Yay vacation (and a movie review)
Dec. 22nd, 2006 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjHaving spent my lunch hour(+) and another after-work session finishing up the food shopping, I decided that I needed a break from furniture and organization and preparing for visitors, so I went off and saw Eragon tonight. There are a couple of important principles for enjoying movies. (Some day there will be much more discussion of this if ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scotica and I ever get around to starting our historic movie review series.) The most important is to try to enjoy a movie for what it is, rather than disliking it for what it's not. (A secondary principle is to ignore anything the publicity says about what the movie is. It's not that difficult to figure out what the enjoyment parameters should be on your own.) So we start out with the understanding that Eragon is a cobbled together pastiche of half a dozen familiar SF stories and, on many levels, is a classic Mary-Sue. (I'll leave the plot synopsis and review of sources to those who have already done so, like this one.) And that's the book -- the movie is unlikely to rise above that or even to aspire to rise above it. So we can just say that on a storytelling level, my expectations were not particularly high and they were, for all intents and purposes, met. The plot was simplistic, obvious, and very VERY familiar. The character development was non-existent. And -- as is the bane of any alternate-world novel turned into a movie -- what we got boils down to illustrative snapshots of the story, not a full and independent story itself. The overall plot was an odd shape, but then it suffers from reflecting a first-book-in-a-series original. Too much ground-work and build-up, and then the climactic battle feels like it's the "preliminary battle where our hero succeeds only to find he must struggle on to the Real challenge". Well, and so it is -- there are more volumes in the series to get through before he (presumably) defeats the Evil Emperor and restores the benevolent reign of the dragon riders. (Yeah, right.) And then just when it feels like we've hit the Romantic Bridging Scene, the credits roll. Hard to know what the odds are that further volumes in the series will get cinematized. So, given all that ... the scenery is nice. The CGI dragon is quite up to modern standards. The costuming is nicely varied (although one is able to identify the Good Guys instantly because they wear leather pants) and picturesque. The acting was ... not the strong point of the movie. You're unlikely to regret it significantly if you wait for this to come out on DVD.
scotica and I ever get around to starting our historic movie review series.) The most important is to try to enjoy a movie for what it is, rather than disliking it for what it's not. (A secondary principle is to ignore anything the publicity says about what the movie is. It's not that difficult to figure out what the enjoyment parameters should be on your own.) So we start out with the understanding that Eragon is a cobbled together pastiche of half a dozen familiar SF stories and, on many levels, is a classic Mary-Sue. (I'll leave the plot synopsis and review of sources to those who have already done so, like this one.) And that's the book -- the movie is unlikely to rise above that or even to aspire to rise above it. So we can just say that on a storytelling level, my expectations were not particularly high and they were, for all intents and purposes, met. The plot was simplistic, obvious, and very VERY familiar. The character development was non-existent. And -- as is the bane of any alternate-world novel turned into a movie -- what we got boils down to illustrative snapshots of the story, not a full and independent story itself. The overall plot was an odd shape, but then it suffers from reflecting a first-book-in-a-series original. Too much ground-work and build-up, and then the climactic battle feels like it's the "preliminary battle where our hero succeeds only to find he must struggle on to the Real challenge". Well, and so it is -- there are more volumes in the series to get through before he (presumably) defeats the Evil Emperor and restores the benevolent reign of the dragon riders. (Yeah, right.) And then just when it feels like we've hit the Romantic Bridging Scene, the credits roll. Hard to know what the odds are that further volumes in the series will get cinematized. So, given all that ... the scenery is nice. The CGI dragon is quite up to modern standards. The costuming is nicely varied (although one is able to identify the Good Guys instantly because they wear leather pants) and picturesque. The acting was ... not the strong point of the movie. You're unlikely to regret it significantly if you wait for this to come out on DVD.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 05:14 pm (UTC)I, personally, have no interest in reading the book. I personally don't find it intriguing that it was written by a teenager; I read enough teen fiction when I was an English teacher.
I enjoyed your review, by the way. We're going to see it this afternoon (popular vote).
no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 05:31 pm (UTC)As soon as I could release my inner critic and look at the pretty sets and beautiful dragon, I had a much better time. I definitely have no interest in reading the books, but I'll go see the sequels if popular vote reigns again.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 07:00 pm (UTC)