Eragon (2006)

In the wake of Peter Jackson’s hugely successful ‘Lord of the Rings’ film trilogy, studios were looking for the next epic fantasy series to turn into films. Enter ‘The Inheritance Cycle’ by Christopher Paolini; a four book series that is very reminiscent of Tolkin’s works.

The first book in the series ‘Eragon’ was published in 2003 and was so successful that Fox Studios soon got the film rights. The film was released in 2006 with a very strong cast with the likes of a young Ed Speleers (in his first major role), Jeremy Irons and Robert Carlyle.

The film is about a young boy Eragon who finds a dragon egg in the mountains whilst out hunting. When the egg hatches to reveal a dragon, Eragon- with the help of his friends- must topple a evil Empire.

I remember being very excited for this film when it originally came out. Whilst I was- and still- disappointed that it was very toned down compared to the books (the 12a rating had been very new at the time so that might explain a bit) and very fast-paced to the point where it had missed out on a lot of important characters and plot details, there’s still some enjoyable moments to be had on it such as the flying scenes. The other really good thing about ‘Eragon’ is that for most of the film, they relied very heavily on practical effects. If done today I’m willing to bet that a lot of it would be very heavily CGI and not good CGI either.

The score by Patrick Doyle is also the highlight of this film including the end credits song ‘Keep Holding On’ sung by punk rocker Avril Lavigne (it was also here that I had discovered her for the first time!).

I still like the film twenty years later if only for nostalgia reasons but if you want the true story of ‘Eragon’ and the rest of ‘The Inheritance Cycle’ I 100% recommend the books including the recent sequel book ‘Murtagh’.