Let alone Lord of the Rings... NOTHING of this is deserving of praise. NOTHINGThis seems like a scam. "Someone would think this might be as good as LOTR"

Not allowing Paolini have any control over this movie was a HUGE mistake. In what world would that be okay for a book to movie adaption? To compensate did they scoop up titans for their director or writer? NO. We had no names creating this movie without any direction or consultation from the writer of the book himself. The end result? An ill-paced movie with boring characters and a plot that doesn't even attempt to stay true to the novel. The only "positive" you could take is that the visual effects were decent for 2006. It breaks my heart that the series was effectively killed by this abomination of a movie, because I thoroughly enjoyed the novels. 12 years later I'm still patiently waiting for a remake, because this movie will never be watched again.

On my 11th birthday, I remember the first gift I opened before I went to school was the book Eragon. As a kid who loved Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings (and still do to this day), I was excited to read into this newer fantasy book. I enjoyed it very much as a kid, and to this day I still think it is a good book despite a few flaws I've noticed more now that I'm older.And of course, around the time I read the Eragon book, the film adaptation was getting ready to come out. I was so excited. I was expecting a film on par with The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. Sadly, two things started to discourage me as the film's release grew closer: 1) The film's MPAA rating was PG and 2) the film's running time was only 104 minutes. This got me worried, and the reviews for the film by critics and fans didn't exactly help. Needless to say, I was disappointed by this adaptation, but not just because it took out some of my favorite parts from the book, but because it wasn't a good movie either.For those of you who are not familiar with the book, Eragon is based off the book by Christopher Paolini, who started writing it when he was only 15 years old and got it published when he was 18. The story is set in the magical world of Alagaesia, which was once ruled by a group of warriors known as the Dragon Riders. However, one day a rider named Galbatorix betrays the riders and kills them all, making himself king over Alagaesia. Fast forward a few hundred/thousand years later and we meet a young boy named Eragon, who stumbles upon a magical blue stone while hunting in the wilderness. He originally thinks that he can use it to buy meat for his family, but he quickly learns that the stone is actually a dragon egg. And when the dragon egg hatches, Eragon becomes the next dragon rider.As you can tell by reading the synopsis, this story is very similar to other fantasy films such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc. Of course, this was also a criticism of the book as well, but at least it had likable characters, epic action scenes, and a great level of detail that brought the world to life. These things were at least present in order to make the story compelling, even if it is beat by beat the story of Star Wars. This film version has barely any of that. The characters aren't fleshed out enough to where you care about them. The action is dumbed down in order to create a PG fantasy film for children. Alagaesia itself isn't set apart from any other fantasy worlds we've seen before. The movie just feels like no effort was really put into it except when it came to the visual effects, which are almost too good for this movie.This is mostly due to a really poor script. I'm not just talking about the dialogue, which is some of the worst I've ever heard ("I'm the rider and I say we go"), but the way the story is set up feels like they just took a few scenes from the book and slapped it together to make a movie that was under two hours so they could make a quick buck. Characters appear that have very little screen time and ultimately feel pointless. Even characters that provide importance to the later books are minimized or just simply don't appear at all. It's not structured well, and you can tell that the passion for the source material that fueled the makers of LOTR and Harry Potter is not here at all.Even the action sequences are not all that spectacular. Part of me wants to blame the film's PG rating, but we've seen other movies with this rating that were able to create epic and enjoyable action scenes. The only part that is really enjoyable and entertaining is the final confrontation between Eragon and Durza, the film's main antagonist, which also leads to an scene afterward that had quite a bit of emotion to it. However, anyone expecting epic battle sequences on par with LOTR are probably going to be as disappointed as I was.As far as the acting goes, there are actually a few good performances here, the best of which being Jeremy Irons as Brom. You can tell that he was having fun with the role and was doing his best with the material he was given. Ed Speleers also does a fair job as Eragon, and had this film actually been successful, I would have been interested in seeing him star in more films. Djimon Honsu is also good in his brief role as Ajihad, and Rachel Weisz does a decent job as the voice of Saphira. Most of the other actors fall flat, with the two worst performances coming from John Malkovich, who looks like he's ready to stop shooting and get his paycheck, and Robert Carlile, who takes what could be a compelling villain and makes him absolutely silly.Ultimately, Eragon is wasted potential. It's a movie that could have been great had they put more effort into everything other than the visual effects and handled the adaptation process a little more seriously. I'm not saying that a movie has to be 100% faithful to the source material, but in this case, it would have worked better for the movie and for the potential sequels that could have come from it. In the end, it's not one of the worst movies ever made, but it is definitely one that was disappointing to me and other fans of the book, as well as those looking for the next LOTR or Harry Potter.

On 15th December 2006, I signed to see Eragon at the cinema as I felt I could "use the experience". That evening, the experience turned out to be far more than I was expecting. I had a feeling that dragons would be involved as the first letter of the title is the letter after "d" in the alphabet. Before the film started, there was a trailer of Eragon the game which included a voice over saying, "Who you think is your greatest enemy, is actually your greatest ally." I quickly realised this referred to the dragons. I was very inspired.Within the first few minutes, I was already fascinated by what I was seeing. I hoped Arya would escape with the blue stone and was relieved when she sent it away by magic. When Eragon found it, I just could not wait to see what happened next. It's that kind of adventure.The bond Eragon and Saphire share is so strong. One day Eragon is a farm boy - the next day he's a hero. Amazing!I quickly came to find that Eragon is one of those films you can't really call a film, because it's beyond a film - it's a quest, a fulfilling adventure.For me, I certainly proved that a year can end very differently to how it starts. If anyone has anything negative to say about the film or the game, they had better keep it to themselves rather than spoil it for others. One of the students I knew loved dragons and had an Eragon poster in his room. I have no fear of flying and I would gladly team up with Eragon and Sapphire (I would ride a dragon of my own) and stand alongside Murtagh against Galbatorix.