons and their Riders fought for the rule of a world full of magic and elves and dwarves. See that’s the problem when they made Lord of the Rings it wasn’t as vivid as my imagination, when they made Narnia it wasn’t as grand as my mind’s eye had made it but in both instances it was pretty darn close. It was as if someone with an imagination as grand as my own had made the movies and they had just pictured them differently. But with Eragon the problem is they didn’t even begin to come close, the movie was so far from the books and so far from anyone who has a little bit of imagination that if you find you have read the book that the movie is a vast disappointment.

Shortly after seeing the movie I commented to my friend who has also read the book that seeing the movie was similar to reading the cliff notes version of any good novel. They got the general gist of the movie, they got the characters and the basic plot of the book but after that the movie was like a condensed dumbed down version of the book. The film was made to impress an eight year old and I doubt they will be impressed because eight year olds have pretty good imaginations and this movie did not. The film didn’t even bother at times to explain the motives of any its characters, it was just like let’s go they are going to be after us. I have to wonder if Christopher Paolini the author of the book signed off any of the travesties they did to his story. I know JK Rowling takes serious interest in each and every single Harry Potter movie they make and Paolini should have done the same for his book.

It’s not that the movie is horrible by any means, its just very mediocre. The action is there, the adventure, the characters but the movie is lacking those nagging little bits they left out that were in the book like motives, politics, better and more plot and an imagination that could bring to life a fantasy world and put it on the big screen. The dwarf city was pitiful and I will gladly hold in my mind what I thought it should be like because they did a horrible job in that area, heck they didn’t even bother to make the elf maiden Arya’s ears pointed. The movie was like a cheap straight to video release masquerading as a supposedly big time holiday release.

Jeremy Irons isn’t who I had in mind to play Brom but I could have accepted him as Brom had they just bothered to flesh out his character. He was the one character in the movie that seemed to have no motives and he was wronged by this, as his character is fantastic in the books. I joked with my friend at one time that all they needed was a second sun setting behind Edward Speleers as one scene seemed to be completely ripped out of Star Wars and that’s what they tried to make Eragon’s character in the movie Luke Skywalker, the whiney petulant, reluctant hero. The problem is that Eragon in the books isn’t whiney and petulant like that or even reluctant. He goes in search of his Uncle’s killers instead of running from them. He is the hunter not the other way around. The filmmakers, the screenwriters, the special effects department all dropped the ball on this one, as the movie is mediocre and very very disappointing.

Grade: C-