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Eragon
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Eragon (Review)

April 30, 2007By

Eragon


2006
Directed by Stefen Fangmeier

I have just seen the greatest film of the last 50 years: STAR WARS!!! Unfortunately, it was buried beneath a train wreck of a movie called Eragon. Eragon is based on a book written by Christopher Paolini, who started on it when he was 15 and got it published by age 18. When reprinted, he became a best-selling author at age 19. Sadly, his novel is not unique, and is in fact just Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings, with a few references to Dragonriders of Pern and Robert Jordan novels. It is less of a theft and more of a wholesale rape, as what he does take isn’t turned into a brilliant work of fantasy, but just some fanboy wankery hardly worthy of posting on bad fan-fiction sites on the internet. Paolini managed to pimp out his age (due to finishing home schooling early he was free to do a book tour of schools while dressed in some knight costume) to successfully get his book republished. This shows us that you don’t need originality to succeed in the world, only ambition to promote yourself and your repackaged ideas. Sure, Star Wars borrows from Kurasawa and mythology canons, but it melds together into an interesting story that reshaped science fiction movies. Eragon becomes a mess, complete with shots identical to those in Star Wars and others, and manages to even screw up copying from Star Wars correctly. George Lucas never ruined Star Wars this bad with Jar Jar Binks, but Paolini enters new territories. So in a way it is ground-breaking, nothing has ever sucked so much like this before.

Eragon (Ed Speleers) – Luke Skywalker at your service! This orphan blonde whiny farmboy is thrust into the world of being a generic hero when his uncle is killed and a crazy old man teaches him the way of Jedi Knighting by Dragon. Totally not a self-insertion of Paolini. Ed Speleers went on to become a construction worker.
Brom (Jeremy Irons) – Obi-Wan Kenobi, or KenobIrons, or Obi-Wan Irons. Crazy old man who knew about Jedi Knight Dragonriders, because he used to be one. Killed due to Eragon’s stupidity while rescuing the Princess. Is Irons making up for Dungeons and Dragons? Because he was the only thing good in that film, a feat he doesn’t manage here.
Arya (Sienna Guillory) – Princess Leia here is for once not Eragon’s sister (at least not yet!) An Elf, despite the film forgetting and making her human. I only read she was an elf online. Probably still his sister, anyway, or at least he wants her to be. You can find photos of actress Sienna Guillory naked on the Internet, and looking at those is better than watching this film any day of the week.
Durza (Robert Carlyle) – Darth Vader! Sort of. Sort of like Darth Maul, in that he’s only in one film and killed. Flies a TIE Advanced Smoke Bat. Can teleport like Nightcrawler, except he doesn’t use it to fight at all. Durza’s name sounds very close to Dozer, which were the green creatures from Fraggle Rock that built stuff all day. Except Dozers were cool, and Durza sounds like he was named by a three year old with a mouth stuffed with crackers.
Galbatorix (John Malkovich)- Emperor Palpatine! Like the Emperor, wasn’t in the first chapter of the trilogy, except the producers seem to think that audiences have gotten stupider over the last 30 years and insisted on inserting him in, because otherwise the audience would never know who is giving orders. Well, if they liked Eragon, they probably ARE that stupid.
Murtagh (Garrett Hedlund)- Han Solo! Except in this trilogy, Han Solo is the brother of Luke, unlike Leia. Nice try, we still see what you’re stealing from. Namely, Christian Slater’s character of Will Scarlet from Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves! Besides dressing up the character identically, and giving him the same hair style, they also make him Eragon’s secret brother (reveled in book 2) just like Will Scarlet was made Robin Hood’s brother in that movie. Named after Danny Glover’s character in the Lethal Weapon franchise.
Uncle Garrow (Alun Armstrong) – Uncle Owen! Farmer adoptive father of Eragon killed by the Emperor’s men looking for what the hero has, just like Uncle Owen!
Roran (Chris Egan) – Eragon’s cousin, doesn’t have a Star Wars counterpart in this movie, maybe Wedge. His character does something other than wander out of the film after 20 minutes in the second book. Looks like a clone of Eragon, both of which are walking Nazi Aryan propaganda. Remember, blonde hair is good, black hair like Han Solo/Murtagh is bad.
Ajihad (Djimon Hounsou) – Lando! Not really. Why name a black guy “A Jihad”? RACIST! Obviously he isn’t really Lando, as Lando doesn’t show up until part two/five. A Jihad is leader of the Varden (the Rebels), which would make him sort of like Mon Mothma or Admiral Ackbar. No word on if A Jihad had promoted suicide bombings.
Hrothgar (Gary Lewis) – Chewbacca! Not really. The King of the Dwarves, except no one involved in the movie bothers to point this out at all, or even give his name, which Paolini ripped off from a video game called Icewind Dale, originally a reference to Danish King Hroðgar from Beowolf. Not that Paolini would borrow anyone else’s work. I didn’t know he was supposed to be a dwarf until I read it online.
Saphira (CGI and Rachel Weisz) – Jedi Lightsaber! X-Wing Fighter! Is blue, just like Luke’s first lightsaber. Gives Eragon the power of the Force. Born of a blue Jelly Belly. Makes snappy comments trying to endear her to us as one of those tough girls, but fails. Gives Eragon ringworm. Somehow makes dragons boring and uninteresting.
Dungeons & Dragons
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Dungeons & Dragons (Review)

October 21, 2005By

Dungeons & Dragons


2000
Starring
Jeremy Irons as Profion
Bruce Payne as Damodar
Justin Whalin as Ridley Freeborn
Marlon Wayans as Snails
Zoe McLellan as Marina Pretensa
Thora Birch as Empress Savina

A group of high schoolers sit around a table drinking copious amounts of Mt. Dew, all while pretending to be orcs or sorcerers and rolling handfuls of dice with more sides than golf balls have dimples in this thrilling true to life adaptation of the classic game. No, wait, instead we get a live-action adventure that puts the “Dung” in Dungeons & Dragons. Ignoring the shelves of existing literature set in the D&D universe littering bookstores and comic book shops, and also ignoring the fairly decent cartoon of the late 1980’s, the director instead chose to give us an all-new adventure, which breaks new ground in the amount of source material ignored in order to produce a terrible Hollywood movie of an existing property. Director Courtney Solomon had the rights for the film for ten years, and this is his best effort. The culmination of all his dreams. His shining star in a dark void. Ten years…..wasted! Drunken monkeys banging away on keyboards with bananas produced better scripts in that time. The lone bright spot of the movie is Jeremy Irons seemed to realize what junk he was in, and had a grand ol’ time hamming up, over acting, and becoming the best performance in the film.
His sorcerer gone mad in his lust for power and dragon control is fun to watch, hilarious at times. Fellow villain Bruce Payne plays his Damodar character with a permanent scowl and low voiced threat voice that he seemed to either be loving his role, or he was awakened each morning at 4 am by construction and the scowl lasted all day. Either way, it’s a boon for us, as fun with acting is always preferable to being bored to tears. Grab your +3 Mace and come with me on a grand adventure, a quest to parts unknown to retrieve an ancient device, the magical “Eject” button of the DVD player!


Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Review)

May 4, 2005By

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy


2005
Starring
Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent
Mos Def as Ford Prefect
Zooey Deschanel as Trillian
Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox
Alan Rickman as Marvin (voice)
Warwick Davis as Marvin (body)

The classic work by Douglas Adams finally comes to the silver screen. Twenty years or so it took, with pitfalls all the way. It was originally a radio play, then a book, then sequels, miniseries, video games, and towels followed. Finally, after years of stalling, the movie has been realized. Douglas Adams died, but the film continued onward. He did manage to contribute a lot toward the script before he left us. I myself read the books in high school years ago, but had not read them recently, so they were not fresh on my mind. I did not want to constantly compare the film to the books, so I stayed away from them until after the show. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or HG2G as the slang goes (Or even H2G2, which is being used as well as typos rapidly expand their stranglehold upon the English language) the movie has some big shoes to fill and big expectations to meet.