I'll be curious to see what level of success this movie ends up achieving. My son's opinion on the way out of theater: "That should have gone straight to DVD." I don't think I felt as upset as he was about it, but as I said I haven't read the book.
I'm curious what others think about the storyline? Was it just me on a cynical day? (A strong possibility, given the day I've had...)
I don't believe I'll be watching it, though my younger brothers have been pretty insistent in their pleading to see it. I might have to bite the bullet.
I also feel it should've gone straight to DVD, but we all can't get what we want.
My conclusion is that Eragon is junk food. It's not great reading, but it's not really trying to be. All it's trying to do is cover all the little things that make fantasy good, even if they are cliche. And people pay money for it, so it must be satisfying some hunger for fantasy.
I only went to see the movie because one of these friends already bought the ticket, and I wasn't doing anything else that day. And though it deserves criticism, as a whole, I thought it had several things making it better than the book. 1) It was considerably shorter.
To the well read, or even the poorly read, fantasy genre reader, the book is crap. Well, maybe not crap, but not very good. Eragon would have failed miserably that fantasy test that was posted here a while back. The story is about a farm boy who discovers that he really is a royal dragon rider raise by his uncle, as his parents were killed by the evil king. He find a dragon egg, Eragon, and then magically discovers that the last surviving dragon rider of old is the town drunk who takes him under his wing and ... you get the point.
The movie I will avoid. Planned on avoiding it the second I heard it was coming out.
Though the fact that a poorly written Eragon could make a fortune on sales and movie rights is a boon to aspiring writers everywhere. Turns out you don't need to write a masterpiece to make a fortune afterall.
Jammrock
Nothing of late tends to irritate me more than hearing that somebody who's having a success of sorts--any sort, any arena---is the "son of" or "daughter of" or "relative of" somebody well known. (Or "went to the right schools" or "is part of the old boy's network," or somesuch.) It makes me devalue my literary talent and efforts---would I have made it if my parents had worked in publishing?---and makes me think the whole game was stacked against me from the start. And that depresses me no end.
There are plenty of "relatives" who've done things I've liked. For example, I like the early novels of J. O. Jeppsen, better known as Mrs. Isaac Asimov. (And I voted for George W. Bush, who's certainly a "son of"---depending on who you talk to and what end of the political spectrum you're on.)
But the whole "hotbed of nepotism" situation does not inspire me to pick up a copy Eragon and read it. Is the book worth anything? Maybe. Maybe I'd like it if I read it...maybe I'd like the movie...but I don't think I'm inclined to do either.
I'll be blunt - the movie sucked. I wanted to slap myself when I got out of the theater. I'd keep most of the actors, but change everything else about the movie. It was like they were trying to get the entire movie into a certain timeframe and so they kind of glossed over or completely skipped certain parts of the story.
My two cents...if you don't like, I'll take a refund then.
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Eragon got published, I think, because of the writer's connections, parents involved in the publishing industry.
This is not correct. I just read the story of how it transpired, and what really happened is that the author, Christopher Paolini and his parents (keep in mind he was still a teenager, living in Montana) self-published his book. He was home-schooled so I'm sure the folks considered this a good lesson in economics, marketing, and the publishing industry. The family promoted the book heavily for over a year, giving 135 presentations at libraries, schools, bookstores, etc.
In the summer of 2002, a published (Carl Hiaasen) author's stepson bought and read a copy of the self-published book while on vacation in Montana. Hiaasen then brought the book to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, who bought the rights to the trilogy. The rest is history.
http://www.alagaesia.com/christopherpaolini.htm
I still think "connections" are the connection here. I never heard anything of this sort accrued to, say, Harry Potter.
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Ah, but how and why did Carl Hiassen's son buy and read a copy of it?
Ahem... did you read my post? The family lived in Montana. The book was heavily marketed in Montana. The kid made 135 personal appearances promoting his book, dressed in medieval style clothing, at bookstores, libraries, etc. The book was all over the place... IN MONTANA.
Hiaasen's stepson bought the book while they were vacationing in MONTANA. It was easy to buy at the time. The stepson LOVED the book and raved about it. Thus, Hiaasen, got it into his hands, and apparently felt it was good enough to alert his publisher about it.
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I'm attuned to SF and fantasy.
Apparently that wasn't enough. You would have had to also be attuned to the self-published industry coming from the state of Montana.
Things like this can happen due to a combination of lucky events. Something like that happened to me the other day; I work at a newspaper in Oregon. We got hit by a giant windstorm last Friday --it clocked wind gusts of 137 mph on the Oregon coast, although we only got gusts up to 69 mph in our town. Anyhow, the wind blew a trampoline into a tree, and our photographer got the shot. I was replying to an email to the regional Associated Press Bureau chief, who is due to come pay us a visit soon, and casually mentioned the trampoline picture. AP calls us, asks us to upload photos, bingo... our pictures are on national news. It's not manipulation of the system, or a case of getting unjust advantage... that would be a cynic's point of view.
It's just a matter of being in the right place, at the right time, following a hell of a lot of hard work.
In my opinion, the kid who wrote Eragon DESERVES his success, to some degree, because dang it... he did everything right; he applied BIC (butt in chair, for you newbies), he edited, he and his family paid self-publishing costs out of their own pockets, and they heavily and agressively marketed the book for over a year before "luck" coincided with them.
He believed in his book, and so did his family. Regardless of the fact that the story is pretty simplistic and full of cliches, it's still an admirable story of success, and one Christopher earned through hard work alone. Had he not been so agressive with his marketing, the book wouldn't have been in the bookstore in Montana for Hiassen's stepson to buy, and fall in love with.
I only hope that when my book is finally done, I can believe in IT as much as Christopher believed in Eragon.
The book itself, however....let's just say, inspiration to writers everywhere. If that can get published and on the NYTimes bestseller list...
Granted, I read the first, self-published edition. Knopf edited out approximately 20,000 (if my memory serves) words before publishing it, which would have improved it greatly. I also feel like some plot and unpredictability would have helped, but you can't have everything.
I'm still impressed with the process Christopher Paolini went through, but the end result...not so much impressed.
Here we go, trying to salvage our writerly dignity and self-confidence by denigrating something successful. I wonder how often it occurs to us to figure out what this book is doing right rather than submitting it to death by a thousand paper cuts.
If hundreds of thousands of people can't get enough of the story, it doesn't freaking matter how it got popular. I mean, it's nice and all to use its publishing history to trash it, because, you know, that lets us entertain the conceit that if only it had been our stories that had that extra bit of help...
Nah. Under the mounds of bad plot, predictable story, and stilted dialogue that are somehow more cliched than this thread, it's doing something terribly right. I wonder what it is?
Yes, I'm going to lurk on Hatrack forever just to make sure this gets brought up in every one of these kinds of threads. Take off your writers hats and look at the story as a reader. What is it doing right?
I'd do that myself, but I haven't read it. 
My problem with figuring out what the book is doing right is that it isn't doing the right thing for me. There are other books that I do like that are also successful, and I would rather study those.
I don't mean that to sound close-minded. Writers should try to read and understand everything. I've tried to understand why Eragon is popular, and I have some theories, but since Eragon is not my idea of a good book I am simply going to file my knowledge/guesses away and try to emulate the books I do enjoy.
And I don't think explaining the book's publishing history is in any way an attempt to "trash it," at least it wasn't for me. Remember, Paolini himself DIDN'T have any real connections. What happened to him (book randomly picked up by child of other writer) could happen to anybody who self-publishes and puts the right kind of a marketing push behind their work.
I take your point, though, trousercuit.
I will say that I don't really care whether the plot, idea, story, or even dialogue are trite, cliche, one-dimensional, or simply silly on the face of it.
I care about craftsmanship, about which nobody here has said even a word. Maybe the book has it, maybe the movie doesn't. It could turn out the other way round. I don't really know one way or the other. But by "craftsmanship" I don't mean literary contrivences or innovative use of light and shadow (though I'm not really opposed to either). Taking the film, I mean stuff like being able to tell not only that something is a poorly done special effect but also being immediately aware of the technique used to create it. Things like actors who are barely in character (this is not about whether the characters themselves make any damn sense) and takes that simply couldn't have been the best out of more than one take. Scenes that add nothing but prurient interest or cheap viscerality.
Moving to writing, it's harder to define. Wonky usages and confusing language, poor use of POV so that I don't get involved with the characters, outright stupidity or gross ignorance on the part of the writer, these are all part of it. I suppose that I want the text to convince me that the writer cares about the story, whether or not I've read dozens or hundreds of similar stories.
Like I said, I don't know whether or not Eragon is any good, either the book or the movie. If I find out I'll let you know what I think. But I think that hating on the plot is a signal of envy. It's the sort of thinking that seizes on the easiest part of writing a story and says "I can do better than that" without acknowledging that the idea is nothing without the execution.
It reminded me of Terry Brooks; I like Brook's writing and started out loving his Shannara series, but with each sequel I picked up, I felt that I'd already read that story before. The talent was there, but it wasn't capturing my interest anymore.
The same thing happened with Eragon. I started out enjoying the story because Paolini knew how to string more than two words together. My enthusiasm died about halfway through, because I realized that I'd read the same kind of story before. He could write; I just wasn't interested anymore.
I stand by what I said earlier, Eragon is junk food. There's nothing wrong with having junk food; whatever junk food has going against it, it still tastes good and can fill you up. And I have quite a few friends that enjoy the book a lot (these are the guys who really hate the movie); I'm just not of them.
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I also feel it should've gone straight to DVD, but we all can't get what we want.
Show business is a business after all.
Now whether or not people should be paying $14 to see it... Well that's a different question. To be rational then you must expect the experience of viewing it to be at least equal to the cost mentioned. About 2 hours and $14. So, at the end of the day, ask yourself why you paid that cost to see it. Then there's your answer. Personally $14 seems high to see any movie. Where I live it's commonly $4 for an early show.
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This is not correct. I just read the story of how it transpired, and what really happened is that the author, Christopher Paolini and his parents (keep in mind he was still a teenager, living in Montana) self-published his book. He was home-schooled so I'm sure the folks considered this a good lesson in economics, marketing, and the publishing industry. The family promoted the book heavily for over a year, giving 135 presentations at libraries, schools, bookstores, etc.
In the summer of 2002, a published (Carl Hiaasen) author's stepson bought and read a copy of the self-published book while on vacation in Montana. Hiaasen then brought the book to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, who bought the rights to the trilogy. The rest is history.
EVERYONE is misisng the big point here...
Who the hell would go on vacation in Montana?
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited December 22, 2006).]
The book got published and sold lots of copies. Now it's a movie. It was written by a kid for crying out loud. A kid from Montana.
I say hats off and congratulations.
If I ever have 10% of Pauolini's success, I'll be thrilled beyond measure.
I intend to read it soon, have a copy that's bubbling up to near the top of my to-be-read pile.
As for the book, it was a fun read. Yes, it was full of cliches and a tad predictable but a lot of movies and books are.
Kudos to to the author. He made money writing a fun story. I wish for half the success.
I've been there on vacation, I've gone back more than once, and I'm not the only one.
well that's grand if you like mountains and cows and things... I suppose I've never been there but I've always imagined it as a big-giant extension of Wyoming, which without booze and fireworks is awfully dull.
I liked Eragon when I read it (to a point; by the time Paolini's somewhat-engaging world of Alagaesia faded into the background, I was reading because I was holding out hope it would get better, and because I wanted to see if there was a cliche he wouldn't whole-heartedly embrace), looking back, actually remember very little of it.
No one remembers the bag of Doritos, after all.
The movie was great for my kids, who were engaged by the dragon and mysticism. Beyond that, it did little to impress.
I don't mind the predictability of it, and the complete failure to develop a character could be the result of many things, including the need to condense several hundred pages of story into a 120 page script.
What dissapointed me were all the inconsistencies -- a given type of warrior is nearly impossible to defeat mano a mano, and yet this kid battles them without even a scratch. We're told of the "price" for using magic early on, but never see this cost to the hero after the magic is used multiple times. There were many such problems that left me feeling a bit cheated.
Perhaps that's different in the book, I only read a few pages of it, but I have a feeling otherwise. I don't mind formulaic storytelling or Cliche fantasy (let's face it, most genre fiction is riddled with cliche at one level or another); so long as it's done well I can appreciate the same story in any number of different incarnations (how else does "the Nativity Story" manage to sell tickets?). But the movie and/or book has to be consistent and told well.
My 2 cents....
Okay, let's throttle back a little and say it's just a bunch of strawberries. I don't just munch them unappreciatively like a cow eating it's own cud (yuck!), I savor each individual one. If not, then what is the point of eating them?
Or, let's talk about Doritos. I eat them till I feel like not eating anymore, then I stop eating them. But apparently I'm the only one.
"Characters are born out of necessity" - Christopher Paolini
Any person who has ever spent more than a week on a story can understand why this statement is so infuriating. He represents many of the things that we as writers work so hard to avoid being. His characters are one-dimensional, uninteresting, and sometimes unnecessary Mary Sues. His plot borrows completely from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and contains many elements that break our suspension of disbelief, which are things that we discuss about on this board and try to avoid doing. Finally, his writing process did not seem to be anything like ours as he simply woke up one morning, started writing, finished, edited a few times through, and got published with "no" problems (Being 19 years old, still living with your parents, and appearing before dozens of youngsters in a goofy medieval costume may equal the arduous process of getting published...I'm not sure) Finally, he wasted this wonderful opportunity by selling a book, that given a few more years of polishing, could have been excellent. I mean I see thousands of places in his books where he could have done a better job with more experience in writing.
P.S. I wrote a little more than I meant to.
As for borrowing elements from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings...neither story invented the core concepts that made them really great stories. I've never once suggested that anyone should try to avoid emulating the plot elements of such archtypal works in the fantasy genre, and I don't know that anyone else has seriously suggested it either.
As for being published with "no" problems, that "no" definitely deserves to be put off in quotes. Yes, I think that literally betting the farm on your novel does count as putting a real, if unconventional, effort into it. More importantly, I think that even to suggest that there is anything wrong with an author's work simply because that work was written and published before the author spent a certain number of years trying to break in...it largely invalidates everything else you say, because that criticism is so fundamentally flawed.
Then you finally admit, in the most backhanded way possible, that the story had serious potential.
I haven't read any of his writing, so I can't really say nay or yea to whether or not it's all that good or bad. What I will say is that the quality of the criticism I've seen persuades me that almost nobody is really put off by the text itself. It seems like simple envy is the predominant motivation behind almost everything negative that's been said thus far.
You might all take a cue from how I treat, say, J. K. Rowling. I've tried to read her work, and it actually put me off of the movies, which I had previously found fun if not exactly amazing. But hey, they're kid's books, and a lot of kids and parents seem to like them just fine. Nobody is claiming that they represent great literature, so I'm content to leave well enough alone. Of course, it helps that she's not even close to the level of wealth that could tempt me to envy
I may be an individual who prefers character development to a linear plot, but I have never read a book in my life where the main character never wavered in personality and was not punished for it. It just throws off the balance of the universe when a person can behave in a self-destructive manner and not see the consequences of those actions.
Personally, I did not like his book for the simple reason that he let me down. Everything seemed so promising in the beginning, and I read on and on, hoping to see all that potential come to a head, but it never did. He betrayed me and many others, but got away with it because "he is a just little kid, who doesn't know any better."
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With Saphira the dragon, Paolini had an excellent opportunity to do what few other writers had tried and actually give a dragon a personality. But instead, he goes the easy way and makes her this all-knowing being from birth who saves Eragon just in time everytime he is trouble.
I've read Eldest, the sequel to Eragon. In that Paolini actually explains why Saphira is the way she is.
I think he called it the "Blood Memory" of dragons or something like that. I haven't read it in a while, but I do remember that one piece of infortmation.
Plus in all fantasy, aren't dragons mighty, arrogant, all-knowing beings anyway?
Remember MICE? How about Atlas Shrugged, or any of Clarke's fiction?
It seems like Paolini's writing infuriates critics and writers mostly. I can't think of why that would be, except that he did spectacularly well by ignoring things that writers hone for years and years and things that critics spend years and years looking for. I suppose this would be especially bad for people who make those things he ignores into their pet specialties and magnify them beyond all reason.
It only reinforces in my mind that we too often hone the wrong things. So again, without the backhanded envy nonsense: what did he get so terribly right?
[This message has been edited by trousercuit (edited December 29, 2006).]
How did this guy get "in" and you can't?
Same for writers of any other genre. It obviously isn't really good writing, plot, new ideas that get published. Who's paying off whom? If I have to (have relations) with somebody, then let me know who it is.
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Paolini's Parents own a publishing company , he said his father helping him edit his work . Sister doing the cover art etc.
Whats infuriating is that people don't appreciate good art, what is presented to the masses as 'popular' sells better usually . Look at how well Paris Hilton's music did.
They don't own a publishing company, they self-published. I'm guessing it took a lot of work. And then they still had to sell it. Say what you will about the writing, I haven't read the book, but he didn't just fall into his success.
Seems like most of the griping in this thread is coming from jealous people. Why do you care what the "masses" buy? You must be so devoted to the craft and art that you don't even care how popular your writing is, correct?
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It just throws off the balance of the universe when a person can behave in a self-destructive manner and not see the consequences of those actions.
Then our universe must be SERIOUSLY out of balance.
The he could be any of a lot of writers. When I see, say, a prominent SF editor say something like, "I met this guy at the Milford conference...later I read his manuscript and I'm publishing it," I just wonder how fair the submission process actually is. What was the point of my submitting if my manuscript is passed over in favor of one by a guy who knows a guy who knows the editor? (My chances of making an appearance at Milford are slim-to-none---hey, I don't even know if they're holding them anymore.)
Really, you're getting frustrated with the wrong people. Publishers just offer the selection, and the readers take what they want. Eragon still could have flopped despite its publishing connections. But the audience paid for it and enjoyed it.
I didn't like it, but that's personal taste. By the end, it bored me. I don't see why I should be agonizing over Paolini's success; there are plenty of other successful writers who I also don't like, but that shouldn't bother me unless I foolishly paid money for their work. This is where borrowing books comes in handy.
Yes, that connection allowed him to do an end run around the dreaded slushkillers who guard the usual entrances to publication. But the fundamental nature of the connection was based entirely on his work, not on some extrinsic factor like having "had relations" with someone.
Now, I'm not going to say anything in favor of "connections", though it occurs to me that aspiring writers (writers who wish to become famous, or at least published) often do themselves a disservice by positively cultivating antagonistic (or otherwise unharmonious) relationships towards working editors and established writers. But a "connection" that was based solely on contact with the text itself...that cannot be dismissed as "favoritism". Otherwise you have to say the same of every story which an editor buys because he happens to like it (we will presume that female editors always have more mysterious reasons for their decisions ).
The guy didn't get an inside break, y'all. Someone looked at the text itself and said, "you know, Knopf would do well to pick this up." As they did.
Paolini's characters are not particularly important. We have a hero, that's necessary and a villain to match. Cookie-cutter and cliche as they are, they exist out of necessity. Other than that we have our Brom/Gandalf/Dumbledore character... that's really everyone that matters. The rest are just a rainbow of candyland colors. One crazy lady in particular has no relevance he created just as a tribute to his own sister. These are not necessary characters, they are there simply to give population to his world. Whether or not that is bad is a subject for another debate, but it is ironic and quite hilarious [to people who have objectively read the books] for Paolini to criticize the practice of using non-essential characters when he is the very author of such a practice.
If he's decided to create characters who are somewhat more elaborate than is usual for the spear-carriers and cast of thousands...that's possibly a part of the appeal. I don't see it as unnecessary if it contributes to the success of his work. If, on the other hand, he gives the major characters the motivations they need to carry the plot forward, that's also clearly necessary.
But there is no reason that has to be the case, it's just because most writers aren't interested in them as individuals. If Paolini doesn't mind putting in the extra time and effort to make them feel like distinct individuals, and the audience likes feeling that the cast of thousands is composed of a bunch of real characters rather than scarecrows or colored toothpicks (this is sometimes done to "force multiply" extras in SF/Fantasy movies), then it isn't unnecessary. They aren't advancing the plot, but they are advancing the story.
I'm not saying that this is the case in Paolini's work, I'm just saying that there is absolutely no reason that minor characters shouldn't be memorable, distinct characters even though they are minor in the story. idz ece important tu spell za short words correctly ax te longer words, after all.
Another criticism is that while his cast has several names it has very few characters. For example Eragon and Roran, in their respective points of view, are as far as I can tell the exact same person. They just have different names and circumstances but they think exactly alike. They perceive events in the same way and they respond exactly alike.
This only becomes a problem when the writer tries to produce the POV of a character with motivations and mental characteristics that are totally alien to the author's own personality. That was the main problem with a very disappointing book I recently read. I might as well say that the author was Bujold. Her usual protagonists are people who are believable (at least in terms of base characterization) with mentalities that are thinly disguised variations of her own outlook. The problem with this book was that she tried to write characters fundamentally different from herself, and the result was just ridiculous.
I'm actually working on the skill of simulating an alien perspective, it's quite necessary for me. But it isn't necessary for most writers or for most fiction, as long as authors choose to identify with characters that they naturally understand and find sympathetic.
I agree that the ability to characterize viewpoints depends completely on the eperience and insight of the author, but techniques exist and can be employed well enough that I, as a reader, shouldn't have to read as Eragon and then as Roran and immediately realize "this is the same exact person."
jk
I've never met anyone who honestly convinced me that they would never take another person's life. I've met people who convinced me that they wouldn't do it unless they deeply believed it to be morally justifiable, and people who convinced me that they don't accept any moral justification for homocide (and yes, those two groups are necessarily completely distinct). Most people I've met would kill if the risk were sufficiently low relative to the percieved gain and would try to justify it if they were caught or needed help covering it up.
I've never encountered any reliable technique for distinquishing between two point of view characters written by the same author other than keeping the name and character data in the reader's mind. I've read a lot of authors who've written multiple POV characters, and that's what I've learned. The best authors are those who simply accept this fundamental human limitation and just write about characters that they can imagine themselves being.
I may have mentioned before that this often puts me in a bind...but I'm okay with that.
Consider also the differences between how women and men think. A female author, writing from a male POV must make it convincing, and there are many good female authors who pull it off.
Perhaps it's perception or expectation that makes some people read characters as the same, I don't know. I've had critiques on stories that vary greatly on this subject. While the vast majority will say the characters were well developed and well written, others will complain that they sounded the same.
[This message has been edited by luapc (edited January 07, 2007).]
But about authors trying to write oppositely gendered characters this doesn't prove anything to me. It shows a considerable amount of skill and forethought but I regulkarly get the impression that say Rowling's male characters act like females and Card's females occassional think like men. I can't base these impressions off of anything, I just have them.
I simply cannot imagine her writing the kinds of characters that Bujold writes best, and Bujold's attempt to write a Nortonesque character failed rather badly, in my never-to-be-humble opinion. You can compare Card's characters with Bujold's, or with Cherryh's, and see that they are fundamentally different. Even at that, Card's characters, both male and female, are far more feminine than any of Norton's characters. Each of these writers...hmmm, I probably should have included an equal number of males...nevermind that. Each of these writers is unique, their respective outlooks are not defined primarily by their sexual identity.
I can point to a couple of POV characters in Card's books who don't think anything like him. But these characters always come across as irrationally self-destructive egotists. Card shows us very clearly what he thinks of the character, but I don't think that he even slightly succeeds in showing us how those characters would really see themselves. Those characters only work because he doesn't try to get us to see the stories primarily from their perspective. They end up as straw men. If you saw yourself in them, you'd hate the portrayal.
Bujold tried a pair of characters who fundamentally didn't work with her outlook, and the story foundered rather badly. In this case it wasn't because she was trying to make them out to be unsympathetic, it was because she failed to understand that she simply has no clue what motivates such characters. It wasn't because one of them is a man and she happens to be a woman, the female character was even less plausible than the man.
Actors must understand the motivations of a character in order to play the character well. And that understanding can't be superficial, it has to be deeply sympathetic. That's why you always hear actors describing even their most disgusting characters in such positive terms...yes, some of that is the moral relativism of Hollywood, but a lot of it is a simple necessity of the process of getting into character. If you cannot feel that your character is the hero of the story, no matter what everyone else thinks, then you won't do a good job of acting as that character. It's basic theater.
Writers have the luxury of being able to simply write down the lines and overt actions of non-POV characters, they don't have to understand why those characters do what they do, they just have to know what the characters do. But with POV characters, you need to be able to get deeply into the character, to see the character as someone that you could have been if your circumstances had been a bit different. There might be a way round this, but I haven't found it yet.
But I--I, myself--I ENJOYED the movie.
I liked it. It's Star Wars with dragons. Really. Farm boy lives with his uncle, evil empire destroys his home and he's suddenly the bearer of something REALLY IMPORTANT (dragon, droid) and so he has to leave home with the crazy old guy who used to be a warrior and go find the Rebel Alliance. Er, Varden. (sp)
Along the way we meet Darth Vader (creepy shadow dude), who's captured Princess Leia (mysterious warrior woman), and we go rescue her from the Death Star (that creepy building) and let Uncle Brom die fighting Vader. Han Solo shows up a couple of times (although he has really bad anime hair), but he's totally a good guy--you can tell, because he's got such a bad attitude.
Finally, we make it to the Rebel Alliance, but--oh noes!--the Empire has followed us here. Epic battle ensues, orphaned farmboy becomes the hero and defeats the bad guy, and there was much rejoicing. (Yay!)
It wasn't GREAT FILM by any standard, but it was an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half--way better than MI:3, which is the last movie I went to the theater for.
It was kinda cool seeing a black elf. Nice to see that persons of African descent are being represented in all the appropriate fantasy races. Political correctness allows us to retcon the fantasy archetypes to include all the correct ethnicities. But am I the only person who's waiting for a dwarf to be something OTHER than Scottish? Like, say, Welsh. Llewellyn the dwarf. It could work.
It's true that the characters weren't as developed as those in Star Wars, but perhaps the reason Paolini's "cliches" are so successful is that he draws intentionally upon a widely literate fan base who already know these archetypes and love them. People want to read more about Luke Skywalker, but if Paolini can convince us that Eragon is just as cool, we'll transfer those feelings over. Maybe. It could work.
Now, for the writing style portion of the thread.
I personally find that my writing style changes according to the things which I read. If I'm reading a lot of Terry Pratchett, I tend to be very silly and satiric. If I'm reading Raymond Chandler, I feel like my own characters have to smoke a cigarette, kiss a girl, take a stiff drink, and then break the bottle over somebody's head. If I read Heinlein, then my characters become rugged individualists with sharp wits and heavy survivalist traits. So, either I can write in contrast to my own personality, or my personality is of such remarkable plasticity that anything I read changes WHO I AM, instantly and noticeably.
At least, that's what I think.
There were a lot of things I read and loved when I was starting out as a reader, things that dazzled and stunned me.
I'm older now. I'm harder to dazzle and stun than I was then. I might read Eragon someday, or see the movie, but I doubt if it'll have the impact it would have had on me if I had seen or read it when I was fifteen. If I'd read / saw Eragon back then, or was fifteen now and read / saw it, I might've loved it as much as some of you do.
It's not that the stuff I read-and-saw back then was any better. A lot of stuff, when I read / see it now, doesn't hold up well. (Some of it does, some seems even better now than then.)
So...enjoy it while you can. With rare exceptions, you'll only be fifteen once.
[Edited to add an afterthought.]
[This message has been edited by Robert Nowall (edited January 13, 2007).]
For the most part, I don't even like fantasy (I'm just not into fake creatures and annoying kings) but if it's an intriguing story (in the least little bit) with out all of the annoyances of normal fantasy (such as authors who simply assume you're familiar with all of Tolkein's writings including the unpublished scribblings on his wall as a 2 year old or something) I quite enjoy it.
I just thought someone should explain why the average population of readers enjoyed the book.
The Wizard's First Rule--my best example of a popular terrible book--meets both conditions. The marketing was good enough to get the book in a lot of people's hands, and the story has just enough to it to keep you from putting the book down. Of course, the maturity level of the reader has a lot to do with it, too. There is a heavy enough concentration of 12 year olds in the sci-fi/fantasy section that the floor of acceptable quality seems a little lower than other genres, like non-bodice-ripping historical fiction.
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I went and saw the movie with my brothers, parents, and my wife. I sat between my wife and my brother. My brother was constantly hissing jokes and commentary and my wife was getting mad at me, trying to get me to stop my brother from talking. Everyone but me had read the book. Everyone but me hated the movie.
Did any of them like the book? Did any of them realize the obvious simlarity between STAR WARS and Eragon? George Lucas ripped it off of Christopher Paolini, not the other way around. We had a class about it at George Wythe College. It's true, at least, I believe so.
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I liked it. It's Star Wars with dragons.
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It was kinda cool seeing a black elf.
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I personally find that my writing style changes according to the things which I read.
someone else,
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Ok. Eragon was amazing. For those of us who (to break an apparent sacred fantasy reader rule) have never read Tokein or any of the other "classic" fantasy novels, Eragon was a pleasant novel filled with the classic mythological creatures, adventure, and of course a dragon or two. I'm not saying that this was the most amazing book in the world or anything, but it was an enjoyable 8 hours of reading. I'm not even a young adult and I liked it.
In other words. We shouldn't support idea theft.George Wythe would have been adament about that.
Seriously its just about a kid who wanders around and stuff. Who Bucking cares?
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited January 14, 2007).]
If somebody wants to satisfy whatever deeply felt human need this essential myth exists to fulfil, then I see nothing wrong with him becoming a huge success and getting a movie. I personally couldn't write a story like that, at least not very well. I'm more in tune with "the supervillian wins, everybody else ends up dead"...that's kinda my mythic. But that doesn't make me feel that humans can't have stories that they really like. Indications are that Eragon is such a story, and I'm glad that somebody explained why.
Now, if the writing is crappy, that's too bad. I hate crappy writing. I still haven't recovered enough from Rowling's prose enough to try watching the fourth movie, which is a shame becuase I've enjoyed the others...not enough to watch them day in and day out, but few movies pass that test.
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It's not about what you are but what you act like.
Isn't that the same thing? You are what you act like? That sounds like a damn contradiction to me.
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Grow up. Ereagon --. Read Tolkein, that's what George Wythe would have done if he was around today.
Not everyone is going to act like a stubborn fifty year old you sits on his backside all day ridiculing those that actually enjoy all works of fantasy, whether it's Poalini or Tolkien. I like Eragon the book, I write fantasy, I am 20 years old, so are you going to tell me to grow up as well for liking something that I find appealing?
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In other words. We shouldn't support idea theft.
So we should totally think of new and innovative ideas all the time even though there's not a single damn idea that hasn't been done before!? Wow, genius statement right there. Star Wars is a cliche, Eragon is a cliche, EVERYTHING WE WRITE IS A CLICHE!
And Statesman, jleigh_honey is allowed his/her opinion as you are but there is no need as to re-use the whole "Poalini stole Lucas's idea!!!" argument that every single person that dislikes Eragon comes up with, and YES, I have been to several boards, gaming sites and even IMDB.com and read the same damn comments over and over, each time just laughing at the useless fact that Eragon is only ever compared to Star Wars.
And for Tolkiens elves and dwarves, look at Dungeons and Dragons, and a lot of other fantasy works out there. Everyone who write's fantasy uses Tolkien's models of elves and dwarves, even orcs and goblins, so here's a hint, think of something new to bring to the Eragon argument and have a nice day.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited January 14, 2007).]
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It's not about what you are but what you act like.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Isn't that the same thing? You are what you act like? That sounds like a damn contradiction to me.
No. I can be a 45 year old and act like a two year old, that doesn't make me a two year old.
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Not everyone is going to act like a stubborn fifty year old
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I write fantasy, I am 20 years old
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so are you going to tell me to grow up as well for liking something that I find appealing?
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So we should totally think of new and innovative ideas all the time even though there's not a single damn idea that hasn't been done before!?
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EVERYTHING WE WRITE IS A CLICHE!
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there is no need as to re-use the whole "Poalini stole Lucas's idea!!!" argument
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And for Tolkiens elves and dwarves, look at Dungeons and Dragons, and a lot of other fantasy works out there.
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think of something new to bring to the Eragon argument and have a nice day.
[This message has been edited by Statesman (edited January 14, 2007).]
Eragon the Movie was the worst kind of screenwriting/storytelling laziness I've ever seen. The book was tolerable and a quick read, but in seeing the movie I thought to myself "Well, there's two hours of my life I'll never get back." I understand for the sake of time you would need to merge situations or characters from the novel just to keep the story going but even if I hadn't read the book, I would have found the hurried pace and sloppy editing jarring.
Also, I'm surprised no one picked up on how heavily the author borrowed from Anne McCaffrey and her Pern dragons. It was so blatently ovbious, from the dragon's body struture to mental communication between dragon/rider, the intellegence and defined personality of the dragon, to initial Impression, to what happens to dragon/rider when one or the other dies. My best friend and I who are huge McCaffrey fans were rolling our eyes.
[This message has been edited by Whitney (edited January 14, 2007).]
Or I'm getting tired of the subject and tired of some of the language (rule-breaking or just plan rude) I'm seeing here.
Anyway, ideas can't be copyrighted which means they can't belong to any one writer. So they can't be stolen.