by Adam Riske
• Best Scene/Moment: The third act battle between Eragon (Ed Speleers) and Durza (Robert Carlyle) riding dragons is pretty fun.
• Best Song: “Keep Holding On” by Avril Lavigne.
• Director Grade: Eragon was directed by Stefen Fangmeier.
Great Movies: N/A
Good Movies: Eragon
OK Movies: N/A
Bad Movies: N/A
Unseen By Me: N/A
Overall Grade: B
• Double It with This 2006 Movie: Night at the Museum
• Year 2006 Movies to Trailer Before Them: Charlotte’s Web, Lady in the Water, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
• Ella McCay or Eragon? Tie
• Only in 2006 (tie): Ed Speleers lead performances and feature films directed by Stefan Fangmeier.
• Scene Stealer: Jeremy Irons.
• I Miss: The wave of Lord of the Rings rip-offs like Eragon and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. They’re perfect for January/February Saturday matinee viewing.
• I Don’t Miss: This is super specific. I wasn’t crazy about how 20th Century Fox consistently took tentpole movies and made them seem smaller by having them run only about 105 minutes. They did this with the X-Men and Fantastic Four movies a few times in the 2000s (as well as Eragon) and it made them feel automatically lesser to me, like it wasn’t a big enough swing.
• 2026 Crush (tie): Sienna Guillory and C-Tier Fantasy Movies.
• What I Thought in 2006: I watched Eragon with low expectations because it looked like such a brazen Lord of the Rings wannabe and the review were bad but I ended up liking it. I didn’t tell anyone for 20 years because it’s not cool to be the one person who’s like “Yeah, Eragon. Kinda slaps.”
• What I Think in 2026: For the first half I was like “What was I thinking liking Eragon back in 2006?” and then during the second half I was all “Yeah, no, this still works for me.” I like how, despite being unoriginal, Eragon is very sincere and entertaining in the same way going to a renaissance faire on a summer afternoon can be. I would have totally gone to see Eragon 2 in theaters opening day if it ever happened. It’s a classic case of something I start out interested in ironically and then over time I just kinda like it legitimately.
I still haven't seen Eragon, but I remember my younger sister being very into the books and telling me that the author wrote the first one when he was 15. I looked that up just now and it appears to be true--at least he started writing it when he was 15, it didn't come out til he was a few years older. He also graduated high school when he was 15 and Wikipedia says that the books were published through his parents' company and that to promote them, "Paolini toured over 135 schools and libraries, discussing reading and writing, all the while dressed in "a medieval costume of red shirt, billowy black pants, lace-up boots, and a jaunty black cap."
ReplyDeleteI think it's time for a revival of this movie in theaters so we can all wear jaunty black caps and billowy pants to see it.