I received the book for Christmas, right about the same time it had been released to the theater. Carey wanted us to go see it, but I asked that we read the book first. Of course, by the time we had both finished reading it, it wasn't showing in any local theaters. Bleh. So we waited until it had been released to DVD, which was yesterday. Yay. So Carey snagged a copy for us to watch with the kids and we all settled down, looking forward to an enjoyable movie. I absolutely loved the books, so I was expecting something a lot different. Carey and I were both really dissapointed.
It was horrible. For those of you who haven't read the book, you'll probably find a reasonably enjoyable movie. Now, Carey and I both kept in mind that a movie has a lot of time constraints, so we expected there to be changes. There were changes in our beloved LOTR, but they're still wonderful movies that we both love watching and have done so countless times. We've even had a few marathon weekends (and with the extended versions, it's an awesome vision). Right off, we noticed a few changes, but we ignored them, willing to give the movie it's chance. However, the further into the movie it got, we were just more and more confounded and I'm sure we were sitting there with our mouths hanging open. Containing such names as John Malkovich, Rachel Weisz and Jeremy Irons, we were expecting something much different. Sigh....once again a wonderful story was reduced to shreds. Several people that helped Eragon become who he is at the end of the first book were moved around, changed, and in several cases completely dropped. Other people that helped set up the whole first book, to move into the second book, were never even mentioned. Several key plot points (at least in my mind) were completely dropped. Scott Weinberg sumes it up quite well: "It's not that Eragon feels like huge chunks were pulled from its now-skimpy frame -- but that the "in-between" scenes that may have given the film some color, urgency or freshness ... were simply never written in the first place." This was one of the worst 90 minutes that I've spent in a long time. Read more of the mind boggingly 95 rotten tomatoes that it received.
The elves were absolutely horrible (they weren't elvish in any sense of the word), I didn't see one dwarf (or at least one that was recognizable) and what did they do to the urghals? And what did they do to Sephira? Feathers on her wings? Bleh. And the rhazak, while being suitable foul, still weren't brought to life very well in the original vision. The funny thing is though, that the original story boards were perfect. Carey got the two disc version, with all the extra goodies so we took a look at that as well. So we're a bit confused as to what happened between the beginning and the end result. Makeup and costumes are non existant, and the storey just doesn't flow in only ninety minutes. It seems that everyone forgot how to act in this travesty. Even Rachel Weisz's beautiful voice seemed disjointed.
There are a few nice special effects, and while I don't agree with the representation of Sephira, they did do a beautiful job with her. So because of that, 4 stars out of 10. This is not one that will be joining our collection, which is sad. It was a story that I would have enjoyed watching over and over.
IMDB
The official Eragon movie site
Purchase the books
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