Eragon (Full Screen Edition) | 
| Director: Stefen Fangmeier
Actors: Edward Speleers, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Guillory, Robert Carlyle, John Malkovich
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy Used: $0.90
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Rating:  497 reviews
Sales Rank: 23314
Format: Ac-3, Dolby, Dts Surround Sound, Dubbed, Dvd, Full Screen, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 103 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 2242707
UPC: 024543427070
EAN: 0024543427070
ASIN: B000NA28HU
Theatrical Release Date: December 15, 2006
Release Date: March 20, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Movie DVD
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While it owes much of its appeal and appearance to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Eragon can stand on its own as an enjoyable fantasy for younger viewers. Faithfully adapted from the bestselling novel by teenage author Christopher Paolini, this boy-and-his-dragon tale offers clean, fast-paced family entertainment without compromising the darker qualities of Paolini's novel (the first in what is known as the "Inheritance" trilogy). The plot centers on 17-year-old peasant farmboy Eragon (played by appealing newcomer Ed Speleers) who discovers a mysterious blue object that turns out to be an egg that eventually hatches to reveal Saphira, a blue-scaled dragon that quickly grows to full-size. According to prophecy, Eragon is destined to be a dragon-rider like those who once protected a benevolent kingdom, thus reviving an ancient conflict against the army of King Galbatorix (John Malkovich), a former dragon rider who turned to evil, now in alliance with a! dark-magic "Shade" sorcerer named Durza (Robert Carlyle). While the movie serves up familiar fantasy elements and offers little if anything new to fans of the genre (or anyone who's read the books of Anne McCaffrey and Ursula K. Le Guin), it's visually impressive (especially the dragon scenes, with Rachel Weisz providing the telepathic "voice" of Saphira) and full of timeless wisdom, much of it delivered by Eragon's heroic mentor Brom (Jeremy Irons), himself a former dragon rider with memories of past battles and hope for Eragon's future. Add a fair warrior-maiden named Arya (Sienna Guillory) and you've got all the ingredients for a worthwhile (if not particularly original) fantasy that points directly to a sequel. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is up to individual viewers to decide. --Jeff Shannon Eragon Extras  Christopher Paolini talks to us about his book and film inspirations and makes recommendations for fans of Eragon, click here to view the complete list. |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 492 more reviews...
 This could have been a masterpiece. March 14, 2007
S. Ulrich (Lancaster, PA)
191 out of 219 found this review helpful
Honestly, I wanted to cry as I sat there in the theater watching this movie. What a waste of ten bucks. If you have read the books, and excitedly waited out the release of the movie, you are undoubtably as disappointed as I am. The books had such scope, like a Lord of the Rings junior. There was no way to get everything important shoved into an hour and a half movie. Why not go ahead and make a 2 and a half hour epic? I'd have watched it!!
Here is what you'll miss in the movie:
-The relationship between Brom and Eragon is very underdeveloped, so much so that when Brom dies, you're like, whoopdeedoo.
-Saphira ages from a tiny dragon into just about full grown in one ridiculous moment.
-Eragon's journey with Murtagh is like, 5 seconds long. No Hadrac desert, no bonding. Again, you could care less about Murtagh in the movie.
-The Dwarven kingdom was UNBELIEVABLY disappointing. If you read the book, you probably had quite a vision workded up in your head, with the Star Rose and all. The movie pretty much annihilates all that. And the dwarves themselves are stupid-looking. You can't slap some armor on a guy with a beard and call them a dwarf.
-Arya is an ELF. Did they really go over on the budget that they couldn't even give her POINTED EARS???
-The battle between Eragon and the Shade is like nothing. I was so bored.
Over all, this movie takes a perfectly paced book and puts it into hyperdrive, taking all the wonder and fun right out of it. You'll sit down to watch this movie and all you'll be able to do is watch in horror as they slaughter it. It is a terrible shame. Had they had a larger CGI budget, blatantly copied some LOTR stuff, and had Mr. Paolini perhaps overseen the novel-to-script process, well, maybe he did, but they just shoved some more money at him and he said, "Whatever, I'm alright with you destroying my cool book. Go for it."
Now, if I were to choose one or two things from the movie that didn't totally and completely suck, I will say this:
Saphira, for the amount of CGI that was spent on her, is perfect. She was totally real. The voice of Rachel Weisz is perfect as well. Eragon, Edward Speelers, he was great too. Too bad he had to over-act in order to compensate for the crappy, crappy dialogue and lack of character development.
If they happen to make a sequel, Lord help us. The second book is even more complex and wide-scoped than the first. It will not translate well based on it's predecessor. I say they scrap the first movie, and make it all over, with a bigger budget, and the fans of the book get all editing priveledges. Then we'd have our Eragon come to life, rather than this horrible, mess of a mutilated movie!!
 Two Thumbs Down December 18, 2006
Jeff M. Williams
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
Eragon- While the actors and special effects were excellent, I couldn't get over the story line. I read and liked the book. They skipped and completely left the story line in the movie so often it was hard to keep up. If I were Chris Paolini I would be furious at how they butchered my story. The dumbest part was when Saphira was first learning to fly. She took off a baby dragon and came back full grown. This book's story was destroyed in the theater. Maybe my expectations were too high as I went to see the movie looking for Lord of the Rings quality and I got a USA up all night with Joe Bob Briggs movie. Had they made this movie 3 1/2 hours long and stayed with the story line it would have rivaled Lord of the Rings. As it is we may never see Eldest in theaters.
Star Wars meets Dragonheart December 27, 2006
G. M. Handlon (Colorado Springs)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I am the only member of my family who didn't read the books. That said, we all saw Eragon the movie together. It was noted beforehand that I alone had no expectations. The rest of this review is a spoiler, so proceed at your own risk.
I'm sorry to report that none of us enjoyed the movie. It was all about the animation. The story was recycled. The dialogue was inane. They repeated one line at least three times, and I'm told it was never in the books..."One part brave, three parts fool."
This project had the depth and imagination of Ralph Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings", meaning not much. My family (the Eragon fans) were intensely disappointed, outraged and offended. They said it was like taking a novel and condensing it to a four-frame comic strip. I wonder what the author, Christopher Paolini thought? There is mention of elves and dwarves, but you never see them...or so I thought. I was told afterward that the female lead character, Arya, was an elf. The movie never revealed that. At the end, I thought she was Minnehaha the Indian princess.
Personally, I did not hate Eragon as much as the others in my family, but I would not recommend it. I thought that as presented, this movie was a bold-faced rip-off of Star Wars; the king is a dragon-rider who turned against his brethren to gain ultimate power...there is a secret encampment of rebels, waiting for a leader to appear...that leader has no idea he is the chosen, or why...the hero's adoptive family is slain in the search for him by the evil king...the hero's mentor is slain by the evil king's more evil minion. Sound familiar? On and on it goes, a regurgitation of the same old thing. Even the dragons are reminiscent of the worms in Dragonheart and Dragonslayer, nothing innovative.
The computer graphics are very good, but that's about all you'll get in this offering. Given that, even the best of the CGs will remind you of Lord Of The Rings, but not as good.
Crashes and burns February 22, 2007
E. A Solinas (MD USA)
86 out of 112 found this review helpful
"Eragon" wants to be "Lord of the Rings." It really, really wants to be. In a pinch, it'll settle for "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" with a dash of Harry Potter.
But those hoping for a spectacular PG-rated epic shouldn't hold their breaths, because the adaptation of Christopher Paolini's bestseller is a massive bellyflop. The direction is stilted and plodding, the acting is on par with tree stumps, and the whole thing is uninspired -- it never moves beyond "quick cash-in."
A young woman is being chased through the woods by a band of evil soldiers, trying to recapture a bright blue stone she stole from evil King Galbatorix (John Malkovich), but she magics it away. It's found in the woods by a young farm boy, Eragon (Edward Speleers), who unsuccessfully tries to trade it for food. But the stone turns out to be a dragon's egg.
When his home and uncle are destroyed, Eragon escapes with his now-grown dragon Saphira (Rachael Weisz) and a mysterious stranger named Brom (Jeremy Irons), who knows a lot about the Dragon Riders. Now Eragon and Saphira may be the only hope for the land, not to mention the captive elf princess he's dreaming about, and whom he has to rescue from the evil king.
Dragons, damsels in distress, magic spells, an evil king and his evil wizard, and a Young Hero in the Luke Skywalker mold... well, "Eragon" had a lot of obstacles in front of it from the start. It sounds like the love child of "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings"... except it's infinitely more clumsy than either of those movies.
And the director doesn't help -- Stefan Fangmeier is horribly crude and clumsy in his directing, with a style that manages to be both stilted and choppy. The scripting is even worse. Expect the most pompous, cliched fantasyspeak imaginable ("It is your fate to be a Dragon Rider. The Varden need a Rider if they are to defeat Durza and the king." "I didn't ask for any of this!" "But you were chosen, nevertheless!").
It's not surprising, since Fangmeier has never even directed a short film before. His only prior movie work has been for visual effects, which might explain why the CGI for Saphira the dragon is so beautifully detailed and fluid. Wonderful work there. But not enough to make you forget the rest of the movie.
Speleers looks like a deer in the headlights, while Sienna Guillory has all the elegance and magic of hobbit feet, and Malkovich is given the most 2-D villain role of the 21st century. The supporting actors give the only solid performances, miscast as they are -- Weisz gives a wonderfully nuanced performance, while Irons is solid as the mentor figure.
"Eragon" has the occasional good performance or moment of excellence -- usually from Weisz as Saphira. But the rest of the time, it's an amateurish example of how NOT to make a fantasy movie.
Absolutely inane December 30, 2006
WYM19 (Canada)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
I read a few chapters of the book, then stopped because the dialogue was so dull. I figured the movie would be better. Well, the movie seemed like a teenage boy's simple idea of fantasy. Dragons and their riders were killed many years ago and an evil king took over the kingdom. All hope is gone, for there are no more dragons or dragonriders. A young (17-year-old) farmboy named Eragon finds a stone. The stone hatches a helpless baby dragon. Unbelievably, a few days later, the dragon has a telepathic voice, is quite huge, and loyal as a dog. Eragon is just a farmboy, he doesn't want to be a grand rider. Brom, a uncle-like storyteller, teaches Eragon a few snippets about being a dragon-rider. Brom and Eragon flee the farm, chased by evil bad guys. Watching the movie was just like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, David Edding's Belgarion series - a young farmboy has a destiny (here, a dragon), and a mysterious old man teaches him the ways of life while they flee the bad guys.
Eragon is lauded throughout the whole movie as a destined hero, but I thought he seemed outright stupid. Eragon is bonded to the last dragon in the world. If a dragonrider is killed, his dragon dies too. Eragon is also a farmboy who can't fight. Yet Eragon keeps on rebelling against the wise Brom and running to fight evil Urgals who can kill him (and therefore his dragon) in a heartbeat. Then Eragon gets a dream from a captured elf (a young teenage girl who looks like any human, except she wears feathers in her hair) and of course, he runs out to rescue her and imperils his dragon. Brom tries to get Eragon to understand how important it is that Eragon stays alive so the last dragon stays alive too, but Eragon has no head for strategy and only knows that he is smart and strong enough to save this girl from whatever unknown is holding her. Talk about overconfident and stupid. He should at least try to learn more about his enemy before literally walking into his lair.
Eragon is actually quite annoying. He's disrespectful, ignorant, selfishly reckless and can't see beyond the end of his nose. He is really, really cocky. Once Eragon is on his own, he overacts like he's a confident 30-year old leader and only then, after the fact, does he start to talk respectfully of Brom. Eragon is also annoying in his patriarchal attitude towards his dragon. At one point, his dragon tries to reason with him, and his response is, "I'm the rider, and I say we go". Hence, they go. Hm, arrogant and treats his dragon like property? The entire story is populated by evil goons, middle-aged men, a dragon, Eragon, and two teenage beauties (of course). Both teenage girls are the tanned, sweaty, heavy make-up, super-skinny kind, with bony faces like you'd see on a magazine cover. Aren't elves supposed to look ethereal or at least not quite human?
The scenery is beautiful, very mountainous and vast. The hardest part of the movie was the dialogue; it was very inane. Perhaps the cheesiest line was, "...into the sky...to win or to die!". There's no humour or interesting conversation between any characters. There's little to no camaraderie. Eragon is annoying and has no manners (he gets a nice set of armour or someone saves his life, and he doesn't even say thanks!). He'd be a lot more interesting if he showed any humility. Either he's rebelling against being a rider or he's confident that he can take on anyone. If he were smarter, he'd be training with his dragon on how to be a better fighter on horseback, or practicing his swordplay. The story relies on the natural-born ability theory of power. Eragon doesn't need to practice riding maneouvres/swordplay/magic - it just comes naturally to him because he's the chosen one! Unlike Luke Skywalker, Frodo and Belgarion, Eragon doesn't really try to improve his skills, because of course, he was born with what he needs - or so the movie suggests. Once Eragon realizes he can use magic, Brom tells him to use it as a last resort, and of course, being a good listener, Eragon uses magic over and over again. The intelligent, telepathic dragon sounds like a loyal dog with very little personality or assertiveness with her rider - she meekly does what he tells her to do. The evil king doesn't sound evil at all (he has a very ordinary-joe voice). Over all, I'd have to give it 2 stars for the scenery and computer generated dragon. The hero was ignorant, arrogant and had no manners, the dragon wasn't treated like an equal, and the dialogue was terrible. It really seems like a simple kid's fantasy - there's little depth or originality in this movie.
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