"Eragon,” comes to the screen with many elements of a fantasy classic, but loses important elements by focusing too hard on appearing to be an epic. The movie’s heartfelt depiction of good against evil makes enough room for a few clichés to go unremarked upon. Edward Speleers plays Eragon with credible whole-heartedness. The rest of the cast acts well enough that they almost overcome the hackneyed dialog, although John Malkovich could have looked move malevolent. “Eragon” is the debut film of director Stefen Fangmeier. Before “Eragon,” Fangmeier worked as the visual effects supervisor for “Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events,” so the beauty of “Eragon” caomes as no surprise. But beauty and acting cannot balance out the dialog and plot disparities.
The beginning of the movie cuts between the peasant life of the soon-to-be hero and the villain chasing a girl with a stolen dragon egg. The girl transports the egg to safety and our main characters, Saphira the dragon and Eragon the dragon rider, meet.
Then Saphira, a baby dragon, hatches—she’s cute, skillfully animated, and full of energy. However, after two scenes, baby Saphira grows from a komodo-sized dragon to a barn-sized one without explanation. The scene where she grows up implies a passage of time, but when she returns to Eragon, it is still the same day. She’s suddenly all-knowing and she has a voice that echoes, but her self-confidence seems misplaced. When did she learn how to talk? How does she know the whole plot already? Did she pick her own name? One moment Eragon is caring for a clumsy baby and now she’s pushing him toward his destiny as a hero. Kids can probably make the sudden imaginative jump to accepting new background plot, but I felt a bit like I’d gone to the bathroom and missed a few scenes.
Soon after that the movie starts to pale to the adult watcher. The scenes are beautiful, but they distract from the story. The loud, swelling music climaxes one time too many. The clichés become more repetitive. The close-ups become relentless and misplaced. The movie seems to be trying to squeeze more feeling out of the audience than time allows. In nine hours, we could feel deeply about each of these scenes, but a hour and a half doesn’t leave the time.
Our heroes spend most of the movie running from the evil King Galbatorix, Malkovich, to join the Varden rebel group. The fights along the way rush by without gaining the suspense to make them exciting. The characters even backtrack much of their journey without lengthening their time spent traveling. Surely, days traveling away from the castle, a day traveling back to the castle, and then two days traveling away from the castle shouldn’t result in reaching the Varden.
A notable exception to the lack of suspense is the final fight. The fight at the end has drama, black magic and interesting complications. But again the narrative has holes—the ground troops don’t seem to contribute to the battle. They run around, they fight and die, but the cause of their victory is unclear.
“Eragon” can be admired as a journeyman work. The book was written by Christopher Paolini, starting when the author was fifteen and better adaptation of it in the screenplay, by Peter Buchman, could have contributed well to the film. The book takes more time on Saphira growing up and gives the Ra’zac more personality.
The film will work for kids or families, but it won’t find much of a home with “The Lord of the Rings” crowd. It borrows too much plot from “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings” without accomplishing the same quality feeling. The stark parallels force “Eragon” into comparison with films that had more experienced directors and far better funding. “Eragon” might have received a better reception if it were being compared to “Dragonheart.” “Dragonheart” has nearly as many clichés and “Eragon” uses newer animation techniques. “Dragonheart” has fewer narrative jumps, but a similar plot of hero and dragon versus the tyrannical king. Both movies credibly tackle the need for the hero to believe in himself and have appealing characters.
“Eragon” is unsatisfying for all its hype, but it will appeal to children and the more forgiving viewers. If “Eragon” had been less burdened by parallels, it would be easier to view it as an acceptable first work.
