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I'd be down for a remake or a tv show but not a continuation of the original film. I just despise the scene where Saphira just magically transforms into an adult and can speak perfect english.
They didn't even fuck up the dwarves. They just...didn't have them at all. Like, they just cut an entire fuckin' race because it didn't fit in the budget, even though they were pretty goddamn important throughout the books.
@@greydawn8820 Not even close. Harry Potter will still be considered a timeless children's classic in 50 years - like Oz or Narnia. Eragon will be considered a ripoff trash pile. Because it already is by anyone who knows the fantasy genre at all. The people who like Eragon like it because they read it as dipshit kids , and didn't know any better. And cling to it out of nostalgia. It just flat-out sucks.
@@luriven4800 No, the movie was so bad I was mad at Jeremy Irons because he was the only reason I went to see it. Painful, painful experience through and through.
This is absolutely true. Unless they’re gonna make very long movies that cuts ZERO content, the show format would be the better way to go for most adaptations.
I always wondered why the Dragonlance novels and the Discworld books where never turned into a film franchises. Then I remembered reading somewhere that its actually a miracle whenever a successful movie gets made at all in Hollywood. But NETFLIX has definitely opened up a whole new world for film and this might be the next wave.
also it's been years since I've seen the movie but I remember distinctly that Saphira was just a very bland, "dignified talking dragon" that reminded me of Aslan. Saphira is not an Aslan-like figure in the books, she's super sarcastic and witty and gluttonous. She has character, she can be goofy sometimes (e.g., her getting drunk at the beginning of Eldest and breaking a table)
Or how she barged into Nasuada's command tent (breaking several pieces of furniture and pinning the poor commander against a tentpole in the process) because she wanted to see Eragon again after he sent her away so he could deal with the remaining Ra'zac and Sloan at Helgrind. It's little things like that that deeply inform the relationship she and Eragon have. It's not just the bond of Dragon and Rider; it's also a bond of parent and child. It's a really powerful bond and I absolutely dig it.
I never read the books, so the movie was my first introduction to Saphira and I found her to be a really beautiful Dragon and thought her personality made sense for such a noble creature. But it would be nice to see her as people have experienced in the novels as well.
@@danielwhyatt3278 i always say that the movie had potential. When i was reading the books, i actually had the faces of the actors or saphiras design for the dragons in my mind. The cast was good (in my opinion) but the way they went about it was... not so good to say the least
I thought sapphire getting drunk and passing out at a party was so great because dragons generally have 3 modes: -Just straight up animals -Mystical creatures of magic that are all ethereal and kind of above everyone else -sly cunning and evil And sapphires character is separate from all those stereotypes! It’s what I was really drawn to with the books
I laughed when during the middle of the movie they had saphira burst into flames, becoming a bigger dragon as if she were a Pokémon instead of growing over time
I always thought that scene was meant to be a time jump, as in "a few months later, Saphira had grown into a larger size", and I thought it was shot in such a weird way
I read the small, paperback, making-of book and read that the director asked Paolini to tell him what will bein the other books so as to know what to leave in or out of the first movie. So, the director did have plans on how to make the next movies.
This was my problem, and what made me walk out of a movie theater for the very first time. I was so disappointed by the fact that it couldn't even keep the book's plot straight that I left. I wanted to even ask for a refund, but couldn't find any staff. Such a sad waste.
Came here to say exactly this I cam handle poor acting. But missing key plot points is unforgiveable. The whole second book is ruined if eragon remains fit and healthy
I’m a true Paolini fan, but I truly wish I could say I never knew about the movie, let alone the abomination of a video game. I only have myself to blame for the second part.
I remember back in high school i was reading these books and I was stoked. I was talking to my english teacher about them and I asked him “can you believe a teenager wrote these?” And he simply replied “yes.”
I could tell as a teenager. It's a fun adventure book, or maybe just an interesting world if lore, but given how straightforward it is, I wasn't interested in reading the others.
Well, to be fair, even though he was a teenager at the time... his books were written better than any Stephen King book ever made. Chris Paolini has great mentors in his parents and he is a natural story teller.
One of the best choices in the books is that we NEVER see galbatorix except at the very very end of the novels. The dedication to making him actually scary was so great in the books and it managed to make me have to physically stop reading to calm myself down.
It was the opposite for me. Galbatorix was such a let down once he actually showed up on the page because he could never live up to what I'd imagined him to be over the course of the saga.
@@taqresu5865 Its exactly like how Star Wars built up Jabba (before the weird additions added him having his tail stepped on in A New Hope). We hear mentions of him as a big crime boss with Han owing him a debt in 4 and then we see the consequences of this debt at the end of 5 and then finally see Jabba in 6 (and he looks totally different to what you’d expect).
At least Percy Jackson had Alexandra Daddario as eye candy to make it more enjoyable.... The other DONT..... Lol and at least they try to make her blonde on the second movie, too little too late anyway.... I will never get why Hollywood thinks theyre gonna succeed by changing more than half of things, and not sticking to the source material, God if those works are getting an adaptation in the first place its cause PEOPLE ENJOY THE FN SOURCE MATERIAL... DONT CHANGE IT ... PERIOD....
@@chananyaminster2075 I avoided seeing Artemis Fowl since I knew it would ruin my day just as TLA did. Seeing everyone’s reaction to it, I think I made a *very* wise choice.
@@the_retag But they are the only people in the room and both of know full well that it's an egg. And before you say that someone is listening in, Galbatorix has his whole capital on heavy lockdown at all times, to the point where if someone even so much as sniffs the wrong way, that person will probably be at the next day's public execution, so there's no reason for him to even consider spies to be an issue.
That's the exact same way I got into the books. I had cheap tv and it was a movie on one night and I thought it was amazing read the books then decided never watching the movie again
Oh Shut Up Sheev. For 14 year old me they were utter bliss. A world that was way more interesting and beautiful than mine. And they’re still a ton of fun 10 years later. DONT Start with the whole “it’s just Star Wars” crap, because I can tell you where to shove that too. It’s frickin YA. - Anyway. There’s the reaction wanted.
Honestly, Jeremy Irons is the perfect Brom. He is the one member of the cast I would carry on to a new adaptation. He does a fantastic job of playing the grumpy, sarcastic mentor.
He was good enough in his role, that when I read the final book in the series, and there's a certain flashback with Brom, I actually pictured Jeremy Irons in my mind. His acting performance in my head was incredible. They should give him an Oscar for it. ;)
@@Kadaue i'm not to optimistic about it, the book series takes advantage of being books a lot, especially for the telepathy, which is such an important part of the movie
I remember feeling quite pissed about this movie. Not even because the movie itself wasn't that great, but because they changed so much from the source material, it felt like a different world to me. One example: they didn't even bother giving the elves pointy ears. Yeah, it's a small thing, but things like that are everywhere in this movie.
@@dragonxswords114 No pointy ears for the elves, no dwarf city and Urgals portrayed as regular, brutish humans. The movie is lame everything in this movie sucks, except for Garrett Hedlund's great performance as the most popular character in the franchise. He was awesome. But sadly for him, he was a great and talented actor who had the misfortune of being casted in a crappy movie. I feel for him.
@@michelled.4874 Irons and Hedlung were good in this movie, Malkovich just had a bad script. I rly missed Orik, Angela was a joke, Tronjheim wasnt in the movie, the Urgals looked like the Umbar Pirates from Lord of the rings, the entire Roran-story was missing, the Ra'zac were bullshit...there was so much wrong in this movie...
The first one was pretty good as a stand alone movie but compared to the books, its a total mess. Second one is trash. And Fun fact: the director of Percy Jackson is also the director of harry potter.
Rorin strong-hammer was probably my favorite character. The cousin who becomes a badass through raw willpower, not an elven infusion, or magic. Just a pure badass.
His chapters were my least favorite. It felt like filler to the main story. Plus the scene where he kills like 200 people in one day is just absurd, and the ridiculous inner monologue when he is approaching the guards about planning to kill them. Those chapters had elements which were good because the stakes were higher but it was still like watching paint dry...though most of the 3rd and 4th book was like watching paint dry.
As a kid I skipped or at least skimmed through all the Rorin (and all side character) chapters bc I just wanted to continue Eragon's story. However I just finished rereading the series for the first time in like 10yrs, and I gotta say Rorins story was very interesting. Sure there are some parts where it feels like he's got plot armor. But in a world with magic, elves, and dragons, it's cool to see just a normal dude be able to hold his own against terrible odds.
@@VisuaIHavoci just went back and read a lot of only rorans parts/parts he was included in and I really enjoyed it that way, it wasn't over shadowed by eragons story that way
When I was a kid reading Eldest, I didnt like the Roran chapters, but I've since gone back and reread the books as an adult and...honestly, I think Rorans chapters were actually some of my faverate.
Fun fact: I read the books before seeing or understanding anything about the Star Wars. The reveal of Eragons father absolutely blew me away and I can now totally understand why the Star Wars scene is referenced so much.
I love Star Wars but was still blown finding out Eragon's dad. Recently I reread the books and noticed so many similarities to Star Wars. It's like a different fantasy version of Star Wars.
Jason Reyelts when I read the chapter where Eragon finds his farm burned by the Razak (excuse the spelling I haven’t read Eragon in a while) I could almost hear the twin suns/force theme like Luke in A New Hope
The worst part of this film is that they turned the two strong female leads into crappy sidekicks with no personality. They made Saphira an obedient horse and Arya a dumb damsel in distress.
Exactly, remember how she almost killed Eragon while she was comatose cause he was trying to poke around in her head? This movie missed out on so much in regards to building up the characters, Arya is one of the most powerful people in the series and this disaster of a film completely ruined her
@@DragonRider-cx7br Almost killed him when he was poking in her head and showed him up in sparring sessions because he just couldn't keep up with her. Really such a wasted potential her character was with the movie.
As sad as it is I don’t think Eragon will ever be a film franchise because the magic and the ways the dragon talks is so heavily based on the internal mental abilities
Yeah, feels incredibly difficult to do in a film. Maybe an animated series with really creative visual direction could do it, but you'd need a hell of an art design team to keep it easily readable visually for the entire series.
@@KRYMauL The magic in Eragon is visually just two people standing across from each other and concentrating. The actual combat system involves reaching out with your mind and driving your own conscious into the enemy, and also basically grammar and syntax based spell composition to get around hyper specific rules. The Lord of the Rings model wouldn't really work for magician vs magician encounters.
@@zenbrown7144 Yeah the escalation of the magic system went from your basic fireballs and enchantments to slaughtering hundreds of men instantaneously with a mind spike. I do remember being disappointed that Eragon's growth in power lead to much less compelling battles and fight scenes. Made me look forward to Roran's chapters more just because he was still going around caving heads in with a hammer.
Eragon was his best book. My greatest criticism is how Christopher would spend 2-3 pages describing a thing only to never reference it again. I understand world building, but I can clearly remember those Dwarven wolverine claws easier than major plot points in his other books.
Or that time Nasuada is having a meeting with some of her people and he starts describing what happened before that scene in such detail that I thought to myself, "Dude, why didn't you just start the chapter with that?"
@ryananderson5202 in case your immediate offense at the slightest criticism kept you from understanding my implication that I have bought and read all of the books in the series: I have bought and read all the books in his series. Secondly, what does homeschooling or being from Montana have to do with his decisions as a published author? Why should I pretend that his writing was flawless just because he didn't have the advantage of attending public school in a more populated state? Lastly, he was 18 when he wrote and published Eragon, a fact that the media spared no expense at promoting. I'm fairly certain my fair criticism isn't hurting his bottom dollar.
I disagree I think his best work came after the first book. Roran is one of the best characters in the series and gets hardly any focus until Eldest which is really where some interesting ideas start coming into focus rather than the pretty basic story in the first book.
Fun fact: Once Paolini did a Reddit AMA, and I asked him something about the movie, and who he would love to direct it, he replied that when making the movie, he gave the studio a list of four or five directors. The list included Cuaron (before Potter), Del Toro, and a up-and-coming indie director... Nolan (reminder this was back when his biggest movies were Imsomnia and Memento). The worst is the executives who always act like they know better, and their response to Nolan on the list was: "Oh no, we can do better than that".
He overrated his story a bit, didn't he? He isn't a young Tolkien. Those directors from the beginning of their careers, even when they were not famous, wanted to work on original or weird stories or classics, which Eragon isn't. It's a very very basic fantasy, enjoyable still, but it's not Harry Potter.
My one memory of the movie was Sapphira growing into an adult dragon in terms of seconds. I was like 'what?' How do they plan on portraying the actual ancient dragons? ...turns out, they don't plan
Oh, yeah that scene. I didn't even watch the whole movie, bc we were actually in the middle of packing up our things in summer camp to leave when someone put it on, but that scene was so stupid. I never had the urge to finish watching it it was so bad.. And I can report that the voice acting in german was also horrible
@@mjtopping4179 In the books, if I recall, Dragons never stop growing and they have a say in whom they hatch to, being able to wait countless years if need be. The book also spent more time to show Eragon caring for Sapphira
Yep, that was the moment I gave up on that movie. I didn't bother with the rest, as I was told I should not await much...but I wasn't prepared for how bad it really is.
Growing up in seconds turned Sapphira into a generic "wise old dragon" when she was a baby in the books that actually had to grow up and mature and was a more complex character because of it.
2:11 This is the part in the last Airbender when I literally cried from laughter. It took a bunch of big feisty eartbenders to move that tiny Boulder while in the animated version one skilled bender sets whole landslides in motion. The most "fail" moment of the movie in my opinion XD
this was the first scene from the movie I had seen, that's all what I needed to know and even tough, I kinda know about half episodes of the show, I only learned later, that the earth-benders were imprisoned on a ship in the series later
@@therealwinston3634 On a metal ship, specifically made so that they couldn't just, idk, bend the fucking world and murder the shit out of their captors. Logic, where is thee
Did you actually watch that movie, or even that scene? The several earthbenders make that rock wall that was cut out here, and the boulder is thrown by the guy at 2:13.
They couldn't even connect the motion of the Martial Arts with the bending. In the show, each element responded with the bender's art; water flowed with the rhythmic sway of the arms, earth shifted with each rigid motion, fire erupted with each rapid strike, and air followed each circular swing. In the movie, none of that grace was captured in bending, making it feel and look disjointed.
The worst part(which is saying a lot) of the Eragon movie was showing Galbatorix. In the books it was akin to Jaws, only really seeing glimpses of the monster until the very end. The build up was intense and the payoff was incredible. He was this unbelievably powerful force that was only becoming stronger over time as he used dark magic to twist the eldunari, and when Eragon finally faced him the clash was immense and extraordinarily memorable. I have not read the books in over a decade but I remember almost every detail of the throne room scene, and the unexpected way Eragon "defeated" him. The movie really set all of this up for failure from the start. I truly hope we can see a new adaption of Eragon in the hands of someone who cares about the story and characters.
Also the fact that we saw Galbatorix from the point of view of Nasuada, one of his victims, not Eragon, the hero meant to kill him. It showed what Galbatorix was actually like to the masses.
over a year ago I have seen a tiktok from Christopher Paolini that they will do anonther film but with him in the office. Haven't heard since then, but the hope is up 🤞
Can we at least take a moment to drink a toast to the fact that a kid wrote his book and got it out there? A lot of us came up with fantasy or sci fi stories in our youth, some quite elaborate (I know I had whole notebooks filled with characters and plots in grade and high school) but few had the guts to seek publication. Bravo to Paolini! Yeh the film sounds forgettable but still. Credit where it is due!
He's the equivalent of a teen with a successful business due to rich parents. Instead of rich it's well connected and already established in the literature world. That said, he still had to WRITE the darn thing, and that in and of itself is worthy of praise. He's quite dedicated to writing, and puts 110% into it.
@@hemmydall But it is awful. It got published because #1 : His parents were in publishing , as has been mentioned. and #2 : The fact that he was a teen , writing for teens , was good for publicity. That's it. It was a good hook to lure in saps who hadn't read enough fantasy to know how painfully unoriginal it is.
Harry Potter and Fellowship of the Ring are the exceptions that inflicted so many vainglorious imitators on us. Because those two worked, we've been inundated with attempts to replicate their profitability.
Galbatorix's build up is brilliant imo. We don't even get a description of his voice until nearly the end of the third book, and that serves to make him even more imposing and cruel than his actions had already made him out to be.
@@Dudewithguns-ww7wc Yeah lmfao. Instead of this malicious force of insanity and power, we get what seems like a toddler putting on their best Bane impression for the adults at any party.
I think the thing that really stuck with me from the Inheritance cycle was the motif of pain. As a kid I never saw characters that could actually get hurt and STAY hurt and the descriptions of the pain Eragon went through due to his injury was really affecting. There is also the pain he inflicted on others like the dwarf child he cursed to be a human shield. There's an entire chapter just describing the pain Roran is going through on a relentless ride. In the end Galbatorix is defeated not by a sword but by pain. You don't see that kind of shit in LOTR and lesser fantasy books aimed at kids and it gave a weight to the world.
Are you sure? There is the entire theme of Frodo feeling more and more painful and miserable due to his injury inflicted by Ring Wraith and the influence of the Ring, to the point he can't stand to live in Middle Earth anymore (funfact: hobbits are not immortal in undying lands, they allegedly live even shorter there. The place on the ship wasn't to grant Frodo with immortality, it was to alleviate his pain). Lotr is maybe not wrapped entirely around physical pain, but the theme is present.
@@a.w.4708 right sure but Tolkien uses the morgul blade injury more to reflect ptsd for frodo and doesn't really obstruct him from his task. Frodo didn't have to go to physical therapy before continuing on. Even so the rest of the non-boromir characters are pretty indestructible. Funny I didn't think of it bc I read both series around the same time as a kid. It didn't really stick out as a focus point for Tolkien he doesn't devote that many words to it in comparison to describing landscapes or detailing historical context. It's there but it's not in the forefront
Of the many, one big disappointment was how the Urgals were portrayed as regular, brutish humans in the movie. Listening to the behind the scenes content on the dvd, the director gave some excuse that they were going to portray them like they're described in the book, but ultimately decided on a simpler design for those characters. Even back then (as a teenager), I could see through his b.s. and figured it was due to limited budget and time. Many of the sketches their artists had drawn were much better than the final design they ended up with. Since Paolini was so young when he wrote the books, I really think hollywood took advantage of him, seeing the popularity of the books as a potentially easy money grab. In terms of the gross 249 million made off the 100 million budget, I'm guessing in actuality they more or less faired just better than breaking even. Movie budgets don't account for advertisement costs, which today usually will run them an additional 100 mil or more, depending on the movie. to the total budget. Back then, the advertising likely cost an additional 50 mil or more, on top of their 100 mil. budget.
When a movie " makes " 250 million , the studio usually splits tue box office profits with the theatres. It normally runs 50/50 over the whole time a movie is out. Theres a funky equation but it usually ends up at half n half, unless your disney. Disney always makes more. I think it would be easy to guess this film lost the studio money and that's why there were no sequels.
They also removed elfs, dwarves, werecats and completely changed the razacs (they basically became really puny earth golems). They butchered the fantasy side of the novel...
was just gonna say the same! Urgals as humans,no horns, Arya an elf without elf ears no dwarfs and a total stupid ending to the movie that has nothing to do with the original story, saphira getting hurt ? like what the hell? And plus Eragon didnt even got the cut on the back ,that is very important thing on the next chapter but oh well.. What a fk mess and a money grab.
I remember reading the book and being so excited they made a movie. I went with my mom, and from the moment that I saw the Urgals were just men, I knew it would be a shit show. I literally cried after I left, and was kind of embarrassed that I made my mom sit through it. What a joke.
I went with my mom and dad for Harry Potter 2 and was seeking their validation on how good the HPU is, felt nice they admired it, yet still calling it a distraction from my studies like any parent, I reall wish all these book adaptations never had such shitty movies,.imagine being embarassed you wasted your mom's time.
I was CRUSHED as I walked out of the theater with my souvenir cup. Somehow I suppressed how bad it was and bought the DVD, couldn't make it passed 20 minutes, and got pissed I wasted the money. Inexperienced director, star, and bad script, nearly non-existent characterization for pretty much everyone aside, this movie was plagued with bizarre, unnecessary changes to characters and the world that were maddening at best and made sequels impossible at the worst. FEATHERS on Saphira, no elves, no dwarves or Tronjhiem, no Urgals, Durza on the weird shadow thing, SMFH. Some of the casting was really good even when their performances weren't. Malcovich, Carlisle, and Honsou were all great choices as was Sloan. I still picture the actor who played Sloan when I go back to these books. PS: funny how you said you were crushed as I typed that sentence
Book: Ok so the dragons glitter like jewels in the sun, and sapphira has sapphire blue scales, which fit with her name! Director: alright shiny blue egg, got it Book: wait no that’s not what I said- Director: and what does the dragon look like? Book: well dragons are elegant and- Director: got it, make it cute. Throw some fur on there and we’re good! Light gray is a nice collie too, very dignified. Book: wait no saphira is blue! Director: Alright I’ll give her a gray- ish blue tinge, just to appease the fans Book: sorry did you say you were a licensed director?
@@morninggloom8391 those are not choices made by directors in this kind of projects. They usually just get a guy that more or less has a techical grasp on how to shoot a film and the executives decide almost every part of the script and the charcter design. They want a safe movie with little budget, a franchise prospect and merchandisable characters. And they got it. It was shit, but nobody really cared, there was no trace of passion nor interest in the making of Eragon. The book is less than mediocre, I remeber reading it and thinking that it couldn't be worse than it was. Then years later I had to go to the movies with my little cousin who wanted to see Eragon at all costs and I realized that even with such bland and generic source material they managed to produce an impressive unsufferable piece of media.
@@giulioceresini1435 I see your point, and yeah while I loved the books, their writing quality is debatable (pretty sure they were written by a 14 year old). So thanks for the info about movie making, I actually didn’t know that, but what I said was purposefully exaggerated to sound funny, I do know that isn’t at all what would’ve happened and that a director isn’t in charge of the art or animation though. Wether or not the movie was better or worse is really just down to opinion, so I won’t get into that debate.
@@Olsenator I would definitely say so. The first one in particular has a special magical quality. The others are fun too. I own all three and rewatching them occasionally, which is saying something considering that I own fewer than 30 movies.
Yeah its like they threw the timeline of the original book into a blender and hit "pulse" a few times. Also the ending destroyed any chance for a sequel by solving all of the sequel's problems...
@@mangomoe7347 Doing so AFTER Eldest was already published too. Like there's the book with the Ra'Zaac monsterrs as major antagonists, it's literally right beside the book you're adapting. Could you not check that any decisions you make WON'T need a retcon?
STILL salty 15 years later about how Murtagh became basically a cameo/Easter egg instead of a dynamic foil to Eragon; also when you cast an actor that hot as an anti-hero of sorts *he deserves waaaay more than that, like, 5 minutes of screen time*! Would’ve been better than having Malkovich ravenously devour the scenery every 15-20 minutes...hope he didn’t get indigestion afterward. Also-poor Robert Carlyle, had just seen the Full Monty for the first time and saw Trainspotting not long after, dude deserved better too.
Yeah Murtagh in the books is such a good character. Setting him up in the first book is so crucial, since you see so little of him in the others. His change is meant to be shocking and dramatic, but it also has his subtleties. From trying to care about Eragon, but being taken over by jealousy and rage... You desperately want to see the best in Murtagh even when you realise he’s not being forced to do all those terrible things. I didn’t want to think he was just bad! But for all this to happen you actually need to care about the character... Plus the hot anti hero actor is always a wasted opportunity...
Exactly! He really was a hot dude...Why in the world didn’t they expand his character more? I know he has a bigger role in the books but maybe somehow try to find a way to put more of him in the film?
@@leocervidae I re-read the books recently, and it blew my mind when the first book actually set up the relationship between Nasuada and Murtagh. I'm impressed that the author had already planned her to be captured, brought to Galbatorix and all that.
I think my favourite part about the Eragon series was when, I believe towards the end of the first book, he had only been learning the language of magic for a few months. So he was asked to bless a baby, and what he wanted to say was like "may pain and sorrow avoid you", but due to his bad grammar, he actually said something along the lines of "may you take the pain and sorrow of others upon yourself." The baby, due to his "blessing", began to age very fast and could telepathically hear the bad thoughts of all people around her, which also caused her physical pain. That was such an interesting mistake for the fucking teenage hero of a fantasy epic to make. He just fucking cursed a baby! And she obviously hates him for it and is irritated all the time. This subplot keeps up over the books, where Eragon tries to find the correct wording to reverse the curse. Spoiler alert: And he never manages to free her of it! He only managed to alter the spell enough to make her be able to ignore all the telepathic worries of other people.
This was my first experience with hating something retroactively. I saw the film first and originally thought it was perfectly adequate. I was a young mother with a small child so it was a great option to play in the background. I found it charming and imaginative. Nothing special. Few years later I came across the books and... while I've always been an avid reader, this was a different experience for me. Eragon is the first novel I can honestly say that I fell in love with. Not because it's the best written or the most original. But I felt the writer's love for his world and characters. And the relationship between Saphira & Eragon really won me over. When I finished, I felt so saddened to leave them behind. I literally just flipped the pages and started at the beginning again. Looking at the film after that... it turned my stomach. As you mentioned, the book isn't anything spectacular but it has charm and love and investment. All of which is absent in the movie. The film is a lifeless cashgrab without even the minimum of interest invested. It angered me that they could just throw away such potential.
You perfectly described how I feel about Percy Jackson. I saw the first movie before reading the books and thought it was fun, then I read the books and retroactively realized the movie was such a disappointment!!!
I remember being 13, sitting on my bed, and before opening the cover to actually read it for the first time, thinking, “This is going to be an adventure.” And I was right. I loved those books, and this movie hurt so much.
This was exactly my experience with the Inheritance cycle and the Eragon movie; saw the movie first as a kid and liked it, read the books and absolutely fell in love, could never look at the movie the same again. It's just... So depressing to think of how little love really went into the movie, especially compared to how much Paolini put his heart and soul into the world and characters of his books.
At first, when I saw the movie as a child, without reading any books, I didn't think much of it. It was an okay-ish movie, fine enough to watch it to the end, but not good enough to leave that "wow" aftertaste. And after several years, when I actually took the time to read whole Paolini's quadrilogy and then rewatched the film - I understood how cheap and soulless it is. Even at the level of giving characters their book-appearance. It wouldn't be that hard to give Eragon's and Arya's actors some wigs, would it? I'd say the only thing that was actually very good about the movie overall was Jeremy Irons as Brom, and even he was killed off prematurely. Everything else is plain meh on its own and very bad in comparison with book's counterparts. Urgals and Galbatorix aren't scary, Durza is more cartoonish than anything, Eragon is flat, Ra'zacs are just a lame plot device, Angela completely lost of all her likable charm and turned into a "default fantasy seeress who'll be here for few seconds", most Carvahall villagers aren't even there or cut from final version, everyone else is so short on screentime that you don't even care about them. Although not completely horrible as a movie itself, it is horrendous as a film adaptation. Would be nice if one day a good TV-series adaptation of "Eragon" came out. Although far from all-time masterpiece, it is still a very interesting story, complex enough to have good characters and nicely written plot arcs. Not as brutal and cunning as Game of Thrones, not as huge and legendary as Lord of the Rings, yet still very much worthy of recognition.
I actually liked Durzas look in the movie, and Jeremy Irons was definitely fantastic! But I feel like the actors did the best they could with a crappy script. Eragon definitely be better as a tv show. It would have given time to flesh out characters and world build.
@@darkfyraproductions7958 To be fair, Eragon 1 is awesome, but the series overall got significantly worse on each successive release. 2 was ok, 3 was bad, 4 was wtf am I even reading? Though, I will say the empathy spell to defeat the baddie was a novel idea on the fourth book, but even there, I think the execution could have been better. I can definitely tell though the author's age when writing the novels. He didn't seem to have the complete control and understanding of how sagas or trilogies should be written, when things should be trimmed and when things should or should not be added in such stories, etc. Though, I do see why some people think 'but omg, how can you like eragon 1 it is copy paste'. Um, yeah? Do people realize how many times they have probably watched star wars for instance, yet it is still the same exact story you know is coming right after it. Besides, if you look at things in a certain angle, a great deal of story telling is borrowing elements from others (even star wars, for instance, took a lot from Dune). It only becomes problematic when it is neither fun, and perfectly predictable. It was rather predictable, but there was enough changes where it was definitely a FUN story to read. And still one of the best in fantasy imho, and now I have read quite a lot more. And understand that it was a bit more predictable, it is still far more of a fun ride in that first book, than many far less predictable, and 'original' books. Take that for what it is worth. But there is much more to good story writing than that, and it should never be the be all and end all dismissal of a work's quality.
Jeremy Irons is Jeremy Irons. He can make the blandest script sound Shakespearean (and when's he's given a role in a movie inspired by Shakespeare, like the Lion King, he is downright incredible). But not even he could save Eragon. He may single handedly make the best moments of the film, but ultimately he was too good for this adaptation.
Honestly, it's saddest to me because it really felt like they could have done a pretty decent job. The cast wasn't terrible, and it had the funding it would need, it just had... awful, awful writing.
@@mallios13 Eragon was released a year later on VHS in 2007 as opposed to History of Violence in 2006, but it wasn't a serious release like History of Violence. Sources say History of Violence was the last "serious" release on VHS which is why it is credited. Personally, I think if someone owns an Eragon VHS they should tape over the empty square and record something better... Props to anybody who knows/remembers what I'm talking about with the square :D
Christopher Paolini got a lot of hate when he started his series. Growing up I genuinely enjoyed it. Also I think he did a great job with his cast of characters.
Absolutely agree. He's probably my favorite male character. If I ever have a son, his name will be Roran. I was glued to all of his scenes in Eldest especially. I hope they redo the movies.
I think this speaks to the mindset of young people as well. Most kids when they see something, if they don’t like it, they move on, it’s why when movies are bad you don’t see the kids fighting about it endlessly, it’s almost always a specific portion of adults in the fandom who feel like they have a stake on it due to their own nostalgia with the source material. And honestly I think taking a child’s mindset to judging entertainment is probably a good thing. Not to say we can’t critique something, but just that the world is not ending because a film or show didn’t turn out well as we want. It’s like you said, a healthy approach to life. We’re not always gonna get what we want and that’s okay.
The kind of reaction one could have before social media. Now he probably would’ve gotten involved in various online groups to get information about the movie and found a community. Then he wouldn’t have been able to “move on” even if he wanted to.
@@AdonanS Dude these book are objectively top tier. The characters are extremely good, the magic system is *chefs kiss* definitely one of the best to ever be written, and the story has heart.
@@AdonanS and I'm here to tell you that you can also just know that there aren't many books that do what inheritance does better than inheritance does it.
When I first saw the movie before reading the books I loved it, because dragons. That's enough for me to enjoy most movies honestly. However, after finding the books and starting those it became obvious to me within a few chapters just how badly cut the movie was. This series definitely deserved better than it got from this film.
@@koalaeucalyptus I also saw the movie before reading the book. And honestly i quite enjoyed the film before reading. Now i hate it ahah. To me Eragon is an "ok" film but a terrible, terrible, adaptation
same here saw the film before reading book blown away wow! is there a second film? yes great wait it's canceled!! NOOOO! wait there is book? books plurel :-D reads books re-watch film that why the 2nd was canceled! that said Jeremy Irons was the perfect choice for Brom (i still see him when reading the book) maybe if the Eragon movie had not been called Eragon... "a Dragon riders tale" "dragon master"... it might have done a lot better
The movie really wasn't an adaptation. It was like how a scary movie is "based on a true story". So many things where changed from the book, big things too. The Inheritance series was a story with many loose elements. Occam's razor was not used. This translates badly to a movie, especially when the movie is made before the book series is complete.
I wrote to Paolini when I was in high school and I mentioned how disappointing it was that they didn't really take the story or characters seriously in the movie, and in his response he basically said, "Well, even if the movie was awful, the book will always remain untouched, so we can take comfort in that."
@@umbreoniteUwU It was written by a kid and got published because of his parents. But we were kids when we read it, and so we didn't mind or notice. Kind of like there are a lot of wrong things about Harry Potter, but we were kids and were sucked into the magical world, so we didn't care. From a literary perspective, Eragon is far from good. Which didn't really matter because we have good memories of it. Paolini hasn't written anything famous other than the Eragon series. Same as J.K. Rowling not having a good record with anything outside of Harry Potter. In comparison, there's let's say Brandon Sanderson with many series under his belt. A good writer is marked by people following the author, not the book.
@@Abrakadabro666 the book is extremely well written if you judge from the emotional impact it has. Places like Carvahall or Farten dûr or Dras'Leona become emotional attachments (Dras'Leona being an example of a place everyone dislikes) in ways that many other authors do not. The story of Carvahall in particular is one told with such heart that nothing from AsoIaF came even close to it. The north and Winterfell are my favorite places there but they just don't compare. So I wouldn't say that it's not well written when the tale feels so alive.
Having just finished rereading. Theres a ton of philosophy and real world advice throughout the books. The descriptions of things like meditation, responsible drug exploration, the hardships of going to war, and the castles and clothes man! These werent vague imagery, paolini really did his research. This book changed my life
@@marcusappelberg369 I honestly found the latter books a bit of a let down. It seemed a step back from eragon where they just felt rushed compared to his first book.
I like the last book most of all honestly I think it would have been kinda stupid if Christopher had spent the entire series hyping up galbatorix as pretty much all powerful only to have eragon beat him would had subverted the expectations of his reputation. Instead we got a fairly realistic expectation of the villain
I wish more people would highlight the great work WETA did on Saphira, and Patrick Doyle's beautiful score, which are easily the two most positive aspects of this movie along with Jeremy Iron's interpretation of Brom. Super excited for Disney's adaptation, hoping it will turn up well !
That's what I thought when watching this movie. The actors and environments lacked greatly, but Saphira looked pretty dang good and the music was great
I only remember one thing from this movie: Eragon has a nightmare with flashes of war and dragons, and wakes up and immediately grabs his arm and says, "Ah, my arm!" The scene was so awkward and the line so flatly delivered that it became an inside joke with me and my friends. It was one of the funniest things I had seen.
I really enjoyed the Eragon books when I was a teenager and recently got them on Audible to revisit the material. Yes, the books are for young readers and are not a masterpiece, but they give us a charming story which was written with passion. And a Star Wars themed story taking place in a Tolkien-like world isn't a bad thing at all. But the movie...just disappointing.
Yes, also, the theme of Eragon is completely different from SW or LotR. Whereas those movies are about confronting evil, maturing as a person (SW), or finding redemption (LotR), Eragon is about love and its power to conquer all things. The early chapters are about Eragon developing a loving relationship with his dragon, raising her from an egg, seeing her as a pet, teaching her how to speak, and eventually choosing a name for her and seeing her as an equal and a life-partner. It is ONLY because of this bond that Eragon is able to overcome the challenges in front of him. Eragon's strength alone is almost enough, but not quite enough to win. It's only when people threaten his dragon or his other family that he is able to find that last bit of strength and defeat his enemies...
and thats a great thing when your read the books as a teenager because when your read it now you can see how it is not a masterpiece as you described it but it ads the nostalgia. i loved the books as a kid and i still do love them
It was a true tragedy to see such a promising film franchise cut down before it even had a chance to breath. It was a great simple story, and the studio messed it up. It even had a fantastic cast. It was snatched from the jaws of victory.
The cast was horrendous tbh, thats at least what I felt like when I watched the movie the first (and last) time as a hardcore fan back when I was like 14 or so.. I mostly hated the movie for the fact, how they butchered the characters. All of the images and characteristics I had built up over 3 books and years of reading was deleted and replaced by the movies versions of the characters, especially soul crushing in the case of Eragon, Brom, Durza, the Ra'zak (or whatever they were called) and Arya..
The best way to describe this movie is "A B-movie with A-movie visual effects". The effects ARE great, but with no substance to anything else, it all just leads to a 'meh' experience.
I bought the DVD just so I could listen to the Director’s commentary to see what the fuck happened and the Director is a madman Uwe Boll type. He bragged about how he forced production to get behind building a million dollar historical building for Eragon‘s home with his uncle so it would be more satisfying to burn down. This is the kind of idiocy that made this.
Im no expert when it comes to cgi and I watcht the movie only ones as kid but the thing I remamber best is how bad safira looked. Just the way her head is formed, her skin her everything... rest might be good, but it a film about a dragonrider and they did that ugly whatever. Besides fucking the story up so no second film is possible.
The one that breaks my heart the most is Angela. She's such a spicy fun character and I imagine her kind of like a River Song, a classic fantasy intelligent, cheeky woman with a side of mystery. And in the movie she's turned into a music video look for one hit wonder Joss Stone.
Eragon was honestly one of my ALL TIME FAVOURITE fantasy movies when I was a kid. I hadn't read the books (and still haven't yet) so I had nothing to compare it to, and to a young persons mind who loves the connections between man and nature and the affinity between Humans and Dragons and the different types of relationships there are, I found it to be really wonderful that stuck with me for a very long time. I was always reeeally confused it never got another film, until now I guess. Still hope we will get a remake of it someday.
I'm so glad to find a comment that I relate to. All of the other comments make me feel so awkward about how much I absolutely adored this movie as a kid. I read the book sometime later and it didn't detract from my love of the movie at all. I waited for YEARS longer than I should have hoping to hear about another movie. I do truly hope we'll see a new adaptation one day.
I completely agree with you. Not having read the books (not even knowing it was an adaptation), I loved that movie. The last scene where the king ripped back the curtain to show that he had a dragon, screamed sequel and I couldn't wait. When it never happened, I completely forgot about it until probably within the last year. I thought about it and looked it up to see if it had happened and I never heard about it or what. Reading that it had been such a colossal flop really made realize how much they screwed it up for fans of the book, it screwed it up for everybody. I also hadn't realized how long it had been
@@Aizlynn_ the biggest problem for people who read the books before the movies, was how much they changed the story and characters, with no reason whatsoever. They basically deleted the images and characteristics of the most important characters from my head and replaced them with their poorly cast and depicted actors. In addition, they left out or changed so many important plot points, that it drove me crazy. To this day this is my single most deisappointing movie experience of my life and I will never stop talking about how they massacred one of the favourite stories from my youth hahaha Still hoping they will make it a show/series, which they should have done in the first place tbh
The Hobbit only failed cause Peter Jackson tried to streached a book that smaller then 1 Lord of the Rings book into 3 movies, thus the film having to streach out scenes and add new characters. The Hobbit at most could be 2 films, but the fact it was made into 3 films was a terrible decision.
@@MERCHIODOS Yeah Jackson seemed to forget that the Hobbit was a kids book... it’s a lot simpler than lotr. He basically made up half of the plot, which is never gonna be as good as Tolkein’s work. He did a great job editing down the trilogy for the big screen, so obviously understands the books but that doesn’t translate to writing your own version when Tolkien spent most of his life perfecting them and world building. But there were some great moments in the hobbit, the dwarves singing (I remember learning those songs off by heart from the book as a kid), the scene with the giants, the game of riddles with gollum were all great bits. So it’s infuriating he sold out to create 3 films when he could have had 2 amazing ones. Plus they relied too much on cgi, I missed the feeling of seeing actors dressed up as goblins and orcs, it does feel so much more real when done well like the original trilogy did.
I could not get over how much I hated the casting for Durza. His over acting, his over all face just not being super intimidating. Idk he looked more like a meth head at the gas station going through a goth phase than he did this horrifying Dracula-esque character that was a genuinely daunting first challenge for our main character.
Haven't watch the movie, but I gotta say, while I had a positive memory of Durza, when I re-read the serie, I found him to be sort of uninteresting and not that threatening. In general, the first book was just eh.
Personally, I'm kind of the opposite on Durza. Almost every character had issues with over-acting, so I don't really hold any issues with Robert Carlyle or any other actors. In fact. I wonder if Robert Carlyle had any input when he was involved in Once Upon A Time when he played Rumplestiltskin because he literally played "Durza but better."
I fell in love with this book series as a kid, and I actually had to chance to meet Christopher Paolini IRL! He's very pleasant and talkative, and actually seemed reallly interested in the art kids would bring for him. Really lovely guy. Sad how the movies just didn't catch the ball, but understandable :)
No, at least Airbender wasn't eragon. A million times better than eragon, which still doesn't make Airbender a good movie. Airbender was meh, while eragon is the absolute worst movie made ever. Period.
I haven't read it front to back again, but from time to time I just pick the books and read my favorite parts or chapters again, they always hit just the same as the first time. Cap is right, they're not masterpieces but they are good, I always thought they're good at making you connect with the characters and what they're going through, and you can feel the care and dedication of Christopher Paolini in them.
I always thought it also brought some unique concepts to the genre that we don't see to often such as the whole telepathy thing and relationship this leads to with other characters. Or some of the visuals it created in my head (e.g. farthen dur) would have been fantastic to actually see if done properly
Eragon was the first book I read in English as a German native speaker. I remember my dad getting the 4th part earlier because he could read english so i decided to try reading in English. I still hope for a 4 season series that does justice to alle the cool characters introduced in the books
Or because they didnt introduce the dwarves, where almost the whole second book takes place. Or because Eragon does not suffer his wound on his back, which is also one of the main plots after the first book
I was so pumped for this movie when it came out. I remember going to it with a friend who had never read the books. The second the credits rolled he looked at me and said “they left a lot out, didn’t they?”
Mmmh, one of the only things I can remember from watching the movie myself (many years ago) is being so irritated at the descion to just instantly 'magically'(?) age Saphira to an adult in one scene. Her line just after that happens is so cheesy too. (Something like: "You're right Eragon, now begins a new era for the Dragon Riders, and I am your Dragon.") I didn't feel invested in seeing the rest of the movie after that. >~
Uhr, same! ^^' At the time, I was sad for her because I felt she didn't have a real childhood. At least in the book she really grows up, she doesn't evolve like a pokémon.
The importance of their relationship as he raised her was just tossed out the window when that scene happened. I'd already read Harry Potter and LOTR before Eragon and still found the books enjoyable and well written, and so at that moment I knew this movie was not trying to be a good adaptation at all. These other books had changed small things for their adaptations but this was like if in the first Harry Potter movie he was just already friends with Ron and Hermione and knew he was a wizard and was just going off to school. The context is completely different and nothing going forward has the same meaning that it should.
"I suffer without my stones" We had to pause the movie for a 5-minute laugh break after that line and its delivery. Can't say we "enjoyed" any part of the film more than that.
There is so much wrong with this movie. I think everyone reading the book had a specific picture of the world in mind. And the movie didnt portrait that picture. I know it sounds weird, but there is something off in the scenery that didnt fit the theme at all. Also Saphira is a main character in the book - not some gadged belonging to Eragon. Arya´s role was mostly cut out, although she too is a main character. The armor and the weapons look like from a costume rental, while Paolini was extremely specific about all that. All in all this felt more like a cheap russian rip off than an official movie.
I honestly thought that Arya's roll in the first book is a support character. She had the first chapter, then a some dreams. When she finally gets introduced to Eragon it's right before the battle that ends the book. Her purpose was the get Eragon to the resistance. I HATED this movie, As mentioned in the video the acting felt stale, they had two boys fighting with stick instead of the training with the sword as a daily exercise. The shade fight was just bad. There was NO tension as the acting was just meh. Thats not even getting into the race change that happened.
I think it’s the color palette you’re picking up on. I always pictured Eragon looking and feeling like LOTR, and visually the big difference is that Eragon has these bright, popping colors all the time
Saphira was indeed very well designed, and animated. Honestly, I think she was the one thing that actually had effort put into it. But, her personality was way off, and the voice actor didn't really feel like she was Saphira. The other characters weren't matched to the book at all, design or personality wise.
@@SilverDrakez The soundtrack is also really good. "Once in every lifetime" is a song that trully encapsulates the book Eragon feeling, that of a "bildungsroman" where an unremarkable guy slowly learns about the world to become a great hero. It also works as a really good theme for the movie.
Jeremy Irons really was a standout, I fully believed he was the Brom of the books. If everyone could have brought that passion and gravitas to the film then maybe things would have been better.
I loved these books when they came out. And begged to go see the movie. My parents took all of us as a Christmas treat. Even at 17 I knew what we were watching was trash and felt so bad dragging everyone to the theater.
Yooo you just blew my mind by showing me a current pic of Eragon's actor because he is in the new season of "You" and he is unrecognizable and his performance is probably the best thing about the entire season. I never would have thought he was Eragon.
Literally my favorite book series... Still pray that someday a director will pick it up. The books are so in-depth and bring a lot to the table, and could be made into like 6 movies. IT HAS SO MUCH POTENTIAL
@@endlessnoodle3056 Not sure what exactly you mean by that, but even high-quality reskins can be massively successful. Just look at the countless successful media just based on Christian mythology or European folklore. Just look at most of the stuff Disney's put out. Just look at the various movies that are basically various Shakespeare plays but with a different setting (up to and including Lion King, btw)
Got assigned to read Eragon in middle school when the movie was coming out. Got really into it because I'd listen to it on audiobook with my uncle, and we read like the first 3 books that way, but the movie was trash, and at a certain point I just put the books down because they took forever to come out, and by the time they did I had matured enough to find the flaws in the writing. Eragon's always been a series I've loved, and been disappointed in in equal measure, lol
@@matthewparker9276 I don't remember exactly how it went cuz it was ages ago, but I remember "leave everything behind" ending feeling extremely pointless. Like nothing about the character or his relationships with other suggested that his solution was going to be fucking off to the middle of nowhere until halfway through the last book but the author does it anyway because?? Hero's journey?
I was 12 or 13 when I started reading Eragon in 2005, and even then I could see it being Star Wars in Lord of the Rings clothing. However, I didn't mind it back then because the similar plot points sort of gave me an anchor to follow along. When I got ahold of Eldest, I was excited to continue the story, but that's when I started noticing flaws in Christopher Paolini's writing, and something I've been told is a huge No-No in writing circles, is that his prose beats you over the head with a thesaurus and the story's pacing is atrocious. It takes a third of the book for Eragon to reach the Elves (and the book is as thick as the later Harry Potter books) and the story constantly switches to unexciting sub-plots like the Varden's politics and their crisis of figuring out how to stay funded and balancing their checkbooks. You would understand how boring this would be to lizard-brain teen me that I actually put off the book for a few years before picking it back up in my last few years of high school. I still haven't finished the series.
True! He was the perfect Brom. Still, when reading the books I honestly was disappointed when it turned out that he was Eragon's father. I wanted his father to be Morzan, Murtagh's father.
This is a fantasy series that is actually way darker than Narnia and matures so much deeper after the first book. Eragon while definitely no masterwork is literally redefined by the sequels. a seemingly classic and teenage fantasy story takes on new light as the rest of the series reveals more and more weight and backdrop to this story. This is actually more akin to LOTR than most realize, and I would sooner acknowledge this similarity than Starwars. while the Inheritance cycle shares lots of similarities with the Star Wars saga so too with the perfect LOTR. Theres total gold here this series is so cinematic. It just needs someone who will put in the time and money into making it real. As cool as series are they're not as big as the movies. nor do their visual effects look as good all the time. GOT had amazing dragons but the fantasy elements were constricted to certain shots and you could tell; its atmosphere was certainly not 100% magical like LOTR and eragons world needs to be.This needs to be 4 films, each film being 2.5 to 3 hours long. And the way to release it would be to shoot them in pairs. Eragon and eldest back to back, released a year apart, and then brisingr and inheritance shot together and released consecutively two years after the first pair. so hypothetically: Eragon- 2025 2.5 hrs eldest- 2026. 3 hrs Brisingr- 2028 3 hrs Inheritance- 2029 3.2 hrs And it needs to be directed by a passionate fan. Id love to work on this if I was a big movie director personally. Peter Jacksons LOTR team would be amazing to get the heart and the action and the bittersweet ending thats so realistic and grounded despite being high fantasy. A faithful adaptation exactly like how LOTR did it or DUNE 2021 did it. directors and writers with clear understanding of why people love he books what the books are saying not just for the cash money. Success comes with that fundamental understanding of DOING IT RIGHT
@@teramalik7260 brom has the role of gandalf eragon is both Frodo and aragorn, wdym literally this has wayyyy more in common with the lore of LOTR than Star Wars. Same genre of high fantasy. Orcs, dwarves, elves, magic, dragons, great power, the hero from an unsuspecting and isolated valley. Eragon in love w Arya like aragorn w Arwen or beren and luthien. In an endless number of ways the Tolkien legendarium has deep parallels to the inheritance cycle. This isn’t a new take. Also it’s common knowledge that the books get better with each installment of the inheritance cycle. Not sure what your opinion is but that’s literally the objective take held by the fanbase critics and most readers.
I remember my grandpa rented the movie the day I finished the first book. I was so excited to watch it before moving on to Eldest. The beginning happens. It's whatever. My brother, who had not read the book, really liked the opening for some reason. It gets to Saphira and then just... has her magically grow to an adult in 5 seconds? And she introduces herself? I loved the beginning of the book, of Eragon wrapping his head around having a dragon, trying to raise it, trying to hide it from the village, trying to subtly get clues about being a dragon rider from Brom, getting THE NAME from Brom and the meaning of naming his dragon Saphira. All of that scrapped for a quick CGI flying scene from baby to adult. I watched the rest of the movie just to watch it with my family. But I absolutely did not enjoy it and they could tell.
They always screw themselves over too. Like you’re starting a franchise why tf are you getting a first time director who focused on visual effects before this?
That's what confused me the most in the promotional materials for the movie. I specifically remember there was a scene in the book where Eragon has to heal the wounds in her wing membranes, so it's not like it was ambiguous what the wings looked like.
@@adenowirus she still has membranes, there’s just feathers as well, which can kinda make sense? As a large dragon she needs all the help she can to fly :p
@@katiemerckel7074 So the movie clarifies that there are membranes under the feathers? I mean, by just looking at them you would think they're built like bird's wings.
I've got a complicated relationship with the book series. I feel like the more Eragon himself grows in power, the more the writing takes a nosedive. It's not so bad at first, his growth is rather natural and he makes mistakes along the way, some with really big consequences down the line. As he reaches a point closer to maturity and stops making so many mistakes though, the writing starts to feel like Christopher didn't really know what to do with the character anymore and started having to shoe in awkward drama. The stakes start to disappear as Eragon becomes far too strong for any ordinary threat to be a challenge to, and in general it starts to feel like it really needs to end but keeps getting drawn out for the sake of not feeling rushed. Perhaps he wrote himself into a corner with Galbatorix, not having a good entry point set up for him to reach his end by the time everyone else's stories were about ready to wrap up? Either way, it's a story with really good beginnings but overstays it's welcome and gets awkward before it ends. I'm glad this movie didn't get a sequel. The movie is very incompatible with the book lore, so any further storytelling would have to start telling a different story entirely, which at that point you might as well just be making something original to begin with. I do however like the idea of a reboot movie series that starts out more faithful to the book but gradually corrects the book series mistakes so that the pacing and character growth doesn't misalign with the ending. There's a lot of great moments from the books that I think would make for fantastic movie moments with the correct execution, but it would need to be done by someone with a lot more experience with movies in the genre in the past. It needs to be a passion project with dedication to the source material, and not just a safe and easy paycheck.
I think about the final fighting scene more than it´s usual for me and I think I have the answer about that (nostalgia might be talking). I think that Galabatorix had fallen because of isolation, mental and social. He intimidated everyone he could, killed or made them completely insane. He was your classic maniacal villain who didn´t feel any connection bc of trauma, so using empathy to show him true nature of his actions was a pretty sick move I haven´t seen anywhere else. SoI might be bullshitting here, but I read that you can be as strong, intelligent or willing to sacrifice, but you can turn monsterous without connection, empathy and kindness. Might re-read the series to get a new perspective on it
I mean at one point in inheritance it becomes a plot point and issue for eragon that he’s become too strong, fighting a bunch of normal people dulled his skills and he we no longer fit to fight anyone who was as strong as an elf or a dragon rider and he needed to fix that
I read the first book numerous times as a kid and due to the pace of the writing did not read the last two books until I was an adult. I found them so disappointing that I was shocked at how much the story had turned. So I went back and read the original two again and found that they really did not hold up at all. I had always heard the jokes about how it was basically just the story of star wars shoved into a Tolkien esc world. When I read the first one again its painfully parallel. While I appreciate the enjoyment the books gave me as a child I can say with certainty that they really aren't that great. They have flashes of excellence, but the first two books are so derivative its almost painful and the later books have almost no stakes and center around hundreds of pages of unrelated events while the story meanders its way to a very disappointing conclusion.
While I didn't mind the movie, I was still disappointed because I felt it could've been so much better. In fact, while I actually have the DVD at home I'm much more likely to pick up the book again than watch the movie. The books were quite enjoyable to me and I really got into them. I felt like most (if not all) of what made me connect to the world of Eragon was barely there in the movie. Reading some of the comments, I agree with those who say if might be better as a TV series to give more time for world and character-building.
Oh I will soooo watch it if Eragon gets adapted again. Especially if they keep the Dragon design the same. She looks beautiful in the film adaptation. Never understood though why The Golden Compass never continued though and they had to remake it.
Just came here to say that there actually has been news from Christopher Paolini himself that he’s going to be a co-wittier and producer for a new Eragon series with Disney+!! Not sure how far into production they are but I hope it all goes well and that it’s a good adaptation. I do have quite a bit of hope since the Mr. Paolini will be involved with the production.
The thing I loved most about the books is Paolini's excellent use of "Checkhov's Gun". Yeah, it's a pretty basic fantasy novel, but it uses those tropes and themes perfectly and every new character or new object WILL come up later in the series. The only thing that disappointed me was how in the first book we're told by the Arden's weaponsmaster "In the end, everything comes down to swords" and the book series ends with a magical fight. The movie itself was definitely rushed, which I think happens because producers don't know for sure if they'll be able to make a sequel.
I've always thought that too! The magic and atmosphere of the books seem so well suited for animation--like in Disney's Sleeping Beauty how you can shift from vibrant, light-hearted scenes in the forest to the grim, dark, scary scenes inside Maleficent's castle, not to mention the dragon battle sequences. There's a lot more freedom in animation as well to make the elve's homes elaborate and imaginative and so very different from other locations that isn't really possible in live-action without a large budget. Plus I think cartoons and animation, in general, can have darker themes and scarier moments without alienating younger audiences because that step away from realism provides a sort of safety net once the show/film is turned off.
@@brookb5890 very well said. I’ve never thought about using animation as a sort of safety net for younger audiences when it comes to darker themes. Disney, take notes!
@@pawebroszko4737 Silly? It goes for quite a different tone and aims a younger audience than asoiaf, but man, at least Paolini can write a conclusion and doesn't try to deal with 50 storylines at once!
One of the biggest problems with making a movie like this, is the first novel itself. I also said its just fantasy star wars, its the hero's journey to a T. And its so much more personal that its hard to explain. It has so many adaptation hurdles it needs to jump over before it can get to the novels that would be better to adapt. Eldest is my favorite and I can totally see how a story like that can be a movie. Roran's half in a style like 300 and Eragon still holding classic fantasy, and the two styles merge with the final battle of that novel with the deep red landscape and the almost white river in comparison. I get goosebumps just thinking about how that might be done. I think that if we are to have something like Eragon again, it would need to be a series. Give plenty of time (and episodes) building up the characters. Maybe build up Galbatorix as a threat by dedicating a few episodes to Roran's training before heading back to the village. Make sure his character has time to be established before becoming the second protagonist.
About that battle...On my latest re-read, I couldn't help but notice how stupid the vardens were. They were outnumbered, but knew that reinforcement were on the way(the dwarfs), so why didn't they wait for Galbatorix's army to attack? Instead, they were the ones to attack. You should never be the agressor if you're outnumbered, cause the defendor always had the advantage. Idk, that really bothered me. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Elder. Brisingr is where it gets good in my opinion.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 Fair enough. The only advantage to attacking first would be to catch the enemy off-guard, then when they think you're outnumbered, reinforcements can see it started and flank.
I remember being brought to this at the cinema with my friends. At the end credits I got up and said 'That was shit' someone across the cinema yelled 'YES!'
@@40rollsonly Dude, once I went to watch TFA in a rental theater and at the scene where Poe and Kylo are looking at each other at the beginning of the movie a woman screamed "HAVE MY BABIES!!!" and a disappointed man responded in a cringing tone, "Jennifer..." Ever since then I consider these stories as potentially true. :p
@@40rollsonly When I went to watch this movie in theatres, there were two other guys sitting three rows ahead of me. The three of us were the only ones in that session. The boys kept saying at specific scenes "That is not how it happened!" like Saphira's growth spurt or the skipping of important places. Eventually, I joined in and the three of us kept criticizing every little thing they did wrong, or plain out laughed at the lacklustre feeling. Some things are just plain true and did happen, no matter how unreal it may seem.
@@cv7958 I'm guessing you're replying to my comment, which is why you're in my notifications, so let me tell you this much: Learn how to read properly before you comment. Cheers.
@@notsosecretsnacker5218 Right? And because Eragon is the recipient of pretty much all the exposition dumps: Roran winds up being extremely show not tell. He has to deal with the Ra-Zac without ever getting an explanation for them, and in addition that making him dealing with them more badass: it makes them WAY more terrifying.
Me and my friend loved Roran way more than dragon when we were reading these books at the same time. Guy was a total badass and Dragon was just a whiny bitch
@@notsosecretsnacker5218 Are you sure you reread the story as an adult? Because even as a teenager, I was annoyed by how much plot armor Roran has (I mean, Eragon has his moments too. But with magic and a dragon, plus an occasional defeat (even if inconsequential), you can be somewhat overpowered. But "guy has a hammer" is a bit pathetic of an explanation for his god-like power).
If I recall correctly, and I haven't seen it again since it was first shown, Rumplestiltskin's introduction was him emerging from the darkness of a dungeon cell and making Snow White jump. I read in an interview that that had been an entirely authentic reaction, given that Ginnifer Goodwin didn't know that he was going to do that!
@@bibliophilecb "Harry Potter had real witchcraft in it!" - Some conservative, ignorant, and paranoid Christian parents probably. Also Trivia: Did some of you know that Harry Potter actually got banned from many US and other schools From other countries years ago? since many priests and Christian parents think HP had an actual wizardy and withcraft in it, but what I find funny is; according to some people who practice Wicca, Harry Potter is nowhere near similar to their 'religion' especially they don't use freaking wands.
@@fantasyalover4782 I grew up in small town Bible Belt, trust me, I saw plenty of places where Harry Potter was banned lol. My favorite story is a friend of mine who wasn’t allowed to read them, then when she turned 18 she immediately read them and said not only were they absolutely fine, but the “documentaries” her parents showed her about how bad HP was taught her way more about real witchcraft than HP did.
I mean, it's just a nice and kinda obvious solution for the communication problem with a big lizard which shouldn't be able to form human words with their snout.
Do you wish we had more Eragon movies?
Go to brilliant.org/Midnight/ and sign up for free, the first 200 people that go to that link will get 20% off the annual Premium subscription.
Your mom
Oh hell no!
Definitely Not! Never ever they need to start an “Eragon” Franchise!
Yes
I'd be down for a remake or a tv show but not a continuation of the original film. I just despise the scene where Saphira just magically transforms into an adult and can speak perfect english.
Are we not even not going to talk about how the elves weren't even elves, the dwarves weren't even dwarves, and the urgals weren't even urgals
They didn't even fuck up the dwarves. They just...didn't have them at all. Like, they just cut an entire fuckin' race because it didn't fit in the budget, even though they were pretty goddamn important throughout the books.
Kind of like the books weren't even good haha
And yet, none of them got shafted as bad as the Ra’zac by the adaptation.
@@adgato75 easily as good if not better then harry potter
@@greydawn8820 Not even close. Harry Potter will still be considered a timeless children's classic in 50 years - like Oz or Narnia. Eragon will be considered a ripoff trash pile. Because it already is by anyone who knows the fantasy genre at all.
The people who like Eragon like it because they read it as dipshit kids , and didn't know any better. And cling to it out of nostalgia. It just flat-out sucks.
Jeremy Irons is a professional. No matter what film he's in, he gives a performance to enjoy.
*krhm* Dungeons & Dragons...
@@frontiergibberish And indeed, Irons is the only enjoyable part of that film.
@@frontiergibberish Right? I literally only went to see it because he was in it, and it sooooo wasn't worth it.
@@luriven4800 No, the movie was so bad I was mad at Jeremy Irons because he was the only reason I went to see it. Painful, painful experience through and through.
@@frontiergibberish He knows what kind of movie he's in.
I feel Eragon would make a better netflix series than a movie, like they’d actually have time to flesh out the characters
I agree 💯
Maybe with how big the Witcher is hopefully they'll think about it
This is absolutely true. Unless they’re gonna make very long movies that cuts ZERO content, the show format would be the better way to go for most adaptations.
I always wondered why the Dragonlance novels and the Discworld books where never turned into a film franchises. Then I remembered reading somewhere that its actually a miracle whenever a successful movie gets made at all in Hollywood. But NETFLIX has definitely opened up a whole new world for film and this might be the next wave.
I just assumed pple went and watched How to Train Your Dragon instead, basically the same premise done successfully.
also it's been years since I've seen the movie but I remember distinctly that Saphira was just a very bland, "dignified talking dragon" that reminded me of Aslan. Saphira is not an Aslan-like figure in the books, she's super sarcastic and witty and gluttonous. She has character, she can be goofy sometimes (e.g., her getting drunk at the beginning of Eldest and breaking a table)
Or how she barged into Nasuada's command tent (breaking several pieces of furniture and pinning the poor commander against a tentpole in the process) because she wanted to see Eragon again after he sent her away so he could deal with the remaining Ra'zac and Sloan at Helgrind.
It's little things like that that deeply inform the relationship she and Eragon have. It's not just the bond of Dragon and Rider; it's also a bond of parent and child. It's a really powerful bond and I absolutely dig it.
I never read the books, so the movie was my first introduction to Saphira and I found her to be a really beautiful Dragon and thought her personality made sense for such a noble creature. But it would be nice to see her as people have experienced in the novels as well.
@@danielwhyatt3278 i always say that the movie had potential. When i was reading the books, i actually had the faces of the actors or saphiras design for the dragons in my mind. The cast was good (in my opinion) but the way they went about it was... not so good to say the least
I thought sapphire getting drunk and passing out at a party was so great because dragons generally have 3 modes:
-Just straight up animals
-Mystical creatures of magic that are all ethereal and kind of above everyone else
-sly cunning and evil
And sapphires character is separate from all those stereotypes! It’s what I was really drawn to with the books
@@Shadethewolfy or when she pinched aragon and murtagh to the ground untill they wanted to talk to each other :p xp
I laughed when during the middle of the movie they had saphira burst into flames, becoming a bigger dragon as if she were a Pokémon instead of growing over time
Yeah😂 director : slowly grow a dragon? Na na nah, let's have eragon use an evolution gemstone 😂
Yes I almost fell off my couch when that happened!
@QueenJuliRose LOL, I screamed that in my head, cause my mom was sitting next to me on the couch.
I always thought that scene was meant to be a time jump, as in "a few months later, Saphira had grown into a larger size", and I thought it was shot in such a weird way
@@akashvishwanath1159 Most of the crimes against humanity in this abomination were perpetrated by Peter Bookman, the screenwriter, not the director.
My main qualm was how they butchered the story line so bad they couldn’t have continued a second movie even if the first was well received
True
I read the small, paperback, making-of book and read that the director asked Paolini to tell him what will bein the other books so as to know what to leave in or out of the first movie. So, the director did have plans on how to make the next movies.
This was my problem, and what made me walk out of a movie theater for the very first time. I was so disappointed by the fact that it couldn't even keep the book's plot straight that I left. I wanted to even ask for a refund, but couldn't find any staff. Such a sad waste.
Came here to say exactly this
I cam handle poor acting. But missing key plot points is unforgiveable.
The whole second book is ruined if eragon remains fit and healthy
Or they could have reconned it to appease the fan base creating a giant mess like Percy Jackson.
as every true paolini fan knows to say when someone brings up the movie: what movie?
"A movie? When is it supposed to be released?"
Same goes for Avatar^^
I’m a true Paolini fan, but I truly wish I could say I never knew about the movie, let alone the abomination of a video game. I only have myself to blame for the second part.
@@admiralglenn2323 I was so excited for the game, I got it on ds so it was also probably the worst version of a bad game and I was so disappointed.
@@ryanambsdorf2859 mine was for Xbox 360
I remember back in high school i was reading these books and I was stoked. I was talking to my english teacher about them and I asked him “can you believe a teenager wrote these?” And he simply replied “yes.”
Yes, if you reread them when you’re older, you can definitely tell haha
I could tell as a teenager. It's a fun adventure book, or maybe just an interesting world if lore, but given how straightforward it is, I wasn't interested in reading the others.
Well, to be fair, even though he was a teenager at the time... his books were written better than any Stephen King book ever made. Chris Paolini has great mentors in his parents and he is a natural story teller.
@@sue8412 ...his writing is still better than most adult authors.
Of course I can believe it. It would be far more shocking if such immature books were written by an adult.
One of the best choices in the books is that we NEVER see galbatorix except at the very very end of the novels. The dedication to making him actually scary was so great in the books and it managed to make me have to physically stop reading to calm myself down.
Totally agree. That scene in book 3 where we actually hear him talk for the first time, that was really exciting.
It was the opposite for me. Galbatorix was such a let down once he actually showed up on the page because he could never live up to what I'd imagined him to be over the course of the saga.
@@Oscitant_Otter Thats the risk with making characters like Galbatorix. Some found him scary, some saw it as a let down. Its flipping a coin.
In a way, it's like how Star Wars introduced the Emperor and Avatar the Last Airbender used Firelord Ozai (though not perfectly executed).
@@taqresu5865 Its exactly like how Star Wars built up Jabba (before the weird additions added him having his tail stepped on in A New Hope). We hear mentions of him as a big crime boss with Han owing him a debt in 4 and then we see the consequences of this debt at the end of 5 and then finally see Jabba in 6 (and he looks totally different to what you’d expect).
"Avatar the Last Airbender"
"Eragon"
"Percy Jackson"
I hope I never see any worse adaptation than these
The Artemis Fowl movie would like a word with you
Dragon Ball Z was also awful, I've heard
At least Percy Jackson had Alexandra Daddario as eye candy to make it more enjoyable.... The other DONT..... Lol and at least they try to make her blonde on the second movie, too little too late anyway.... I will never get why Hollywood thinks theyre gonna succeed by changing more than half of things, and not sticking to the source material, God if those works are getting an adaptation in the first place its cause PEOPLE ENJOY THE FN SOURCE MATERIAL... DONT CHANGE IT ... PERIOD....
Dark tower was pretty unforgivable for how bad it was.
@@hannahallen1799 *Dragon Ball
DBZ hasn't had a live action adaption yet
Bottom line: it's bad but not The Last Airbender bad
We don’t talk about that one
@@kaitlnwhite6809 The Last Airbender is the movie we TRY to forget like Eragon, but can’t since it ruined the days of millions.
Artemis Fowl was worse
@@chananyaminster2075 Worse than which one? The Last Airbender or Eragon?
@@chananyaminster2075 I avoided seeing Artemis Fowl since I knew it would ruin my day just as TLA did. Seeing everyone’s reaction to it, I think I made a *very* wise choice.
I love that for the scene with Galbatorix he also calls it a stone as if he doesn’t know it’s an egg.
As if Durza doesn't know either
that might even make sense as there is reason to not spread the knowlege
@@the_retag But they are the only people in the room and both of know full well that it's an egg. And before you say that someone is listening in, Galbatorix has his whole capital on heavy lockdown at all times, to the point where if someone even so much as sniffs the wrong way, that person will probably be at the next day's public execution, so there's no reason for him to even consider spies to be an issue.
I like the Eragon for ONE reason only. It introduced me to the books. Haven’t looked back.
That's the exact same way I got into the books. I had cheap tv and it was a movie on one night and I thought it was amazing read the books then decided never watching the movie again
Same movie to promote books
Kudos brother
To be fair the books have a ton of problems.
Oh Shut Up Sheev. For 14 year old me they were utter bliss. A world that was way more interesting and beautiful than mine. And they’re still a ton of fun 10 years later. DONT Start with the whole “it’s just Star Wars” crap, because I can tell you where to shove that too. It’s frickin YA. - Anyway. There’s the reaction wanted.
We seriously need more dragon flicks, good ones preferably.
Aw man, i wanted some more bad movies bout dragons 😔
A
Dragon heart is ok for a franchise and they made some in recent years
I do like to see bad movies hahaha but yeah, preferably good
I always thought American Dragon: Jake Long would make a great flick
Honestly, Jeremy Irons is the perfect Brom. He is the one member of the cast I would carry on to a new adaptation. He does a fantastic job of playing the grumpy, sarcastic mentor.
If they bothered to have a good script, Jeremy Irons would have been great! But he had nothing good to work with in this film
I think they were all pretty good, Jeremy the best of them for sure. But they just messed up the story so hard.
Agreed
He was good enough in his role, that when I read the final book in the series, and there's a certain flashback with Brom, I actually pictured Jeremy Irons in my mind.
His acting performance in my head was incredible. They should give him an Oscar for it. ;)
@@runek100 abdvalot of people praise raibeet csrryles performed as durza
I want Eragon to be given another chance on screen. A TV series would do this book series the justice it deserves
Well, supposedly there is going to be a Disney+ series for Eragon sometime.
I know. I can't wait@@RancorSnp
@@Kadaue i'm not to optimistic about it, the book series takes advantage of being books a lot, especially for the telepathy, which is such an important part of the movie
I'd be significantly more excited if the series was animated
The fact that the final battle was SUPPOSED to take place on a mountain within a hollow mountain -- but was reduced to taking place on a hillside.
UGH. Whole dwarven race was erased, the rebels are souless, and arguably the coolest location on thw books, ditched....
@@eduardofreitas8336 And the Urgals were represented by some Hell's Angels bikers instead of the hulking brutes with massive tusks...
I will never forgive them for robbing me of seeing Saphira burst through that massive sapphire
@@slrflre YES
And the castle was reduced to wooden scaffolding.
I remember feeling quite pissed about this movie. Not even because the movie itself wasn't that great, but because they changed so much from the source material, it felt like a different world to me. One example: they didn't even bother giving the elves pointy ears. Yeah, it's a small thing, but things like that are everywhere in this movie.
I personally liked it as a general film. In comparison to the book and adaptation its bad but its not a bad standalone film.
Ya the ear thing bothered me too....not as much as entirely cutting an entire city of dwarves....but still bothered me
So true, C9Gaming...
@@dragonxswords114
No pointy ears for the elves, no dwarf city and Urgals portrayed as regular, brutish humans. The movie is lame everything in this movie sucks, except for Garrett Hedlund's great performance as the most popular character in the franchise. He was awesome. But sadly for him, he was a great and talented actor who had the misfortune of being casted in a crappy movie. I feel for him.
@@michelled.4874 Irons and Hedlung were good in this movie, Malkovich just had a bad script. I rly missed Orik, Angela was a joke, Tronjheim wasnt in the movie, the Urgals looked like the Umbar Pirates from Lord of the rings, the entire Roran-story was missing, the Ra'zac were bullshit...there was so much wrong in this movie...
The Percy Jackson series should be next
It’s was shit 😂
Yeah, the first movie wasn't that offensively bad and still had potential with the characters. They totally fucked up by the second movie though.
@@BigfootUnibrowMan shoulda made her a blonde from the start smh 🤦🏼♀️
The first one was pretty good as a stand alone movie but compared to the books, its a total mess. Second one is trash. And
Fun fact: the director of Percy Jackson is also the director of harry potter.
If anything, at least those movies have that beautiful chick to look at, and the other rival one is pretty cute too😁
Rorin strong-hammer was probably my favorite character. The cousin who becomes a badass through raw willpower, not an elven infusion, or magic. Just a pure badass.
His chapters were my least favorite. It felt like filler to the main story. Plus the scene where he kills like 200 people in one day is just absurd, and the ridiculous inner monologue when he is approaching the guards about planning to kill them. Those chapters had elements which were good because the stakes were higher but it was still like watching paint dry...though most of the 3rd and 4th book was like watching paint dry.
@@poling1990I don’t think roran chapters were bad but they were just placed at hype moments for eragons story making them so disappointing.
As a kid I skipped or at least skimmed through all the Rorin (and all side character) chapters bc I just wanted to continue Eragon's story.
However I just finished rereading the series for the first time in like 10yrs, and I gotta say Rorins story was very interesting.
Sure there are some parts where it feels like he's got plot armor. But in a world with magic, elves, and dragons, it's cool to see just a normal dude be able to hold his own against terrible odds.
@@VisuaIHavoci just went back and read a lot of only rorans parts/parts he was included in and I really enjoyed it that way, it wasn't over shadowed by eragons story that way
When I was a kid reading Eldest, I didnt like the Roran chapters, but I've since gone back and reread the books as an adult and...honestly, I think Rorans chapters were actually some of my faverate.
Fun fact: I read the books before seeing or understanding anything about the Star Wars. The reveal of Eragons father absolutely blew me away and I can now totally understand why the Star Wars scene is referenced so much.
Both are heavily inspired by Shakespeare and the Hero's journey. I wouldn't be surprised if George for twist was actually doing a spin on Oedipus.
@Marc Thome No, the Vader twist it was the only thing I could think of that would inspire an I'm the father twist.
@Marc Thome He then gouges his eyes out in the end, and didn't know that he killed his father thus fulfilling the prophecy
I love Star Wars but was still blown finding out Eragon's dad. Recently I reread the books and noticed so many similarities to Star Wars. It's like a different fantasy version of Star Wars.
Jason Reyelts when I read the chapter where Eragon finds his farm burned by the Razak (excuse the spelling I haven’t read Eragon in a while) I could almost hear the twin suns/force theme like Luke in A New Hope
The worst part of this film is that they turned the two strong female leads into crappy sidekicks with no personality. They made Saphira an obedient horse and Arya a dumb damsel in distress.
Exactly, remember how she almost killed Eragon while she was comatose cause he was trying to poke around in her head? This movie missed out on so much in regards to building up the characters, Arya is one of the most powerful people in the series and this disaster of a film completely ruined her
@@DragonRider-cx7br Almost killed him when he was poking in her head and showed him up in sparring sessions because he just couldn't keep up with her. Really such a wasted potential her character was with the movie.
YES OMG I HATE IT SO MUCH
I'm also disappointed in her movie character design... completely different feel.
@@olymolly3637 Oooooooooo I was heated. I was internally screaming "she's supposed to have black hair! Where's the pointed ears!?"
As sad as it is I don’t think Eragon will ever be a film franchise because the magic and the ways the dragon talks is so heavily based on the internal mental abilities
Yeah, feels incredibly difficult to do in a film. Maybe an animated series with really creative visual direction could do it, but you'd need a hell of an art design team to keep it easily readable visually for the entire series.
Too bad, there isn't many good movies with dog in it. Also, magic is easy just look at Lord of the Rings.
@@KRYMauL The magic in Eragon is visually just two people standing across from each other and concentrating. The actual combat system involves reaching out with your mind and driving your own conscious into the enemy, and also basically grammar and syntax based spell composition to get around hyper specific rules. The Lord of the Rings model wouldn't really work for magician vs magician encounters.
@@zenbrown7144 Oh you're talking about that part. Telepathy is weird, but maybe cutting back and forth will do it.
@@zenbrown7144 Yeah the escalation of the magic system went from your basic fireballs and enchantments to slaughtering hundreds of men instantaneously with a mind spike. I do remember being disappointed that Eragon's growth in power lead to much less compelling battles and fight scenes. Made me look forward to Roran's chapters more just because he was still going around caving heads in with a hammer.
Eragon was his best book. My greatest criticism is how Christopher would spend 2-3 pages describing a thing only to never reference it again. I understand world building, but I can clearly remember those Dwarven wolverine claws easier than major plot points in his other books.
Or that time Nasuada is having a meeting with some of her people and he starts describing what happened before that scene in such detail that I thought to myself, "Dude, why didn't you just start the chapter with that?"
It's almost like he is a home schooled kid from Montana.
His weakness was his schtick.
What do you expect?
@ryananderson5202 in case your immediate offense at the slightest criticism kept you from understanding my implication that I have bought and read all of the books in the series: I have bought and read all the books in his series.
Secondly, what does homeschooling or being from Montana have to do with his decisions as a published author? Why should I pretend that his writing was flawless just because he didn't have the advantage of attending public school in a more populated state?
Lastly, he was 18 when he wrote and published Eragon, a fact that the media spared no expense at promoting. I'm fairly certain my fair criticism isn't hurting his bottom dollar.
I disagree I think his best work came after the first book. Roran is one of the best characters in the series and gets hardly any focus until Eldest which is really where some interesting ideas start coming into focus rather than the pretty basic story in the first book.
I remember loving the third book, but the last book was such a disappointment.
Fun fact: Once Paolini did a Reddit AMA, and I asked him something about the movie, and who he would love to direct it, he replied that when making the movie, he gave the studio a list of four or five directors.
The list included Cuaron (before Potter), Del Toro, and a up-and-coming indie director... Nolan (reminder this was back when his biggest movies were Imsomnia and Memento).
The worst is the executives who always act like they know better, and their response to Nolan on the list was: "Oh no, we can do better than that".
He overrated his story a bit, didn't he? He isn't a young Tolkien. Those directors from the beginning of their careers, even when they were not famous, wanted to work on original or weird stories or classics, which Eragon isn't. It's a very very basic fantasy, enjoyable still, but it's not Harry Potter.
@@nickn2794 I think Del Toro would dig it, he'd probably put his own twist on the franchise and make something pretty rad
What an author in his position really needed was a director who was already a fan of his books
" Oh no, we can do better than that " *puts a vfx supervisor as director*
Today I learned - for someone his age, Christopher Paolini had very sophisticated taste in movies.
My one memory of the movie was Sapphira growing into an adult dragon in terms of seconds.
I was like 'what?'
How do they plan on portraying the actual ancient dragons?
...turns out, they don't plan
Oh, yeah that scene. I didn't even watch the whole movie, bc we were actually in the middle of packing up our things in summer camp to leave when someone put it on, but that scene was so stupid. I never had the urge to finish watching it it was so bad.. And I can report that the voice acting in german was also horrible
I hated how quickly the dragon grew up, it was completely stupid. So dragons aren't creatures in their own right, they're slaves to humans.
@@mjtopping4179 In the books, if I recall, Dragons never stop growing and they have a say in whom they hatch to, being able to wait countless years if need be. The book also spent more time to show Eragon caring for Sapphira
Yep, that was the moment I gave up on that movie. I didn't bother with the rest, as I was told I should not await much...but I wasn't prepared for how bad it really is.
Growing up in seconds turned Sapphira into a generic "wise old dragon" when she was a baby in the books that actually had to grow up and mature and was a more complex character because of it.
2:11 This is the part in the last Airbender when I literally cried from laughter. It took a bunch of big feisty eartbenders to move that tiny Boulder while in the animated version one skilled bender sets whole landslides in motion. The most "fail" moment of the movie in my opinion XD
this was the first scene from the movie I had seen, that's all what I needed to know
and even tough, I kinda know about half episodes of the show, I only learned later, that the earth-benders were imprisoned on a ship in the series later
It was also really stupid to imprison earthbenders next to a mountain
@@therealwinston3634 On a metal ship, specifically made so that they couldn't just, idk, bend the fucking world and murder the shit out of their captors. Logic, where is thee
Did you actually watch that movie, or even that scene? The several earthbenders make that rock wall that was cut out here, and the boulder is thrown by the guy at 2:13.
They couldn't even connect the motion of the Martial Arts with the bending.
In the show, each element responded with the bender's art; water flowed with the rhythmic sway of the arms, earth shifted with each rigid motion, fire erupted with each rapid strike, and air followed each circular swing.
In the movie, none of that grace was captured in bending, making it feel and look disjointed.
The worst part(which is saying a lot) of the Eragon movie was showing Galbatorix. In the books it was akin to Jaws, only really seeing glimpses of the monster until the very end. The build up was intense and the payoff was incredible. He was this unbelievably powerful force that was only becoming stronger over time as he used dark magic to twist the eldunari, and when Eragon finally faced him the clash was immense and extraordinarily memorable. I have not read the books in over a decade but I remember almost every detail of the throne room scene, and the unexpected way Eragon "defeated" him. The movie really set all of this up for failure from the start. I truly hope we can see a new adaption of Eragon in the hands of someone who cares about the story and characters.
Also the fact that we saw Galbatorix from the point of view of Nasuada, one of his victims, not Eragon, the hero meant to kill him. It showed what Galbatorix was actually like to the masses.
over a year ago I have seen a tiktok from Christopher Paolini that they will do anonther film but with him in the office. Haven't heard since then, but the hope is up 🤞
@@SaridenChan it’s going to be a TV show if I remember correctly.
Can we at least take a moment to drink a toast to the fact that a kid wrote his book and got it out there? A lot of us came up with fantasy or sci fi stories in our youth, some quite elaborate (I know I had whole notebooks filled with characters and plots in grade and high school) but few had the guts to seek publication. Bravo to Paolini! Yeh the film sounds forgettable but still. Credit where it is due!
Their parents have an indie editorial or something like that. So he didn't really need to seek publication.
His parents published the first book. Then it became a bestseller (even outselling Harry Potter for a while) and other publishers bought the rights
@@cavc94 additional bravo to his parents, as how many out there have that similar drive that got their kid's work published?
He's the equivalent of a teen with a successful business due to rich parents. Instead of rich it's well connected and already established in the literature world. That said, he still had to WRITE the darn thing, and that in and of itself is worthy of praise. He's quite dedicated to writing, and puts 110% into it.
@@hemmydall But it is awful. It got published because #1 : His parents were in publishing , as has been mentioned. and #2 : The fact that he was a teen , writing for teens , was good for publicity. That's it. It was a good hook to lure in saps who hadn't read enough fantasy to know how painfully unoriginal it is.
You can't tell everyone that you're planning a franchise
That's not how things work
Harry Potter and Fellowship of the Ring are the exceptions that inflicted so many vainglorious imitators on us. Because those two worked, we've been inundated with attempts to replicate their profitability.
@@morganrobinson8042 Lord of the Rings worked because all the three movies were already made
When trying to make a good franchise, *don’t* start with the thought process of “Franchise.”
Start with the thought-process of *story.*
*The Mummy (2017) has left the chat.*
@@DJtheBlack-RibbonedRose lmao
Galbatorix's build up is brilliant imo. We don't even get a description of his voice until nearly the end of the third book, and that serves to make him even more imposing and cruel than his actions had already made him out to be.
As somebody who read the books before watching the movies I simply couldn’t take him serious
@@Dudewithguns-ww7wc Yeah lmfao. Instead of this malicious force of insanity and power, we get what seems like a toddler putting on their best Bane impression for the adults at any party.
@@aussie7410 What do you mean by Bane?
@@elumiomerk4013 The DC character.
@@aussie7410 Oh is it because of the bald head?
I think the thing that really stuck with me from the Inheritance cycle was the motif of pain. As a kid I never saw characters that could actually get hurt and STAY hurt and the descriptions of the pain Eragon went through due to his injury was really affecting. There is also the pain he inflicted on others like the dwarf child he cursed to be a human shield. There's an entire chapter just describing the pain Roran is going through on a relentless ride. In the end Galbatorix is defeated not by a sword but by pain. You don't see that kind of shit in LOTR and lesser fantasy books aimed at kids and it gave a weight to the world.
Are you sure? There is the entire theme of Frodo feeling more and more painful and miserable due to his injury inflicted by Ring Wraith and the influence of the Ring, to the point he can't stand to live in Middle Earth anymore (funfact: hobbits are not immortal in undying lands, they allegedly live even shorter there. The place on the ship wasn't to grant Frodo with immortality, it was to alleviate his pain). Lotr is maybe not wrapped entirely around physical pain, but the theme is present.
@@a.w.4708 right sure but Tolkien uses the morgul blade injury more to reflect ptsd for frodo and doesn't really obstruct him from his task. Frodo didn't have to go to physical therapy before continuing on. Even so the rest of the non-boromir characters are pretty indestructible.
Funny I didn't think of it bc I read both series around the same time as a kid. It didn't really stick out as a focus point for Tolkien he doesn't devote that many words to it in comparison to describing landscapes or detailing historical context. It's there but it's not in the forefront
Of the many, one big disappointment was how the Urgals were portrayed as regular, brutish humans in the movie. Listening to the behind the scenes content on the dvd, the director gave some excuse that they were going to portray them like they're described in the book, but ultimately decided on a simpler design for those characters. Even back then (as a teenager), I could see through his b.s. and figured it was due to limited budget and time. Many of the sketches their artists had drawn were much better than the final design they ended up with.
Since Paolini was so young when he wrote the books, I really think hollywood took advantage of him, seeing the popularity of the books as a potentially easy money grab. In terms of the gross 249 million made off the 100 million budget, I'm guessing in actuality they more or less faired just better than breaking even. Movie budgets don't account for advertisement costs, which today usually will run them an additional 100 mil or more, depending on the movie. to the total budget. Back then, the advertising likely cost an additional 50 mil or more, on top of their 100 mil. budget.
When a movie " makes " 250 million , the studio usually splits tue box office profits with the theatres. It normally runs 50/50 over the whole time a movie is out. Theres a funky equation but it usually ends up at half n half, unless your disney. Disney always makes more.
I think it would be easy to guess this film lost the studio money and that's why there were no sequels.
I feel the same about the Urgals. When I was reading the books, I always thought of the Urgals as something like the Orcs from Warcraft.
They also removed elfs, dwarves, werecats and completely changed the razacs (they basically became really puny earth golems). They butchered the fantasy side of the novel...
was just gonna say the same! Urgals as humans,no horns, Arya an elf without elf ears no dwarfs and a total stupid ending to the movie that has nothing to do with the original story, saphira getting hurt ? like what the hell? And plus Eragon didnt even got the cut on the back ,that is very important thing on the next chapter but oh well.. What a fk mess and a money grab.
Well, Urgals should be full CG creations and studio just want to made movie as cheap as possible.
Eragon: How not to start a film franchise
The Mummy 2017: How not to start a cinematic universe
What did they do wrong
The Mummy?... More like Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible ft a "mummy"
I remember reading the book and being so excited they made a movie. I went with my mom, and from the moment that I saw the Urgals were just men, I knew it would be a shit show. I literally cried after I left, and was kind of embarrassed that I made my mom sit through it. What a joke.
I went with my mom and dad for Harry Potter 2 and was seeking their validation on how good the HPU is, felt nice they admired it, yet still calling it a distraction from my studies like any parent, I reall wish all these book adaptations never had such shitty movies,.imagine being embarassed you wasted your mom's time.
@@stankssmile5865 lmao. I know man. I genuinely felt bad.
@@KevinMcFernley that sounds so bad- my mom would especially get mad cause she hates it when i waste her time
Arya had round ears and there were no dwarves or Tronjhiem either
I felt the exact same way after dragging my mom to see The Last Airbender. It was a tragic experience.
I was CRUSHED as I walked out of the theater with my souvenir cup. Somehow I suppressed how bad it was and bought the DVD, couldn't make it passed 20 minutes, and got pissed I wasted the money. Inexperienced director, star, and bad script, nearly non-existent characterization for pretty much everyone aside, this movie was plagued with bizarre, unnecessary changes to characters and the world that were maddening at best and made sequels impossible at the worst. FEATHERS on Saphira, no elves, no dwarves or Tronjhiem, no Urgals, Durza on the weird shadow thing, SMFH. Some of the casting was really good even when their performances weren't. Malcovich, Carlisle, and Honsou were all great choices as was Sloan. I still picture the actor who played Sloan when I go back to these books.
PS: funny how you said you were crushed as I typed that sentence
Book: Ok so the dragons glitter like jewels in the sun, and sapphira has sapphire blue scales, which fit with her name!
Director: alright shiny blue egg, got it
Book: wait no that’s not what I said-
Director: and what does the dragon look like?
Book: well dragons are elegant and-
Director: got it, make it cute. Throw some fur on there and we’re good! Light gray is a nice collie too, very dignified.
Book: wait no saphira is blue!
Director: Alright I’ll give her a gray- ish blue tinge, just to appease the fans
Book: sorry did you say you were a licensed director?
@@morninggloom8391 those are not choices made by directors in this kind of projects. They usually just get a guy that more or less has a techical grasp on how to shoot a film and the executives decide almost every part of the script and the charcter design. They want a safe movie with little budget, a franchise prospect and merchandisable characters. And they got it. It was shit, but nobody really cared, there was no trace of passion nor interest in the making of Eragon.
The book is less than mediocre, I remeber reading it and thinking that it couldn't be worse than it was. Then years later I had to go to the movies with my little cousin who wanted to see Eragon at all costs and I realized that even with such bland and generic source material they managed to produce an impressive unsufferable piece of media.
@@giulioceresini1435 I see your point, and yeah while I loved the books, their writing quality is debatable (pretty sure they were written by a 14 year old). So thanks for the info about movie making, I actually didn’t know that, but what I said was purposefully exaggerated to sound funny, I do know that isn’t at all what would’ve happened and that a director isn’t in charge of the art or animation though.
Wether or not the movie was better or worse is really just down to opinion, so I won’t get into that debate.
I remember loving this as a kid but i forgot everything about it. Narnia is golden though. Stuck with me.
I loved eragon as a kid aswell 😂
@G L ah heard of that one. Was just a bit too unrealistic for me haha
Same, although I did love the Eragon books and was deeply disappointed in the movie. The first Narnia movie is still one of my favorites.
@@Olsenator I would definitely say so. The first one in particular has a special magical quality. The others are fun too. I own all three and rewatching them occasionally, which is saying something considering that I own fewer than 30 movies.
@G L both books of fiction
This movie was actually my introduction to the franchise.
When I read the book, the story was almost unrecgonizable.
I had that sensation as well.
Agreed
Yeah its like they threw the timeline of the original book into a blender and hit "pulse" a few times. Also the ending destroyed any chance for a sequel by solving all of the sequel's problems...
@@mangomoe7347 Doing so AFTER Eldest was already published too. Like there's the book with the Ra'Zaac monsterrs as major antagonists, it's literally right beside the book you're adapting. Could you not check that any decisions you make WON'T need a retcon?
I was so confused the first time I read the book because I was still picturing the Urghals as ripoff LOTR Orks.
STILL salty 15 years later about how Murtagh became basically a cameo/Easter egg instead of a dynamic foil to Eragon; also when you cast an actor that hot as an anti-hero of sorts *he deserves waaaay more than that, like, 5 minutes of screen time*! Would’ve been better than having Malkovich ravenously devour the scenery every 15-20 minutes...hope he didn’t get indigestion afterward.
Also-poor Robert Carlyle, had just seen the Full Monty for the first time and saw Trainspotting not long after, dude deserved better too.
Yeah Murtagh in the books is such a good character. Setting him up in the first book is so crucial, since you see so little of him in the others. His change is meant to be shocking and dramatic, but it also has his subtleties. From trying to care about Eragon, but being taken over by jealousy and rage... You desperately want to see the best in Murtagh even when you realise he’s not being forced to do all those terrible things. I didn’t want to think he was just bad! But for all this to happen you actually need to care about the character... Plus the hot anti hero actor is always a wasted opportunity...
If the director couldn't get a convincingly villainous performance out of Robert Carlyle, then he must have been doing something wrong.
Exactly! He really was a hot dude...Why in the world didn’t they expand his character more? I know he has a bigger role in the books but maybe somehow try to find a way to put more of him in the film?
@@leocervidae I re-read the books recently, and it blew my mind when the first book actually set up the relationship between Nasuada and Murtagh. I'm impressed that the author had already planned her to be captured, brought to Galbatorix and all that.
I think my favourite part about the Eragon series was when, I believe towards the end of the first book, he had only been learning the language of magic for a few months. So he was asked to bless a baby, and what he wanted to say was like "may pain and sorrow avoid you", but due to his bad grammar, he actually said something along the lines of "may you take the pain and sorrow of others upon yourself." The baby, due to his "blessing", began to age very fast and could telepathically hear the bad thoughts of all people around her, which also caused her physical pain.
That was such an interesting mistake for the fucking teenage hero of a fantasy epic to make. He just fucking cursed a baby! And she obviously hates him for it and is irritated all the time. This subplot keeps up over the books, where Eragon tries to find the correct wording to reverse the curse.
Spoiler alert:
And he never manages to free her of it! He only managed to alter the spell enough to make her be able to ignore all the telepathic worries of other people.
This was my first experience with hating something retroactively. I saw the film first and originally thought it was perfectly adequate. I was a young mother with a small child so it was a great option to play in the background. I found it charming and imaginative. Nothing special.
Few years later I came across the books and... while I've always been an avid reader, this was a different experience for me. Eragon is the first novel I can honestly say that I fell in love with. Not because it's the best written or the most original. But I felt the writer's love for his world and characters. And the relationship between Saphira & Eragon really won me over. When I finished, I felt so saddened to leave them behind. I literally just flipped the pages and started at the beginning again.
Looking at the film after that... it turned my stomach. As you mentioned, the book isn't anything spectacular but it has charm and love and investment. All of which is absent in the movie. The film is a lifeless cashgrab without even the minimum of interest invested. It angered me that they could just throw away such potential.
You perfectly described how I feel about Percy Jackson. I saw the first movie before reading the books and thought it was fun, then I read the books and retroactively realized the movie was such a disappointment!!!
You’ve completely summed up why I love these books so much!
I remember being 13, sitting on my bed, and before opening the cover to actually read it for the first time, thinking, “This is going to be an adventure.” And I was right. I loved those books, and this movie hurt so much.
This was exactly my experience with the Inheritance cycle and the Eragon movie; saw the movie first as a kid and liked it, read the books and absolutely fell in love, could never look at the movie the same again. It's just... So depressing to think of how little love really went into the movie, especially compared to how much Paolini put his heart and soul into the world and characters of his books.
At first, when I saw the movie as a child, without reading any books, I didn't think much of it. It was an okay-ish movie, fine enough to watch it to the end, but not good enough to leave that "wow" aftertaste. And after several years, when I actually took the time to read whole Paolini's quadrilogy and then rewatched the film - I understood how cheap and soulless it is. Even at the level of giving characters their book-appearance. It wouldn't be that hard to give Eragon's and Arya's actors some wigs, would it? I'd say the only thing that was actually very good about the movie overall was Jeremy Irons as Brom, and even he was killed off prematurely. Everything else is plain meh on its own and very bad in comparison with book's counterparts. Urgals and Galbatorix aren't scary, Durza is more cartoonish than anything, Eragon is flat, Ra'zacs are just a lame plot device, Angela completely lost of all her likable charm and turned into a "default fantasy seeress who'll be here for few seconds", most Carvahall villagers aren't even there or cut from final version, everyone else is so short on screentime that you don't even care about them. Although not completely horrible as a movie itself, it is horrendous as a film adaptation.
Would be nice if one day a good TV-series adaptation of "Eragon" came out. Although far from all-time masterpiece, it is still a very interesting story, complex enough to have good characters and nicely written plot arcs. Not as brutal and cunning as Game of Thrones, not as huge and legendary as Lord of the Rings, yet still very much worthy of recognition.
I actually liked Durzas look in the movie, and Jeremy Irons was definitely fantastic! But I feel like the actors did the best they could with a crappy script. Eragon definitely be better as a tv show. It would have given time to flesh out characters and world build.
@@darkfyraproductions7958 To be fair, Eragon 1 is awesome, but the series overall got significantly worse on each successive release. 2 was ok, 3 was bad, 4 was wtf am I even reading?
Though, I will say the empathy spell to defeat the baddie was a novel idea on the fourth book, but even there, I think the execution could have been better. I can definitely tell though the author's age when writing the novels. He didn't seem to have the complete control and understanding of how sagas or trilogies should be written, when things should be trimmed and when things should or should not be added in such stories, etc.
Though, I do see why some people think 'but omg, how can you like eragon 1 it is copy paste'. Um, yeah? Do people realize how many times they have probably watched star wars for instance, yet it is still the same exact story you know is coming right after it. Besides, if you look at things in a certain angle, a great deal of story telling is borrowing elements from others (even star wars, for instance, took a lot from Dune). It only becomes problematic when it is neither fun, and perfectly predictable. It was rather predictable, but there was enough changes where it was definitely a FUN story to read. And still one of the best in fantasy imho, and now I have read quite a lot more. And understand that it was a bit more predictable, it is still far more of a fun ride in that first book, than many far less predictable, and 'original' books. Take that for what it is worth. But there is much more to good story writing than that, and it should never be the be all and end all dismissal of a work's quality.
My experience watching Eragon:
I paused every 5 minutes to facepalm and ask "why did they change that?!?"
Jeremy Irons is Jeremy Irons. He can make the blandest script sound Shakespearean (and when's he's given a role in a movie inspired by Shakespeare, like the Lion King, he is downright incredible).
But not even he could save Eragon. He may single handedly make the best moments of the film, but ultimately he was too good for this adaptation.
Honestly, it's saddest to me because it really felt like they could have done a pretty decent job. The cast wasn't terrible, and it had the funding it would need, it just had... awful, awful writing.
The most interesting thing about this movie is that it was the last film released on VHS in the United States.
Wasn't that A History of Violence?
I definitely heard that movie and "last VHS" a few times.
@@CorrectionUnknown Survey says... "History of Violence" was the last film released on VHS. Eragon can't even make that claim.
@@mallios13 Good... a huge part of an age of movies should die with some dignity
Wouldn’t that technically be Bumblebee?
@@mallios13 Eragon was released a year later on VHS in 2007 as opposed to History of Violence in 2006, but it wasn't a serious release like History of Violence. Sources say History of Violence was the last "serious" release on VHS which is why it is credited. Personally, I think if someone owns an Eragon VHS they should tape over the empty square and record something better... Props to anybody who knows/remembers what I'm talking about with the square :D
Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter will probably be the only fantasy adaptations that lived up to their expectations
What about the series of unfortunate events Netflix series
Well, GoT did until they run out of books to adapt.
Harry Potter not really though
@@edgyanole9705 It’s not really fantasy. It’s heightened reality but not fantasy.
@@MissCaraMint I didn't see that they said fantasy, yeah the series of unfortunate events is definitely not fantasy
Making a movie from a beloved franchise, without actually understanding why people like it.
I see a common trend here.
New Spiderman movies be like
They also made this movie before the book series was even complete
Percy Jackson who? 👀
Roran "Stronghammer" Garrowson's story is my favorite part of the series.
Christopher Paolini got a lot of hate when he started his series. Growing up I genuinely enjoyed it. Also I think he did a great job with his cast of characters.
Oh hell yeah. The man barehandedly wrestled an Urgal and made the urgal tap out.
Absolutely agree. He's probably my favorite male character. If I ever have a son, his name will be Roran. I was glued to all of his scenes in Eldest especially. I hope they redo the movies.
Roran leading the charge on that city where they rammed the boats through the gates by breaking the dams will always be my favorite Roran sequence.
I'm a big fan of when he saved his fiancé from the Ra'zac
"I saw the movie, was disappointed and I moved on."
This is the healthy reaction to seeing art that doesn't speak to you.
The lack of sending death threats to the actors and actresses is a pleasant surprise
I think this speaks to the mindset of young people as well. Most kids when they see something, if they don’t like it, they move on, it’s why when movies are bad you don’t see the kids fighting about it endlessly, it’s almost always a specific portion of adults in the fandom who feel like they have a stake on it due to their own nostalgia with the source material.
And honestly I think taking a child’s mindset to judging entertainment is probably a good thing. Not to say we can’t critique something, but just that the world is not ending because a film or show didn’t turn out well as we want. It’s like you said, a healthy approach to life. We’re not always gonna get what we want and that’s okay.
The kind of reaction one could have before social media. Now he probably would’ve gotten involved in various online groups to get information about the movie and found a community. Then he wouldn’t have been able to “move on” even if he wanted to.
The Inheritance Cycle is to this day one of my all time favorite fantasy series
Damn right. There might be objectively better stuff out there, but these are still my favorite books.
@@AdonanS Dude these book are objectively top tier. The characters are extremely good, the magic system is *chefs kiss* definitely one of the best to ever be written, and the story has heart.
@@runtergerutscht4401 By might, I meant I don't know if there are much better fantasy novels, but I don't care.
@@AdonanS and I'm here to tell you that you can also just know that there aren't many books that do what inheritance does better than inheritance does it.
When I first saw the movie before reading the books I loved it, because dragons. That's enough for me to enjoy most movies honestly. However, after finding the books and starting those it became obvious to me within a few chapters just how badly cut the movie was. This series definitely deserved better than it got from this film.
I'm glad the movie was enough to at least encourage new readers! Had I watched the movie first, I think I would have never given the books the chance
@@koalaeucalyptus i didnt even know there was a movie and i dont plan on watching it because i want to leave the books untainted
@@koalaeucalyptus I also saw the movie before reading the book. And honestly i quite enjoyed the film before reading. Now i hate it ahah.
To me Eragon is an "ok" film but a terrible, terrible, adaptation
same here saw the film before reading book blown away wow! is there a second film? yes great wait it's canceled!! NOOOO!
wait there is book? books plurel :-D
reads books re-watch film that why the 2nd was canceled!
that said Jeremy Irons was the perfect choice for Brom (i still see him when reading the book)
maybe if the Eragon movie had not been called Eragon...
"a Dragon riders tale" "dragon master"... it might have done a lot better
The movie really wasn't an adaptation. It was like how a scary movie is "based on a true story". So many things where changed from the book, big things too.
The Inheritance series was a story with many loose elements. Occam's razor was not used. This translates badly to a movie, especially when the movie is made before the book series is complete.
I wrote to Paolini when I was in high school and I mentioned how disappointing it was that they didn't really take the story or characters seriously in the movie, and in his response he basically said, "Well, even if the movie was awful, the book will always remain untouched, so we can take comfort in that."
The book isn't even written well idk
@@Abrakadabro666 how so?
@@umbreoniteUwU It was written by a kid and got published because of his parents. But we were kids when we read it, and so we didn't mind or notice. Kind of like there are a lot of wrong things about Harry Potter, but we were kids and were sucked into the magical world, so we didn't care. From a literary perspective, Eragon is far from good. Which didn't really matter because we have good memories of it. Paolini hasn't written anything famous other than the Eragon series.
Same as J.K. Rowling not having a good record with anything outside of Harry Potter. In comparison, there's let's say Brandon Sanderson with many series under his belt. A good writer is marked by people following the author, not the book.
@@Abrakadabro666 the book is extremely well written if you judge from the emotional impact it has. Places like Carvahall or Farten dûr or Dras'Leona become emotional attachments (Dras'Leona being an example of a place everyone dislikes) in ways that many other authors do not. The story of Carvahall in particular is one told with such heart that nothing from AsoIaF came even close to it. The north and Winterfell are my favorite places there but they just don't compare.
So I wouldn't say that it's not well written when the tale feels so alive.
Having just finished rereading. Theres a ton of philosophy and real world advice throughout the books. The descriptions of things like meditation, responsible drug exploration, the hardships of going to war, and the castles and clothes man! These werent vague imagery, paolini really did his research. This book changed my life
Yeah, and especially the later books are well researched and mature in many ways.
@@marcusappelberg369 I honestly found the latter books a bit of a let down. It seemed a step back from eragon where they just felt rushed compared to his first book.
I like the last book most of all honestly I think it would have been kinda stupid if Christopher had spent the entire series hyping up galbatorix as pretty much all powerful only to have eragon beat him would had subverted the expectations of his reputation. Instead we got a fairly realistic expectation of the villain
@@MyFunnyVids888 Yes exactly, the solutiom he chose fitted well with his magic system and themes.
I wish more people would highlight the great work WETA did on Saphira, and Patrick Doyle's beautiful score, which are easily the two most positive aspects of this movie along with Jeremy Iron's interpretation of Brom. Super excited for Disney's adaptation, hoping it will turn up well !
That's what I thought when watching this movie. The actors and environments lacked greatly, but Saphira looked pretty dang good and the music was great
Aijihad looks at Murtaugh for one second, “you are Morzan’s son”. So ridiculous. Hated that movie. Hope they remake the series at some point.
I only remember one thing from this movie: Eragon has a nightmare with flashes of war and dragons, and wakes up and immediately grabs his arm and says, "Ah, my arm!" The scene was so awkward and the line so flatly delivered that it became an inside joke with me and my friends. It was one of the funniest things I had seen.
I really enjoyed the Eragon books when I was a teenager and recently got them on Audible to revisit the material. Yes, the books are for young readers and are not a masterpiece, but they give us a charming story which was written with passion. And a Star Wars themed story taking place in a Tolkien-like world isn't a bad thing at all. But the movie...just disappointing.
@Garik Bedard they certainly make more sense than harry potter that's for sure, although that isn't saying much
Yes, also, the theme of Eragon is completely different from SW or LotR. Whereas those movies are about confronting evil, maturing as a person (SW), or finding redemption (LotR), Eragon is about love and its power to conquer all things.
The early chapters are about Eragon developing a loving relationship with his dragon, raising her from an egg, seeing her as a pet, teaching her how to speak, and eventually choosing a name for her and seeing her as an equal and a life-partner. It is ONLY because of this bond that Eragon is able to overcome the challenges in front of him.
Eragon's strength alone is almost enough, but not quite enough to win. It's only when people threaten his dragon or his other family that he is able to find that last bit of strength and defeat his enemies...
and thats a great thing when your read the books as a teenager because when your read it now you can see how it is not a masterpiece as you described it but it ads the nostalgia. i loved the books as a kid and i still do love them
It was a true tragedy to see such a promising film franchise cut down before it even had a chance to breath. It was a great simple story, and the studio messed it up. It even had a fantastic cast. It was snatched from the jaws of victory.
The cast was horrendous tbh, thats at least what I felt like when I watched the movie the first (and last) time as a hardcore fan back when I was like 14 or so.. I mostly hated the movie for the fact, how they butchered the characters. All of the images and characteristics I had built up over 3 books and years of reading was deleted and replaced by the movies versions of the characters, especially soul crushing in the case of Eragon, Brom, Durza, the Ra'zak (or whatever they were called) and Arya..
The best way to describe this movie is "A B-movie with A-movie visual effects". The effects ARE great, but with no substance to anything else, it all just leads to a 'meh' experience.
A B movie is seriously overestimating the quality of this film. A- CGI Dragon B- all the other visual effects and And a D at best movie.
I bought the DVD just so I could listen to the Director’s commentary to see what the fuck happened and the Director is a madman Uwe Boll type. He bragged about how he forced production to get behind building a million dollar historical building for Eragon‘s home with his uncle so it would be more satisfying to burn down. This is the kind of idiocy that made this.
true but id have personally said it was a potential A movie but with B movie acting and a moron director but either way yes its very much meh
Im no expert when it comes to cgi and I watcht the movie only ones as kid but the thing I remamber best is how bad safira looked. Just the way her head is formed, her skin her everything... rest might be good, but it a film about a dragonrider and they did that ugly whatever. Besides fucking the story up so no second film is possible.
Stars Wars was a B movie with some dated ideas (fifties?) of sci-fi movies
I just rewatched Eragon yesterday when we had no power.
All I remembered was how half of book wasn't in the movie.
How did you watch it with no power?
@@petercross1879 battery powered portable dvd players
They should have improved it by having the half not in the movie , haha
The one that breaks my heart the most is Angela. She's such a spicy fun character and I imagine her kind of like a River Song, a classic fantasy intelligent, cheeky woman with a side of mystery. And in the movie she's turned into a music video look for one hit wonder Joss Stone.
Eragon was honestly one of my ALL TIME FAVOURITE fantasy movies when I was a kid. I hadn't read the books (and still haven't yet) so I had nothing to compare it to, and to a young persons mind who loves the connections between man and nature and the affinity between Humans and Dragons and the different types of relationships there are, I found it to be really wonderful that stuck with me for a very long time. I was always reeeally confused it never got another film, until now I guess. Still hope we will get a remake of it someday.
if u like the connection between human and dragon the book goes very in depth with that
I'm so glad to find a comment that I relate to. All of the other comments make me feel so awkward about how much I absolutely adored this movie as a kid. I read the book sometime later and it didn't detract from my love of the movie at all. I waited for YEARS longer than I should have hoping to hear about another movie. I do truly hope we'll see a new adaptation one day.
I saw the movie in theaters, loved it and decided to read the books. I hated the movie afterwards.
I completely agree with you. Not having read the books (not even knowing it was an adaptation), I loved that movie. The last scene where the king ripped back the curtain to show that he had a dragon, screamed sequel and I couldn't wait. When it never happened, I completely forgot about it until probably within the last year. I thought about it and looked it up to see if it had happened and I never heard about it or what. Reading that it had been such a colossal flop really made realize how much they screwed it up for fans of the book, it screwed it up for everybody. I also hadn't realized how long it had been
@@Aizlynn_ the biggest problem for people who read the books before the movies, was how much they changed the story and characters, with no reason whatsoever. They basically deleted the images and characteristics of the most important characters from my head and replaced them with their poorly cast and depicted actors. In addition, they left out or changed so many important plot points, that it drove me crazy.
To this day this is my single most deisappointing movie experience of my life and I will never stop talking about how they massacred one of the favourite stories from my youth hahaha
Still hoping they will make it a show/series, which they should have done in the first place tbh
Everyone thought they could make LOTR back then. Now we know that their will never be another. Not even Jackson could do it again.
He probably could have, if studio executive politics hadn’t tied his hands every step of the way.
The Hobbit only failed cause Peter Jackson tried to streached a book that smaller then 1 Lord of the Rings book into 3 movies, thus the film having to streach out scenes and add new characters. The Hobbit at most could be 2 films, but the fact it was made into 3 films was a terrible decision.
@@MERCHIODOS the Hobbit didn't "fail"
@@Natesonline if you read my reply you'll see why the Hobbits movie did fail
@@MERCHIODOS Yeah Jackson seemed to forget that the Hobbit was a kids book... it’s a lot simpler than lotr. He basically made up half of the plot, which is never gonna be as good as Tolkein’s work. He did a great job editing down the trilogy for the big screen, so obviously understands the books but that doesn’t translate to writing your own version when Tolkien spent most of his life perfecting them and world building. But there were some great moments in the hobbit, the dwarves singing (I remember learning those songs off by heart from the book as a kid), the scene with the giants, the game of riddles with gollum were all great bits. So it’s infuriating he sold out to create 3 films when he could have had 2 amazing ones. Plus they relied too much on cgi, I missed the feeling of seeing actors dressed up as goblins and orcs, it does feel so much more real when done well like the original trilogy did.
I remember when his father/father figure died, I was like "Ok. Guess we won't see him again" no shock, no sadness nothing.
I could not get over how much I hated the casting for Durza. His over acting, his over all face just not being super intimidating. Idk he looked more like a meth head at the gas station going through a goth phase than he did this horrifying Dracula-esque character that was a genuinely daunting first challenge for our main character.
Probably a directing issue rather than casting. Robert Carlyle is an amazing actor.
Haven't watch the movie, but I gotta say, while I had a positive memory of Durza, when I re-read the serie, I found him to be sort of uninteresting and not that threatening. In general, the first book was just eh.
Honestly, I'm not that mad about Durza. At least it was bold. Can't say as much for many of the story's driving forces, like the Ra'Zac or Murtagh.
Personally, I'm kind of the opposite on Durza. Almost every character had issues with over-acting, so I don't really hold any issues with Robert Carlyle or any other actors. In fact. I wonder if Robert Carlyle had any input when he was involved in Once Upon A Time when he played Rumplestiltskin because he literally played "Durza but better."
Durza was a completely generic and uninteresting character in the book so I didn’t mind
I fell in love with this book series as a kid, and I actually had to chance to meet Christopher Paolini IRL! He's very pleasant and talkative, and actually seemed reallly interested in the art kids would bring for him. Really lovely guy. Sad how the movies just didn't catch the ball, but understandable :)
"WORST MOVIE EVER!!"
- Airbender happenes -
"Meh, maybe I was a little harsh on Eragon"
And then Cuties happened
No, at least Airbender wasn't eragon. A million times better than eragon, which still doesn't make Airbender a good movie. Airbender was meh, while eragon is the absolute worst movie made ever. Period.
@@usmanqadir948 nop
@@usmanqadir948 Bruh
Then, everything changed when Dragonball Evolution Attacked.
I stiil read the eragon series once or twice every three years.
I haven't read it front to back again, but from time to time I just pick the books and read my favorite parts or chapters again, they always hit just the same as the first time. Cap is right, they're not masterpieces but they are good, I always thought they're good at making you connect with the characters and what they're going through, and you can feel the care and dedication of Christopher Paolini in them.
I always thought it also brought some unique concepts to the genre that we don't see to often such as the whole telepathy thing and relationship this leads to with other characters. Or some of the visuals it created in my head (e.g. farthen dur) would have been fantastic to actually see if done properly
Eragon was the first book I read in English as a German native speaker. I remember my dad getting the 4th part earlier because he could read english so i decided to try reading in English.
I still hope for a 4 season series that does justice to alle the cool characters introduced in the books
I love how they couldn't even make a second movie because they just never told Arya was actually an elf :D
Or because they didnt introduce the dwarves, where almost the whole second book takes place. Or because Eragon does not suffer his wound on his back, which is also one of the main plots after the first book
I was so pumped for this movie when it came out. I remember going to it with a friend who had never read the books. The second the credits rolled he looked at me and said “they left a lot out, didn’t they?”
The dragon growing up instantly even made 6th grade me go “wtf!!?”
Mmmh, one of the only things I can remember from watching the movie myself (many years ago) is being so irritated at the descion to just instantly 'magically'(?) age Saphira to an adult in one scene. Her line just after that happens is so cheesy too. (Something like: "You're right Eragon, now begins a new era for the Dragon Riders, and I am your Dragon.") I didn't feel invested in seeing the rest of the movie after that. >~
OMG That was so me my 6th grade self was so fucking angry at that scene lol
Uhr, same! ^^' At the time, I was sad for her because I felt she didn't have a real childhood. At least in the book she really grows up, she doesn't evolve like a pokémon.
The importance of their relationship as he raised her was just tossed out the window when that scene happened. I'd already read Harry Potter and LOTR before Eragon and still found the books enjoyable and well written, and so at that moment I knew this movie was not trying to be a good adaptation at all. These other books had changed small things for their adaptations but this was like if in the first Harry Potter movie he was just already friends with Ron and Hermione and knew he was a wizard and was just going off to school. The context is completely different and nothing going forward has the same meaning that it should.
@@Bones_ Wow! Well explained! It was interesting to hear your thoughts. :D
"I suffer without my stones"
We had to pause the movie for a 5-minute laugh break after that line and its delivery. Can't say we "enjoyed" any part of the film more than that.
Hugh I completely forgot about this line, and now I just feel sick
Honestly surprised that line didn’t get memed.
“Do NOT prolong my suffering.”
Holy shit the cringe is all coming back now.
Don't you usually suffer WITH stones? Because, y'know, bladder stones?
Who said that?
There is so much wrong with this movie. I think everyone reading the book had a specific picture of the world in mind. And the movie didnt portrait that picture. I know it sounds weird, but there is something off in the scenery that didnt fit the theme at all.
Also Saphira is a main character in the book - not some gadged belonging to Eragon. Arya´s role was mostly cut out, although she too is a main character. The armor and the weapons look like from a costume rental, while Paolini was extremely specific about all that. All in all this felt more like a cheap russian rip off than an official movie.
I agree! The world felt small in the movie, while the book let us feel small in a big world we are eager to explore.
I honestly thought that Arya's roll in the first book is a support character. She had the first chapter, then a some dreams. When she finally gets introduced to Eragon it's right before the battle that ends the book. Her purpose was the get Eragon to the resistance.
I HATED this movie, As mentioned in the video the acting felt stale, they had two boys fighting with stick instead of the training with the sword as a daily exercise. The shade fight was just bad. There was NO tension as the acting was just meh.
Thats not even getting into the race change that happened.
I think it’s the color palette you’re picking up on. I always pictured Eragon looking and feeling like LOTR, and visually the big difference is that Eragon has these bright, popping colors all the time
Sapphire got reduced to the role of a glorified horse. The one thing she despised being thought of like in the books
cheap russian knock-off is accurate.
I was rewatching this video and im glad i did because somewhat recently it was announced that theres a new series of Eragon in the making
The movie can be bad but seeing baby Saphira gave me fond memories
I find they animated Saphira well. It holds up. That's the only thing I remember liking from the movie honestly.
Saphira was indeed very well designed, and animated. Honestly, I think she was the one thing that actually had effort put into it. But, her personality was way off, and the voice actor didn't really feel like she was Saphira. The other characters weren't matched to the book at all, design or personality wise.
@@wyntertheicewyvern6226 I completely agree :D
@@SilverDrakez The soundtrack is also really good. "Once in every lifetime" is a song that trully encapsulates the book Eragon feeling, that of a "bildungsroman" where an unremarkable guy slowly learns about the world to become a great hero. It also works as a really good theme for the movie.
Jeremy Irons really was a standout, I fully believed he was the Brom of the books. If everyone could have brought that passion and gravitas to the film then maybe things would have been better.
He is Brom. Change my mind.
he probably was one of the few actors who bothered reading the book as well as the script. (I have no information, this is an educated guess)
Because Jeremy Irons commits. I have never seen the man half ass a performance. He played Borm, the Patrician, and Scar with equal professionalism.
I hear they're rebooting, I'd love to see Jeremy Renner as Brom if a) he can grow a patchy salt/pepper and b) Irons is unwilling to reprise.
@@TheShaggster37 Source?
I loved these books when they came out. And begged to go see the movie. My parents took all of us as a Christmas treat. Even at 17 I knew what we were watching was trash and felt so bad dragging everyone to the theater.
Yooo you just blew my mind by showing me a current pic of Eragon's actor because he is in the new season of "You" and he is unrecognizable and his performance is probably the best thing about the entire season. I never would have thought he was Eragon.
Literally my favorite book series... Still pray that someday a director will pick it up. The books are so in-depth and bring a lot to the table, and could be made into like 6 movies. IT HAS SO MUCH POTENTIAL
I mean, sure, they're fantastic books. But bringing something new to the table? Eragon is just a high-quality re-skin of Star Wars original trilogy
A tv series is more likely to succeed, I think
@@endlessnoodle3056 Not sure what exactly you mean by that, but even high-quality reskins can be massively successful. Just look at the countless successful media just based on Christian mythology or European folklore. Just look at most of the stuff Disney's put out. Just look at the various movies that are basically various Shakespeare plays but with a different setting (up to and including Lion King, btw)
@@raerohan4241 no, those are inspirations. Eragon is *literally* Star Wars in a different setting. Sure, it's much better than Star Wars, but still
there's some rumors about Disney doing a remake, maybe in series model.
Got assigned to read Eragon in middle school when the movie was coming out. Got really into it because I'd listen to it on audiobook with my uncle, and we read like the first 3 books that way, but the movie was trash, and at a certain point I just put the books down because they took forever to come out, and by the time they did I had matured enough to find the flaws in the writing. Eragon's always been a series I've loved, and been disappointed in in equal measure, lol
I found that with the fourth book which was especially disappointing after coming off the wheel of time
I quite enjoyed the final book, but then I'm learning that my expectations for a final book are quite different to the masses.
@@matthewparker9276 I don't remember exactly how it went cuz it was ages ago, but I remember "leave everything behind" ending feeling extremely pointless. Like nothing about the character or his relationships with other suggested that his solution was going to be fucking off to the middle of nowhere until halfway through the last book but the author does it anyway because?? Hero's journey?
I was 12 or 13 when I started reading Eragon in 2005, and even then I could see it being Star Wars in Lord of the Rings clothing. However, I didn't mind it back then because the similar plot points sort of gave me an anchor to follow along. When I got ahold of Eldest, I was excited to continue the story, but that's when I started noticing flaws in Christopher Paolini's writing, and something I've been told is a huge No-No in writing circles, is that his prose beats you over the head with a thesaurus and the story's pacing is atrocious. It takes a third of the book for Eragon to reach the Elves (and the book is as thick as the later Harry Potter books) and the story constantly switches to unexciting sub-plots like the Varden's politics and their crisis of figuring out how to stay funded and balancing their checkbooks. You would understand how boring this would be to lizard-brain teen me that I actually put off the book for a few years before picking it back up in my last few years of high school. I still haven't finished the series.
@@NobodyC13 You should know that it was the work of a young boy himself. And that is remarkable.
Jeremy Irons: The singular redeeming performance in a perpetual list of bad movies.
He carried this movie. It wasn't enough to save it, but he made it bearable.
True! He was the perfect Brom. Still, when reading the books I honestly was disappointed when it turned out that he was Eragon's father. I wanted his father to be Morzan, Murtagh's father.
This is a fantasy series that is actually way darker than Narnia and matures so much deeper after the first book. Eragon while definitely no masterwork is literally redefined by the sequels. a seemingly classic and teenage fantasy story takes on new light as the rest of the series reveals more and more weight and backdrop to this story. This is actually more akin to LOTR than most realize, and I would sooner acknowledge this similarity than Starwars. while the Inheritance cycle shares lots of similarities with the Star Wars saga so too with the perfect LOTR. Theres total gold here this series is so cinematic. It just needs someone who will put in the time and money into making it real. As cool as series are they're not as big as the movies. nor do their visual effects look as good all the time. GOT had amazing dragons but the fantasy elements were constricted to certain shots and you could tell; its atmosphere was certainly not 100% magical like LOTR and eragons world needs to be.This needs to be 4 films, each film being 2.5 to 3 hours long. And the way to release it would be to shoot them in pairs. Eragon and eldest back to back, released a year apart, and then brisingr and inheritance shot together and released consecutively two years after the first pair. so hypothetically:
Eragon- 2025 2.5 hrs
eldest- 2026. 3 hrs
Brisingr- 2028 3 hrs
Inheritance- 2029 3.2 hrs
And it needs to be directed by a passionate fan. Id love to work on this if I was a big movie director personally. Peter Jacksons LOTR team would be amazing to get the heart and the action and the bittersweet ending thats so realistic and grounded despite being high fantasy. A faithful adaptation exactly like how LOTR did it or DUNE 2021 did it. directors and writers with clear understanding of why people love he books what the books are saying not just for the cash money. Success comes with that fundamental understanding of DOING IT RIGHT
@@teramalik7260 brom has the role of gandalf eragon is both Frodo and aragorn, wdym literally this has wayyyy more in common with the lore of LOTR than Star Wars. Same genre of high fantasy. Orcs, dwarves, elves, magic, dragons, great power, the hero from an unsuspecting and isolated valley. Eragon in love w Arya like aragorn w Arwen or beren and luthien. In an endless number of ways the Tolkien legendarium has deep parallels to the inheritance cycle. This isn’t a new take.
Also it’s common knowledge that the books get better with each installment of the inheritance cycle. Not sure what your opinion is but that’s literally the objective take held by the fanbase critics and most readers.
I remember my grandpa rented the movie the day I finished the first book. I was so excited to watch it before moving on to Eldest. The beginning happens. It's whatever. My brother, who had not read the book, really liked the opening for some reason. It gets to Saphira and then just... has her magically grow to an adult in 5 seconds? And she introduces herself? I loved the beginning of the book, of Eragon wrapping his head around having a dragon, trying to raise it, trying to hide it from the village, trying to subtly get clues about being a dragon rider from Brom, getting THE NAME from Brom and the meaning of naming his dragon Saphira. All of that scrapped for a quick CGI flying scene from baby to adult. I watched the rest of the movie just to watch it with my family. But I absolutely did not enjoy it and they could tell.
It's always humorous to me to see a YA novel adaptation that tries to set up a big franchise fail miserably.
They always screw themselves over too. Like you’re starting a franchise why tf are you getting a first time director who focused on visual effects before this?
@@diskeyes Because Hollywood can be real stupid sometimes, I guess.
And they almost always cause themselves to fail. So many of these book were actually very good, and then they get weak adaptations.
This is a mistake they have made again and again and again and they never learn from it.
@@diskeyes Hollywood hacks aren't even human.
Of all the things that this movie did wrong and ooooh there were many, design of Sapphira pissed me off the mosr. Really?! FEATHERS?!
like i to a small extent understand it but come on they could have and should have done better
Ah see you're wrong there- they called them 'skeathers' because they were scaley feathers.
Ikr. It's just... Just why
That's what confused me the most in the promotional materials for the movie. I specifically remember there was a scene in the book where Eragon has to heal the wounds in her wing membranes, so it's not like it was ambiguous what the wings looked like.
@@adenowirus she still has membranes, there’s just feathers as well, which can kinda make sense? As a large dragon she needs all the help she can to fly :p
@@katiemerckel7074 So the movie clarifies that there are membranes under the feathers? I mean, by just looking at them you would think they're built like bird's wings.
I've got a complicated relationship with the book series. I feel like the more Eragon himself grows in power, the more the writing takes a nosedive. It's not so bad at first, his growth is rather natural and he makes mistakes along the way, some with really big consequences down the line. As he reaches a point closer to maturity and stops making so many mistakes though, the writing starts to feel like Christopher didn't really know what to do with the character anymore and started having to shoe in awkward drama. The stakes start to disappear as Eragon becomes far too strong for any ordinary threat to be a challenge to, and in general it starts to feel like it really needs to end but keeps getting drawn out for the sake of not feeling rushed. Perhaps he wrote himself into a corner with Galbatorix, not having a good entry point set up for him to reach his end by the time everyone else's stories were about ready to wrap up? Either way, it's a story with really good beginnings but overstays it's welcome and gets awkward before it ends.
I'm glad this movie didn't get a sequel. The movie is very incompatible with the book lore, so any further storytelling would have to start telling a different story entirely, which at that point you might as well just be making something original to begin with. I do however like the idea of a reboot movie series that starts out more faithful to the book but gradually corrects the book series mistakes so that the pacing and character growth doesn't misalign with the ending. There's a lot of great moments from the books that I think would make for fantastic movie moments with the correct execution, but it would need to be done by someone with a lot more experience with movies in the genre in the past. It needs to be a passion project with dedication to the source material, and not just a safe and easy paycheck.
I think about the final fighting scene more than it´s usual for me and I think I have the answer about that (nostalgia might be talking). I think that Galabatorix had fallen because of isolation, mental and social. He intimidated everyone he could, killed or made them completely insane. He was your classic maniacal villain who didn´t feel any connection bc of trauma, so using empathy to show him true nature of his actions was a pretty sick move I haven´t seen anywhere else.
SoI might be bullshitting here, but I read that you can be as strong, intelligent or willing to sacrifice, but you can turn monsterous without connection, empathy and kindness.
Might re-read the series to get a new perspective on it
I mean at one point in inheritance it becomes a plot point and issue for eragon that he’s become too strong, fighting a bunch of normal people dulled his skills and he we no longer fit to fight anyone who was as strong as an elf or a dragon rider and he needed to fix that
@@meamcatnm I remember that! That was a fun part.
I read the first book numerous times as a kid and due to the pace of the writing did not read the last two books until I was an adult. I found them so disappointing that I was shocked at how much the story had turned. So I went back and read the original two again and found that they really did not hold up at all. I had always heard the jokes about how it was basically just the story of star wars shoved into a Tolkien esc world. When I read the first one again its painfully parallel. While I appreciate the enjoyment the books gave me as a child I can say with certainty that they really aren't that great. They have flashes of excellence, but the first two books are so derivative its almost painful and the later books have almost no stakes and center around hundreds of pages of unrelated events while the story meanders its way to a very disappointing conclusion.
Do you work for holywood Wrong the books were amazing only the last book ended in no land
Read the books, saw the movie. The movie was akin to taking the LOTR trilogy and shrinking it down to a 45 minute show. Gee, I wonder why it flopped.
I didn't mind Eragon, I even just rewatched it. Im sad this series never got off the ground, I loved the book series
Ikr, i watched the movie like 2 times and last Christmas i decided to read the books
While I didn't mind the movie, I was still disappointed because I felt it could've been so much better. In fact, while I actually have the DVD at home I'm much more likely to pick up the book again than watch the movie.
The books were quite enjoyable to me and I really got into them. I felt like most (if not all) of what made me connect to the world of Eragon was barely there in the movie.
Reading some of the comments, I agree with those who say if might be better as a TV series to give more time for world and character-building.
We have A Series of Unfortunate Events, we have His Dark Materials, now if we can get an Eragon Netflix series my childhood will be complete.
Agreed! I would also like to add Animorphs to that list. If they tried for a show again, I think it would be amazing.
@@rockfireman2943 Ooooh, yes yes yes, that would be great
Oh I will soooo watch it if Eragon gets adapted again. Especially if they keep the Dragon design the same. She looks beautiful in the film adaptation. Never understood though why The Golden Compass never continued though and they had to remake it.
Just came here to say that there actually has been news from Christopher Paolini himself that he’s going to be a co-wittier and producer for a new Eragon series with Disney+!! Not sure how far into production they are but I hope it all goes well and that it’s a good adaptation. I do have quite a bit of hope since the Mr. Paolini will be involved with the production.
@@goblinleafyboi Ya love to see it.
The thing I loved most about the books is Paolini's excellent use of "Checkhov's Gun". Yeah, it's a pretty basic fantasy novel, but it uses those tropes and themes perfectly and every new character or new object WILL come up later in the series. The only thing that disappointed me was how in the first book we're told by the Arden's weaponsmaster "In the end, everything comes down to swords" and the book series ends with a magical fight. The movie itself was definitely rushed, which I think happens because producers don't know for sure if they'll be able to make a sequel.
I really enjoyed these books, almost as much as I enjoyed Harry Potter. I personally think this book would be great animated as a series
I've always thought that too! The magic and atmosphere of the books seem so well suited for animation--like in Disney's Sleeping Beauty how you can shift from vibrant, light-hearted scenes in the forest to the grim, dark, scary scenes inside Maleficent's castle, not to mention the dragon battle sequences. There's a lot more freedom in animation as well to make the elve's homes elaborate and imaginative and so very different from other locations that isn't really possible in live-action without a large budget.
Plus I think cartoons and animation, in general, can have darker themes and scarier moments without alienating younger audiences because that step away from realism provides a sort of safety net once the show/film is turned off.
@@brookb5890 very well said. I’ve never thought about using animation as a sort of safety net for younger audiences when it comes to darker themes. Disney, take notes!
Both books are my favourite too
never read a whole trilogy (ended on part 3) it was to silly to me after i discovered a song of ice and fire
@@pawebroszko4737 Silly? It goes for quite a different tone and aims a younger audience than asoiaf, but man, at least Paolini can write a conclusion and doesn't try to deal with 50 storylines at once!
One of the biggest problems with making a movie like this, is the first novel itself. I also said its just fantasy star wars, its the hero's journey to a T. And its so much more personal that its hard to explain. It has so many adaptation hurdles it needs to jump over before it can get to the novels that would be better to adapt. Eldest is my favorite and I can totally see how a story like that can be a movie. Roran's half in a style like 300 and Eragon still holding classic fantasy, and the two styles merge with the final battle of that novel with the deep red landscape and the almost white river in comparison. I get goosebumps just thinking about how that might be done.
I think that if we are to have something like Eragon again, it would need to be a series. Give plenty of time (and episodes) building up the characters. Maybe build up Galbatorix as a threat by dedicating a few episodes to Roran's training before heading back to the village. Make sure his character has time to be established before becoming the second protagonist.
About that battle...On my latest re-read, I couldn't help but notice how stupid the vardens were. They were outnumbered, but knew that reinforcement were on the way(the dwarfs), so why didn't they wait for Galbatorix's army to attack? Instead, they were the ones to attack. You should never be the agressor if you're outnumbered, cause the defendor always had the advantage. Idk, that really bothered me.
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Elder. Brisingr is where it gets good in my opinion.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 Fair enough. The only advantage to attacking first would be to catch the enemy off-guard, then when they think you're outnumbered, reinforcements can see it started and flank.
I remember being brought to this at the cinema with my friends. At the end credits I got up and said 'That was shit' someone across the cinema yelled 'YES!'
This didn’t happen so much in unhappened thing that have happened
@@40rollsonly Dude, once I went to watch TFA in a rental theater and at the scene where Poe and Kylo are looking at each other at the beginning of the movie a woman screamed "HAVE MY BABIES!!!" and a disappointed man responded in a cringing tone, "Jennifer..."
Ever since then I consider these stories as potentially true. :p
@@40rollsonly When I went to watch this movie in theatres, there were two other guys sitting three rows ahead of me. The three of us were the only ones in that session. The boys kept saying at specific scenes "That is not how it happened!" like Saphira's growth spurt or the skipping of important places. Eventually, I joined in and the three of us kept criticizing every little thing they did wrong, or plain out laughed at the lacklustre feeling.
Some things are just plain true and did happen, no matter how unreal it may seem.
I don’t think these comments are appropriate to make very loudly. Maybe some kid enjoyed the movie and you ruined the mood.
@@cv7958 I'm guessing you're replying to my comment, which is why you're in my notifications, so let me tell you this much: Learn how to read properly before you comment. Cheers.
Now that Disney has announced they’re developing an Eragon Series with the acquisition of Fox, we can hopefully put this movie behind us for good
If I was adapting this series: I would just adapt Roran's story.
Title: Stronghammer
Rereading the series as an adult made me realise how good Rorans story is. Just a guy who stands up. So much more badass than Eragon
@@notsosecretsnacker5218 Right? And because Eragon is the recipient of pretty much all the exposition dumps: Roran winds up being extremely show not tell. He has to deal with the Ra-Zac without ever getting an explanation for them, and in addition that making him dealing with them more badass: it makes them WAY more terrifying.
Me and my friend loved Roran way more than dragon when we were reading these books at the same time. Guy was a total badass and Dragon was just a whiny bitch
@@notsosecretsnacker5218 Are you sure you reread the story as an adult? Because even as a teenager, I was annoyed by how much plot armor Roran has (I mean, Eragon has his moments too. But with magic and a dragon, plus an occasional defeat (even if inconsequential), you can be somewhat overpowered. But "guy has a hammer" is a bit pathetic of an explanation for his god-like power).
@@gernottiefenbrunner172 I just like him. No nonsense kind of guy and not aloof like the rest of the story's characters.
Robert Caryle redeemed his "evil sorcerer" reputation with his performance in OUAT as Rumplestiltskin.
If I recall correctly, and I haven't seen it again since it was first shown, Rumplestiltskin's introduction was him emerging from the darkness of a dungeon cell and making Snow White jump. I read in an interview that that had been an entirely authentic reaction, given that Ginnifer Goodwin didn't know that he was going to do that!
I'm most familiar with him as Doctor Rush in Star Gate Universe, which I really enjoyed.
“I was also homeschooled, and a big fan of the Lord of the Rings.”
Say less my man. Hence why I’m subscribed.
Homeschooler starter pack (from a former hs): LOTR
Narnia
Princess Bride
Star Wars/Trek
Hamilton (Or really any Musical)
@@annieboookhall don’t forget Harry Potter (except half your friends weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter).
Real trauma shit, thx guys lol
@@bibliophilecb "Harry Potter had real witchcraft in it!"
- Some conservative, ignorant, and paranoid Christian parents probably.
Also Trivia: Did some of you know that Harry Potter actually got banned from many US and other schools From other countries years ago? since many priests and Christian parents think HP had an actual wizardy and withcraft in it, but what I find funny is; according to some people who practice Wicca, Harry Potter is nowhere near similar to their 'religion' especially they don't use freaking wands.
@@fantasyalover4782 I grew up in small town Bible Belt, trust me, I saw plenty of places where Harry Potter was banned lol.
My favorite story is a friend of mine who wasn’t allowed to read them, then when she turned 18 she immediately read them and said not only were they absolutely fine, but the “documentaries” her parents showed her about how bad HP was taught her way more about real witchcraft than HP did.
I once bought a ticket to Eragon because Borat was sold out and I needed a legitimate way to sneak into that
The dragon and human communicating via thought is just like
The Dragon Riders of Pern.
I actually think about that once in a while xD still need to read Dragonquest (im reading the og trilogy)
Which they still keep trying to bring to screen - and keep failing because they want to make too many changes.
I mean, it's just a nice and kinda obvious solution for the communication problem with a big lizard which shouldn't be able to form human words with their snout.
The books are just a fantasy pastiche of stuff he lifted off other authors. And "Star Wars".
Jeremy Irons is the only Brom for me. The inheritance Cycle holds such a special place in my heart and I’m still bitter about the movie
That is the only thing that makes me sad if we ever get a tv series or a new movie of this franchise. We won't get to have Jeremy Irons as Brom again.
Look on the bright side, Eragon's failure may be why we got the How to Train your Dragon films