Lindsey's Library

Critique

Not that the book is a masterpiece of classic literature, but the movie is terrible. Relying far too heavily on computer graphics and ‘epic’ battles to carry the weight of the film, Eragon’s story is basically nonexistent. It rushes through the dialogue and the connection of the characters that happens at least at some level throughout the book, not to mention that the movie and book differ significantly throughout the process.

Saphira suddenly becomes a full-sized dragon just after learning to fly as a small baby dragon; much of the journey that Brom and Eragon go through is nonexistent, so when he dies you don’t care; Eragon and Murtagh have no bonding time, so you don’t care about Murtagh either, and the dwarves look stupid, not to mention that the elves don’t have pointed ears.

The biggest faux pas, though, was that Shade uses magic to conjure up his own ‘smoke dragon’ in order to fight Saphira in the air. Not only was it cheesy, but it diminishes any of the difficulty in the fight between Shade and Eragon, which basically sets up one of the major themes throughout the next book.

The acting was fine for what it was. Sometimes the bad high British accents used so often in films like these gets tiresome, but there’s not much more one would expect. However, great actors like Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich don’t need to be in a film like this, especially since John Malkovich only appears for about 5 minutes max. They don’t add anything to the experience.

All in all, it’s a terrible movie, and even hardcore Paolini fans will be sorely disappointed, and real film aficionados will likely not be able to stomach more than 5 minutes.