We love enjoying fantasy stories with dragons. There is the success of Game of Thrones, or How to Train Your Dragon, which is preparing to release its live-action remake this next year. But we have also had very painful fiascos, like the infamous Dungeons & Dragons from 2000 or the movie adaptation of Eragon. It is this last film that I want to talk to you about in this topic.
Do you remember this movie? Very possibly not, unless you were, as this server is, a fervent reader of the original novels written by Christopher Paolini who suffered with some annoyance from the very ill-advised 20th Century Fox blockbuster directed by Stefen Fangmeier (his only film as a director). . And it was no wonder, the little more than 100 minutes of footage were clearly insufficient to condense the almost 550 pages of the first book of the saga. The skeleton story, starring a young farmer named Eragon who discovers a mysterious dragon egg and begins an epic journey full of magic, mystery and adventurewas maintained, obviously, but several plots were eliminated, others were altered, and some characters were modified.
What was left? A fairly generic fantasy epic, without soul and good characters despite having Jeremy Irons, Sienna Guillory, Djimon Hounsou and John Malkovich in its cast, as well as Edward Speleers as Eragon
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It is possible that George RR Martin, who in those years kept saying ‘no’ to every Hollywood studio interested in making a Game of Thrones movie, saw in this film one more reason not to give in and wait for HBO, because few works of literature that I remember have been as mutilated as Eragon was. Even so, Eragon was a small commercial success, raising $250 million with an investment of 100 million, which has motivated Disney, 18 years later, to want to give it a new opportunity for the saga. As?
Eragon will have a second chance
From Disney+ they do not want to live exclusively with Marvel Studios and Star Wars and have searched through old adaptations from 20th Century Studios to enhance their portfolio of television series. From there, a reboot of Percy Jackson and the Olympians renewed for a second season has emerged, with considerable success, and from there it is expected that a new version of Eragon will arrive that it manages to avoid, thanks to the benefits offered by this format, much of the film’s problems.
To this end, the first decision that Disney made when announcing the development of this second adaptation of Eragon was to have Christopher Paolini, father of the creature, who a few months ago defended why this time the fans of his work will be happy: ” With this new adaptation I want, or that’s what I would like to achieve, to capture the essence of the characters, the emotion of the story, the greatness of its settings. The movie failed here, since. removed many of the elements that made Eragon unique. “You have to take advantage of what makes you special.”
You are right. By eliminating so much in the original film, what was left is a generic fantasy adventure with heroes, dragons and some battles. But can you achieve it? Will the series change the feeling viewers got from watching Eragon in 2006? Christopher Paolini gave several examples in an interview:
“A very small example, I say small but it is actually large, are the locations. Eragon and his companions end up traveling to a place where there are absolutely gigantic mountains, about 16 kilometers high, that exist in this world by magical reasoning ( …) They eliminated that completely, as well as the fact that if you watch the movie, you will never be able to guess that there are elves and dwarves because there is nothing to identify them.” Radio Times
“The original film is not really a bad movie, but it fails because it is not a great adaptation,” the writer of the books ultimately comments. Despite everything, if you feel like giving it a chance, today, December 18, you can watch Eragon on FDF starting at 10:55 p.m. (peninsular time). It is also available on Disney+.
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