Premium Tuna Belly
The progressively brilliant Harry Potter and the rich, haunting Pan's Labyrinth aside, it's quite unfortunate that Eragon happens to be this work year's only other fantasy offering, reflecting the rather dismal and drab state of the genre in film today.
1. Mystical dragon egg propitiously lands in the hands of a farm boy. Said farm boy just so happens to be the 'chosen one'. Said dragon egg hatches, and said hatchling manages to transform into an almost-grown dragon just by flying in the sky for less than 5 minutes (I suppose this was done to advance the plot).
2. A grizzled war veteran serendipitously happens to reside in the village of said farmboy and acts as his mentor.
3. Said farmboy is pursued for his life by Uruk-Hai wannabes. Cornered and surrounded in some backwater village, said farmboy conveniently conjures an area-of-effect flaming arrow, which would normally take years and years of training to master (read: Ichigo and Bankai) and blasts said pursuants to smithereens.
4. Farmboy runs off on a daring quest to rescue some elf maiden from the hands of some warlock-lich-shade thing. Needless to say, he finds himself outclassed and outmatched, but...
5. Where said farmboy had to rely on subterfuge, obfuscation and jedi mind tricks (just kidding) to infiltrate said warlock-lich-shade thing's fortress, said mentor (see point 2) manages to enter said fortress sans disguise and manages to take the death blow from a deadly arrow just at the right moment.
6. Once again said farmboy finds himself surrounded in said fortress, but by some deux ex machina, is felicitously saved by some unknown ranger in disguise who had infiltrated said fortress since goodness knows when.
7. Just minutes before the 'climatic' final battle, said dragon, who could only manage some paltry ice-breath about 1 week ago, miraculously evolves, pokemon-like, into a full fire-breathing adult.
8. Said farmboy, who could barely ride said dragon properly days ago, manages to balance himself flawlessly on said dragon's tail (whilst said dragon is very busy dodging fireballs) to launch a coup de gras on said warlock-lich-shade thing.
9. The End (or until the sequels get converted to film)
Basically, I thought Eragon was a really contrived, insipid piece of hackneyed crap and I am glad critics agree. They should just rename this film as "7-11", because everything happens so damn conveniently! Thank goodness I didn't watch it on the big screen! I really do miss the old cult fantasy flicks like Krull, Clash of the Titans, and the Black Cauldron.
Five ways to make Eragon better:
1. Don't get some idiot 15 year old, who has no clue of character development or pacing, to write a book
2. Get Joss Stone to blot her face before filming
3. Replace Edward Speelers with Steven Strait as the lead (yummy)
4. Just anime-ize the damn film!
5. Replace the male protagonist with a female instead, who is sent by an underground rebel organisation to assasinate a government leader but discovers that she is part of a larger conspiracy. And instead of Eragon, call the film Aeon Flux.
Let's hope they don't fuck up His Dark Materials: Northern Lights.