Heh… Me too. I saw it with a friend who had just read the book, and I had to endure a constant stream of, “that’s different, that’s not in the book, now they’re just making things up”.
My expectations were low enough that I was pleasantly surprised. As long as it was better than a Saturday afternoon movie on SciFi, that was good enough for me.
Iggins - not to appear dismissive of what you choose to do with your time, but there are so many good books/films/TV programmes out there that I can’t help but wonder why you aren’t in the process of seeking and enjoying them, rather than settling for the wank that is Eragon or Saturday television on the Sci-Fi channel.
A few suggestions (don’t know if you’ve tried any of these):
TV - The remake of Battlestar Galactica - amazing, does “shades of grey” morality better than anything I’ve seen since Bablyon 5 (which you should also see), Carnivale, Six Feet Under, Dr Who, Family Guy, American Dad, Futurama.
Books - anything written by Ursula Leguin, Garth Nix, Neal Stephenson, JK Rowling, the first 20 books written by Terry Prachett (they get variable after that), the writings of Tolkien (admittedly it’s quite hard going but worth it if you can persevere through the writing style), Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, the Child Garden by Geoff Ryman, Illuminatus by Robert Anton Wilson (similarly Schroedingers Cat), the triology by Trudy Canaven - the list is endless.
Films - without knowing your tastes I won’t recommend as I’m into either tacky blockbusters or quite obscure independent cinema depending on how I’m feeling.
I stress this is meant to be genuinely helpful, not condescending or ridiculing of your tastes in any way.
IP
Heh… Actually, I watch most of those things you mention (I watch too much TV, generally), and have a very eclectic taste in media entertaiment. I wouldn’t have even watched Eragon, but for my friend wanting to go, and also needing to get out of the house, as my wife and I had been remodeling the bath all weekend. I figured since I was going, I might as well try to enjoy it.
Also, more seriously, I tend to take movies at face value - I’m not usually too concerned that a film be slavishly faithful to source material, as long as it’s reasonably well done - decent dialogue, script, acting, etc… The only movies that have really made me mad are the Star Wars prequels!
Am i the only who thinks its pretty silly to make a movie out of an unfinished series in the first place? As badly as i want to see a (well made) film version of a song of ice and fire i wouldn’t expect one until after the series has been completed, just imagine what would have happened if they made a Wheel of Time movie after the third book.
Now, now, for every Battle Beyond the Stars, you get a Battlestar Galactica. It all works out in the end. Let’s just hope that the next Peter Jackson goes to see Eragon and says, "Hell, I can do a better job than that…
I have a question for those here who are so contemptous of Eragon. Why is it being judged and found deficent to SF? It’s not SF. It’s fantasy. I am aware of the weaknesses that the books(s) have, haven’t seen the movie yet (and I am concerned that it will truly suck)…but it’s fantasy. LeGuin writes SF–and very well, too. I don’t have a lot of patience with SF–I am not into tech (except as tools) or the dehumanization of man, except as a plot device. I stopped reading SF with Ray Bradbury–I want my fiction to be about people, not machines.
I have read some LeGuin-I can’t remember titles, but the one that I remember was about a very cold place where the people could change sexual orientation periodically. Someone was on the run across a giant polar ice cap. Anyway, it was a very good book, but that was because it contained an emphasis on the human element.
Eragon, for all it’s flaws, does have narrative drive and does create characters that can be cared about. YMMV and all that. Fantasy, in my experience, tends to be more about the challenges faced by humans outside their element–or how human those with magical powers can be. Eragon has that–it’s longwinded etc, but it has that, so I dont’ understand the comparison between it and SF?
to answer elanorigby’s question:
Which is the greater sin? I am no Lucas fan-I stopped watching after the 3rd one and know nothing of the prequels. I find his characters plastic when they’re not wooden, so to speak…
Tolkien is a god here, but in the words of Roger Ebert, Tolkien tests our capacity for the declarative voice or prose (or something like that-I’m paraphrasing). YMMV. Paolini is most certainly derivative, but there are not many genre based stories that aren’t. I am no Paolini apologist, but I confess that I don’t understand the vehemence in the disdain.
SF and fantasy can get blurry–I thought (I could be completely wrong) that SF stressed the technological and man’s adapation to it, and that fantasy dealt with little to no tech, but much magic. Eragon is firmly in the fantasy realm, no? Star Wars and Battelstar Galactica are definetly SF.
And looking at all of this a different way, they are the same stories that get told, no matter then genre, but that’s another thread…(I will say that the skill lies in the telling-and Paolini has much to learn).
…and an obscure little fantasy series set in a world called Earthsea . You may not have heard of it, few have. It did win an award or too. Little things, really.
As do all Le Guin’s stories. The one you are thinking of is The Left Hand of Darkness. It won awards.
Don’t listen to this guy. I haven’t seen Eragon and I don’t plan on it but I’d bet my left testicle that it’s Shakespeare compared to Family Guy and/or American Dad.
Saving grace 
Any nudity? :dubious:
What’s with the snark? I am not disdainful of SF-I am not a StarWars fan. I liked the LeGuin books I read-that is the only one that stayed with me. I am not trashing SF.
All manner of good literature goes unrecognized and unsung. And not every book/movie deserves the awards it is given. I don’t see your point. It would be nice if LeGuin’s book was made into a movie (pick one-she writes like other people breathe-her output is amazing), but ASAIK, that hasn’t happened…yet.
I would like to see the Pern books made into a movie–but fear that it would be cheesy, like so much fantasy.
Its hard to describe but of all the derivative fantasy authors (Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan, I’m talking to you) none has ever stooped so low and done it so badly as Christopher Paolini and Eragon. Its just so freaking obvious who he has stolen from, how much and from what sections, and so little is added that is original in any way. It pains me that people spend money on this tripe, when books are out there like City of Ember for the YA reader?
Its terribly written (I would have written about the same at 15 but had the courtesy not to), outrageously derivative, and unfairly sucessful.
As for SF, it has changed a lot from the 1950s, there is a lot less emphasis on nuts & bolts science these days (several recent threads about this, actually). Read The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell and come back and tell me its not a people-driven SF story.
Technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic -Arthur C. Clarke
Robert Jordan has his flaws, numerous, numerous flaws, but I don’t think derivative can be called one of them. A lot of the stuff he writes seems to be unique, or at least derivative of sources that I have not seen. Rand is an example of “destined One” ala Matrix, etc, but how often does the “destined One” turn out to be insane/borderline insane? The interaction of Aes Sedai with the rest of humanity is new. Have you seen the populace distrust magic users so much that the magic users have to magically constrain their own behavior? Heck, magic constraints on behavior is an underivative idea.
I have more examples of new ground overed by Jordan, but they might be from books 4-10, as I am pretty foggy on what happened during which books, and I wouldn’t ask anyone to read past book 3 or 4.
I’m guessing you haven’t had the misfortune to encounter Dennis McKiernan’s Iron Tower Trilogy?
It’s not being found deficient to SF as a genre. There’s plenty of SF that’s just as bad or worse than Eragon. But there’s also many works of both fantay and SF that are better than Eragon. I have several shelves of them.
Not all SF is focused on tech or the dehumanization of man, by the way. I’ve seen good (and not-so-good) SF that could be changed to fantasy by turning psychic powers into magic and machines into magical items, and fantasy that could be changed to SF by calling magic powers “psychic phenomena” and turning magical items into machines. Heck, Anne McCaffrey’s Pern (which Eragon blatantly ripped off) is practically fantasy already.
If you’re upset about Eragon being compared unfavorably to SF works, I can compare it unfavorably to Steven Brust or Michelle West or Jane Lindskold or Katherine Kurtz or Michael Stackpole or even Robin Hobb or L.E Modesitt, Jr., if you’d like.
And yes, I own Eragon and have read it. My sister bought it for me for Christmas a few years back. I concede that it is fairly good for a first-time teenage author, but it’s no The Outsiders or anything.
Oh, apologies to Hello Again for adding an _ to the name. For some reason I thought quote=name didn’t like spaces, and would transmute _'s to spaces.
I have to ask - *surely *it can’t be as bad as David Eddings? A man who has made an absolute fortune out of formulaic plots and one-dimensional characters?
Can this Eragon-writing guy be as bad as Eddings?
I am finding it hard to imagine. But if he is, I expect he’ll make a mint.
I just looked at the trailer at apple.com. The trailer in itself is pretty bad, even if it’s not horrible. The overall production value *is *bad though. The make-up, the press photos, the poster. One particular press photo had the main character fighting a dragon, but he looked like an old man in it.
What did Robert Carlyle have to do to be punished with a look like that? miss Cactus and I were astounded of how celebrity packed this very obviously flawed movie (ranked two whole decimals beneath Willow at IMDB, that has to account for something) is. I guess somebody wanted to freeride on the success of LOTR and Narnia.
Firstly, let me just say that where I live, SF means Speculative Fiction, and is a catch-all term for Fantasy and Science Fiction(which I usually abbreviate as SciFi),as well as other stuff usually loosely called “genre”, like Magic Realism and Occult Horror . So when I see SF, I first assume an overall genre mix is being addressed, then only after evaluating context do I decide if the person meant Science Fiction when they say SF (as I gather most people here have been doing). I’ll use SpecFic from now on, I think.
It wasn’t snark, it was comic understatement. It’s not meant to be snappy at you, but rather amusing to those who already know what Earthsea is. The *link *was for you, though. Did ya read it?
If you think all post-Bradbury SciFi is about Tech, then yes, you are trashing it. Read Iain M. Banks for the current state of the art (little in-joke there). For something that straddles the line between Fantasy and SciFi very nicely, read Mieville’s *Perdido Street Station .*Fantasy is not all elves and dragons, despite what Paolini and ilk might think.
I think part of the problem is that you are protesting the trashing of Paolini without any knowledge of what the current best in the field of SpecFic is. Here’s a hint, it isn’t Robert Jordan or Terry Goodkind.
Earthsea did. It is one of the classics of the genre, up there with Tolkien, in fact. Le Guin is as much a fantasy icon as a SciFi one, if not more so. If you were a fantasy fan, you would know this. You’d also know why we were slating Paolini. One of the people he rips off is Le Guin, in the magic system he uses.
There was a SciFi Channel miniseries of Earthsea, in fact. Haven’t seen it, but reviews were…not kind.
That’s because the Pern books are cheesy. Good cheese to start with, a Brie or Camembert, but the later books? Cheese-wiz. Or possibly Ch’z-w’z.
Still, I’d watch the movies for sure.