Stefen Fangmeier
Eragon

WHAT ABOMINABLE HORROR. This was my very first thought after turning off the DVD player. You may wonder why? Because this film is truly a piece of garbage with a capital G.

Eragon, directed by Stefen Fangmeier (????), is truly a mishmash of discarded ideas. The references taken from the original book, written by Christopher Paolini, are really minimal and limited. In short, the story tells of a young farmer named Eragon who, while hunting on the Great Ridge (a chain of woods), encounters a blue stone of great beauty. In reality, the stone is a dragon egg... thus begins the adventure of the young farmer who bears an Elf's name and is destined to become the new Dragon Rider and restore that guild of flying warriors and wizards that was destroyed long ago by Galbatorix, the grim and cruel emperor of all Agalaesia (Eragon's world). Up to this point, between the book and the movie, there are very few differences.

The fact is that the subsequent organization of the scenes is truly atrocious: Eragon looks more like a futuristic bourgeois than a farmer (a silver jacket for a farmer? Oh please...); the most important clashes, for example, those with the Ra'zac (his worst enemies) are terrible and full of scenes where you can't understand anything, the spells are baseless or even entirely invented (see Skulblakas Venn which in the movie makes him see better than a telescope, and which is not even mentioned in the book); the Ra'zac themselves, originally huge eagle-like monsters with wings, here seem to be a clone of the offspring of Freddy Krueger, Edward Scissorhands, and Vladimir Luxuria (full of worms that had nothing to do with them). In short, a grade C setting (some scenes, like the Dwarves' fortress, appear like a children's fort); landscapes, nothing to say, spectacular use of special effects (yes, too bad the dragon speaks with a castrati voice, at least it seems so); invented creatures (the Urgals, from bloodthirsty horned monsters to Conan-like barbarians) a cast of great respect (50% total strangers, but also big names like John Malkovich and Jeremy Irons) and adherence to the story as it unfolds in the book equal to less than 0.

In short, a film that could have appeared as a good idea to redeem the world of fantasy (now caught between the exorbitant Lords of the Rings and the endless Harry Potter) on the big screens turns into a sensational failure, all due to an exaggerated trivialization of a book that instead could have made a good movie if directed and created better.

Forgettable...