An · Erraich

So in the wake of the Eragon movie, there's a tremendous backlash, not only at the film, which was admittedly lacking in many ways, but also at the book. There's a rant to follow, so I'll cut it. Read if you like.


So the big thing is that the books are "formulaic" and "unoriginal". Now, I don't read a lot of fantasy, because...let's face it, most of it is complete shit. But I am familiar with Tolkien and MacAffrey, the two that are most often referenced when ripping into Eragon. First of all: These are two of the biggest names in fantasy, probably ever. It's really obvious that Christopher Paolini is going to be influenced by them when writing, especially as he was so young when he started the novels. (He was 15. I'd sure as hell bet most of these people can't write that well *now*, let alone when they were 15.) Second of all, it's not as if he lacks his own original ideas. His characterisation is awesome (much better than Tolkien's, let's be honest with ourselves.), even if his description doesn't always do it. He inspires actual emotion in the reader, something that most fantasy authors completely fail at. I can't generally read fantasy, and do you know why? Because most of it is self-righteous, emotionally fucked-up bullshit. (pardon the language) Paolini wrote what he knew, and he wrote it well. Among all the crap that gets put on our shelves these days, I don't understand why people feel the need to rip this one apart.

On the other hand, he has two novels on the best-seller list and he's only 19...so maybe that's enough right there.

As for the movie: The biggest tragedy was poor editing. Eragon the novel is *not* PG. It's PG-13 or even R. There is some seriously horrible stuff that happens, from time to time. It seems to me that they cut it at the last minute in order to make it PG (it was unrated up until the week it was actually released) and that the story suffered. I have high hopes for a director's cut that will be much better. Can we say The Abyss, anyone?

All right. End Rant.