Eragon fails to impress

Today Greg and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary. We started it with a trip to the beach, then dinner and then we went to the movies. We just got home from seeing Eragon. If you loved the books, if you thought the books were amazing and could not have been better, DON'T SEE THE MOVIE!!

It was a very, very, very, VERY poor rendition of what it could have been. So much was missed out that was needed and too much had been changed. The gedwey ignesia was not a shining sliver circle on his palm, no, it was a thin red dragon on the side of his hand. It glowed red. The reason for it being silver in the first place is because he is called Argetlam throughout the books. It means "shining palm" or "silver palm".

I have many bones to pick, as Greg will when he finishes reading the first book.

The movie actually started off well. I thought "Yay, this is gonna be great." About a quarter of the way through the movie, I was already not impressed. The first thing that got me was Saphira's wings. In the book they are normal dragon wings, hard edges, membrane skin. She has feathered wings, like a bird, in the movie.

Almost every scene with Brom in it was less spectacular than the book. So many things were changed, the worst example was Brom's death. He was supposed to die fighting the Ra'zac, but instead was killed by Durza. (Sorry if I'm giving away plot points. Don't read if you don't want to know). In the book, Brom never reached Durza in Gil'ead. He was entombed on a cliff near a cave after he died from the wound the Ra'zac left him. Saphira turned his tomb into a diamond vault of sorts, with elaborate decoration and a large spiral to top it off, not a rock shape monument as in the movie.

The Urgals were human!
Eragon was too old! 15 not 17!
Brom was too young.
The dwarves were not dwarves.
The battle scene with the Varden was not set up at all.
Arya was flirting with Eragon!
They didn't cross half the terrain they should have (a small thing, I know)
They missed all the important lead ups to the next book.

And the battle with Durza............

Eragon was supposed to struggle, really struggle and he was not supposed to walk away unscathed. The second book, Eldest, is centered around the injury he was supposed to obtain from Durza.

What will Eragon's reason be to go to Ellesmera to receive his training if not the injury?

Now I know what you might be saying, "It's just a movie, it's only based on the book". I know that, and I know that if you hadn't read the books, it may have been a somewhat decent movie, but I am sick and tired of Hollywood ruining good books. Either do it like the book or call it something else. Expectations become too high, otherwise.

Since I've had a bitch about the bad aspects, I will tell you that the scene where Saphira kidnaps Eragon, when the Ra'zac are heading for his house, is done well. In that aspect they really captured Saphira's desperation to protect him, to get him out of there and away from harm. I was also impressed with baby Saphira. So cute! Unfortunately, her growth from toddler, so to speak, and adult, happened in the blink of an eye, almost literally, and it was not even done well.

Another thing I was impressed with was Durza himself. They captured him well. The character was amazing.

I wonder, as Greg pointed out, how Paolini feels about this movie...