The Eragon-ous Zone (Thoughts)

[DoctorZ]

OK.  When I first saw this come out in the theaters I wanted to go see it, but the wife baulked.  I am glad she did and talked me out of going as well.  I just recently saw this unriffed  a month or so ago.  Awful. 

Nice job.  No real belly laughs though.  A solid 5 in one to ten.  I'll definitely want to watch it again.

OK.  The surprise ending..      BUT.....DIS.....where was the secret code to get a free rifftrax for sitting trough the whole thing?  Hmmmm?     Come on.  I'm damaged here.  How about a little love for one of your fans?

[starfighter]

   I'm guessing Dis was just warming up.  Something tells me that the next live show will feature his version of "MacArthur Park." All seven minutes of it.

[Tyrant]

Sweet mother of heaven, this movie was aweful. To prevent me from getting distracted between the movie itself and the riffs (which happens a lot, unfortunatly), Pak and I decided to just watch the stupid thing on its own before the Rifftrax version. So we had to see it twice. It's going to take days of showering before the smell comes out. Gah.

  Interestingly, Pak and I were riffing it beforehand, and the guys actually made some of the same jokes we did. I guess some scenes begged for it. I'm no expert in directing or screenplay writing or whatever, but this movie could have maybe been a good one and it just wasn't handled very well. I'm not sure in what aspect but it was definatly off. The telepathic thing between the dragon and Eragon was the dumbest part of the whole thing. I'm glad Mike and Kevin tore this film a new one. It needed it. I loved all their jokes and Dis' serenade during the credits had us on the floor.

 It'll be interesting to see if any sequels to this thing come out. They certianly set it up left and right for them on the chance the movie would do well. Which, of course, it didn't.

[TheUnabeefer]

Once Dis hit the chorus, I started crying.... I haven't laughed that hard in a long long time.

[Just Some Guy]

I saw that the DVD had a director's commentary and I couldn't resist listening to it for a bit.

A good commentary gives you insight into why a film is the way it is.  It can give you a deeper insight into the movie and a greater appreciation of it.  The Eragon commentary is not one of those.

I would strongly suspect that Stefen Fangmeier, the director, was watching a different movie from me except for the fact that 75% of the time he told me what was happening on the screen.  He kept saying "This is a nice little scene," when it was a redundant scene that was poorly paced and added nothing.  He apparently didn't realize how predictable the movie was because another common statement was on how a viewer wouldn't realize something blindingly obvious like Jeremy Iron's character being a former dragon-rider.  He thought that having the dragon instantly age from baby to adulthood was a good idea and that the one scene of Eragon sitting around while the CGI baby dragon wanders around set up their bond.

In the end I can't decide if he's clueless or if it was just another case of not being able to say anything bad about a movie.

I did learn one thing about Eragon, though.  Like Mike and Kevin I thought that Eragon was filmed in Canada.  It was instead filmed in the other location for generic wilderness, Eastern Europe.  Slovania and Hungary to be precise.

[Indomitus]

It'll be interesting to see if any sequels to this thing come out. They certianly set it up left and right for them on the chance the movie would do well. Which, of course, it didn't.

That's never stopped them before.  Hell, they made a sequel for D&D.

[Pak-Man]

OK. Disembaudio gets to sing every song ever in every movie from now on. :^)

[Rattrap007]

I want more of Disembadio's singing over credits... then we can have the CD of Disembadio Sings the Hits!!

[mrbasehart]

I thought the Riff gathered momentum as the movie went on and by the end, with Dis singing his little heart out, I loved it.  And while I didn't think the movie was really bad, it certainly provided enough material for its running time. 

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Wow.  This film was awful on a scale that one rarely sees in major Hollywood productions.   The incompetent rip-off of a script (which admittedly the film owes to its source material), the acting that was just weak, the lack of continuity between shot to shot, the effects that look like they were done for a Playstation.    I could dedicate a multipage rant on so many aspects of the film.  Scholars should study this disaster as an example of exactly how to not make a movie. 

I thought the riffing was solid but not spectacular for the movie.

oohh no. You cannot put htat much blame on paulini. Eragon the book was a bit derivative, but the sheer toxic, duplicated badness comes from the lifted visuals and the butchered plot you can only get from cramming a big thick novel into a hundred minute movie.

[LadyKenobi]

You cannot put htat much blame on paulini. Eragon the book was a bit derivative,

1)  Yes we can.

2)  A bit?

A BIT?!!!?

He ripped his fanfic of a "novel" off almost wholesale from LotR, Dragonrider of Perin, Wheel of Time, and a mish-mash of various other fantasy/sci-fi sources.  If he turned this in as an assignment in one of my writing classes, he would receive a gigantic zero and an all expenses paid trip to the chair's office for plagiarism.  This not only never should have been a movie; it never should have existed as a book.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Alright, it was very derivative. It had your rider-dragon link thingy, an undistinguished system of magic, elves, dwarves, and a slight variation on the "evil, stupid hero-fodder bad guy race".

However, it was not without some spark of original thought. The Razaks where a new idea. Insectoid race that is simply filling in the "human's natural enemies" role so many other predators had lost on account of lacking thumbs. I don't think I've ever heard or read about a were-cat before this book.

My main point is, however derivative it was, it was less derivative than the movie. The creators of this film have done the seemingly impossible and managed to suck and pulverize the scraps and grains of independent thought that went into the novel "Eragon", and then filled out the empty space with styrofoam peanuts.

Novel: razaks, scary man-eating bug people with paralyzing breath. More powerful than Urgals, and less likely to be dispatched in a single scene.

Movie: Razaks are just some poorly illuminated sweaty guys. No attempt is made to distinguish them from the "urgals", which were also played by undisguised sweaty guys.

Novel: creator is somewhat original, if not wise, in introducing a serious character who changes into a cat and is named "Solembum".

Movie: Solembum is dropped to make the fortune telling scene even more cryptic and pointless. Opportunities for riffs untold are lost to us.



That is my point.

[eegah]

I thought the Riff gathered momentum as the movie went on

Agreed. I was thinking it was going to be a dud early on, but it got better. Overall, an average rifftrax. And Disembaudio was great at the end.

[BassBone]

Anyone notice that Saphira's armor looks completely different before she puts it on? Dammit, movie! Continuity!

[Sideswipe]

I actually did notice that.  I wonder why there wasnt a ridd about that.