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Eragon Movie Recap Part 1: The First Part

So.

I watched the Eragon movie. Voluntarily.

I would say that I had forgotten how bad this movie was, but the truth is, I don’t think I ever fully understood in the first place. I saw this thing in theatres back when I had very low standards, and I kinda disliked it then. Seeing it again more than ten years later, it blew my mind. Ohhh boy, was I ever unprepared. I knew it would be bad, but this? I completely underestimated it. I was not at all ready.

But, ready or not, I saw the film. All of it. In detail. And among all of the bad bits I found many things to laugh at, though I imagine most of those were unintentional, and at least one instance of thematic consistency, which is always nice to see. So, the film was bad, certainly, but not thoroughly, completely terrible. But, if what we have now is bad, can we do better? Can we take what the studio has given us and transform it into something fun to experience, something people might actually choose to look at because they like seeing it? I certainly hope so, as this is the beginning of my quest to make that a reality.

This post and those following it will constitute a recap of the 2006 Eragon film - a summary of its events with a bit of commentary sprinkled in. Personal opinions will probably sprout up faster than weeds in a suburb. The wordy bits will be broken up by annotated screencaps from the film itself. I hope you like them! This series is based on a recap/screencap format that I personally have seen in mammothrider’s RWBY Recaps. In this recap series, you’ll be able to see elements from both that and screencap annotation blogs like cakewatchespsychopass. These folks do some very good work, and if their stuff looks interesting to you, you should totally check it out!

Now that you know what’s coming, I invite you to join me on my journey, as it is now beginning. My mission: to give you a way to enjoy the Eragon movie without first having to endure the Eragon movie.

Our story opens with a series of aerial shots. Clouds, mountains, and more are visible as the opening narration makes it clear that we’re in for a few minutes of exposition. Eventually, while looking at some clouds, a dragon raises its head into the frame. It turns out that we, the audience, were the real dragon rider the whole time! I must wonder, though, where the dragon was keeping its head earlier in this shot. That must have made for one uncomfortable flying stance.

But what’s this? On the other side of this cloud, we find a battle! With dragons fighting left and right and fire flying every which way, we look up to find ourselves attacked from above by another dragon!

The narrator informs us that all of this fighting is because of some guy named Galbatorix. While we’re on the subject of this guy, I have to ask, who names their kid Galbatorix? Like, even ignoring the part where it’s clearly an Evil Overlord Name, am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that somewhere, somebody looked at their kid and thought, I’m going to give you a really unwieldy name containing entirely too many syllables and weird consonants. I don’t mean to suggest that people never have long or complicated names, but compared to the rest of the names in this story, this one really sticks out to me as a very egregious example.

Moving on, we’re told about how there was this big war where a bunch of people died, and those that didn’t opted instead to run away in the approximate direction of some mountains. But wait! Who is this?

Some important rebels are riding through the woods on horseback, and they… stole the king’s favourite rock. We aren’t told why this matters. We are told, however, that the most important rebel’s name is Arya. Interestingly, she appears to be wearing the least armour, despite being the most important. Maybe they’re hoping that people will recognize her, and therefore not attack? That’s an unusual strategy. Regardless, everyone’s favourite oversized paperweight is clearly causing a few problems.

Meanwhile at the local evil lair, Ol’ Galby’s telling his Shade friend Durza all about how much he misses his cool rock. Oh, if only there were someone who could go on a low-profile retrieval mission. Someone with vaguely-defined supernatural abilities. Someone who doesn’t have the responsibility of staying in this weird mountain cave in case they need to loom dramatically in front of the camera. Durza, one of the least bad characters in this movie, takes the hint.

And now, we get to meet our protagonist! He’s getting out of bed at nighttime, for some reason. Protagonist walks past his sleeping uncle on his way to the door, and, for some reason, takes the time to pause and smile fondly at him. I’m not really sure of what the filmmakers were trying to communicate with this. He cares about his family? This man is, in fact, related to him? He would be disappointed if his parental figure were to suddenly be murdered? It is indeed that time of day, you know, the one when people generally aren’t awake? I should hope these things are all understandable by other means.

As our narrator informs us that this man venturing into the woods with a bow and some arrows is, in fact, going hunting, we get to enjoy a confusing bit of editing. In one shot, Protagonist Man (the fact that his name is Eragon is, of course, left unsaid) is closing the front door behind him. In the next shot, he’s climbing a hill in the middle of a lush forest that was clearly not at his doorstep in the establishing shot. Yes, I know he could have walked there first, but the editing strongly suggested he didn’t have to.

Moving on, Durza’s lurking in the forest now, waiting to intercept some horses and their humanoid companions. He stands in the middle of some pathway, raises his hand all magic-like and starts… hissing? The Urgals are apparently on their game today as they know how to interpret vague hissing as “launch ambush plan 4.2”.

It’s ambush time! Arya’s two dude friends get pincushioned real fast, and Arya herself gets tackled off her horse. Oh, no! If only there had been some obvious sign of trouble, like a suspicious dude acting suspiciously in the middle of the road dead ahead.

Eragon’s walking in the woods. There’s no-one around and his phone is dead. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots it: a deer.

Meanwhile, Arya is scooting along in the forest, holding a sword. That’s probably not how you hold a sword. Man, elven emissary training just isn’t what it used to be. Though, I do wonder how she made her tackler vanish before they hit the ground. We will probably never know. Then again, maybe that’s what they covered during training in place of proper sword-carrying technique.

I digress. Suddenly, it’s the Ring of Fire! Durza’s casting it, and really doesn’t seem to worry about fire damage while walking through it. He tries to intimidate Arya by finishing his sentence even after pausing to let her quip, but she’s one step ahead of him. She retrieves a very special cool rock, and immediately beams it out of her jurisdiction. Foiled again, Durza!

Time for Eragon to shoot the deer. But wait! The deer got all glowy and exploded! Actually, no, it didn’t explode, but it did get very mildly spooked and will be grazing elsewhere. Eragon doesn’t know what’s going on. His arrow’s on fire. There’s a cool rock on the ground. It’s smoking. Eragon looks perplexed, more than anything, by this complete surprise. I understand that intense confusion is something anyone would be feeling in this situation, but I would think that Eragon might have more pressing concerns when faced with a flashy mystery projectile.

Durza walks over to Arya, who’s collapsed onto the ground. It turns out that InstaPost is an expensive service. They discuss the exact meaning of “out of her jurisdiction”.

Eragon has decided to walk over to the cool rock. He squats down next to it. Picks it up. Blows on it. Truly an exhaustive investigation. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t do any sort of check beforehand to make sure that the suspiciously shiny explosively teleporting object isn’t going to curse him on contact. Oh, Eragon. What are we going to do with you?

Arya, meanwhile, has some sixth sense that lets her know that her cool rock has been found by an idiot. Satisfied, she takes a nap, leaving Durza to pick up the pieces.

This brings our first installment in the Eragon Movie Recap series to a close! This part covered about 6 minutes of screentime. Thanks for reading, and I hope you had fun, as I most certainly had fun writing it. If there was something you particularly liked, or would like to see done differently in future installments, you are more than welcome to leave some feedback as a reply, or in the ask box, or however else you’d like to deliver your message. I look forward to hearing from you!

Remember to tune in next week when we visit such questions as “will Eragon achieve his dream of multiclassing?”, “just how much trouble is Arya in?”, and “will the audience ever see Eragon follow proper safety procedures?”. See you then!

Bonus: