What happens when someone takes Star Wars

Eragon (Ed Speleers, who looks like he stepped right out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad) is a poor farmer boy (and a scrappy blond kid?) living with his uncle, whiling away his days farming and dreaming about a bigger and better future. Does that already sound familiar? It should. The kingdom in which Eragon lives is ruled with an iron fist by Galbatorix (John Malcovich), aided by his Evil Wizard Durza (Robert Carlyle, who you may remember as Begbie). The Varden are a group of freedom fighters trying to bring Galbatorix down. One of their number, a particularly stunning freedom fighter called Arya (Sienna Guillory) sneaks into the king’s castle and steals his favorite stone. Yes, the king, who is John Malkovich, has a favorite stone.”I suffer without my stone,” he says to Durza in a particularly John Malkovichy manner. “Do not prolong my suffering.” The king’s favorite stone, just so you know, is remarkably egg-shaped.

Durza sets off after Arya. Right before he captures her, she manages to magic the stone away. It appears right in front of Eragon, who takes it back to his village, where he tries to sell it for some meat. The butcher recognizes it as the king’s favorite egg-shaped stone, and refuses to serve Eragon. While enjoying a cool beverage out in the town square, Eragon encounters Brom (Jeremy irons), the village’s extremely wise fool. He will probably be important later, because he is Jeremy Irons. Meanwhile, Durza takes Arya back to the castle and tortures her, which involves her lying flat on a table in a leather tube top. She refuses to reveal the stone’s location, knowing it is the secret to the king’s power.

Eragon takes his egg stone home and goes to sleep. When he wakes up, it hatches into what is admittedly the cutest baby dragon I have ever seen:The dragon quickly grows up under Eragon’s watchful eye. I mean seriously quickly. There is an endearing scene where Eragon teaches the baby dragon to fly. It flies away, and about ten minutes later it comes back fully grown. The dragon tells Eragon her name is Sephira (a dragon and his or her rider can communicate telepathically. When dragons think, they sound like Rachel Weisz), and that together they can save the kingdom.

At this point Jeremy Irons turns up again, revealing that he was a former dragon rider whose dragon died. He exhorts Eragon to accept his fate, and puts him through many a training montage to learn how to ride his dragon and do some minor magic. “Magic comes from dragons,” he says. And that is his entire explanation.

Defeating Galbatorix will not be easy, though. Galbatorix has two different warrior races commanded by Durza: the Razac and the Urgals, who are very similar to the Orcs and the Uruk-hai respectively. They are both on the hunt for Eragon and his dragon. They kill his uncle and sack his house, just like another young blond antagonist in another story. Eragon is now determined to embrace his fate so that he can avenge his uncle’s death and free the kingdom.

Then it’s big final battle time. Brom sacrifices himself heroically so that Eragon may live to face his destiny, and there is a totally wicked dragon-wizard fight that involves a huge black smoke-dragon made of magic! Eragon takes out Durza when the come face to face, and saves Arya from further vague tortures. He teams up with the Varden so that he may one day take out Galbatorix once and for all.

Then Eragon rides away triumphantly while the screen fades to black into an Avril Lavigne song. Eragon is more medievalist than medieval per se, but it borrows a lot of themes and characters from medieval stories. Or, rather, the stories it plagiarized did. So it’s kinda medievalist by association. It’s very silly, but embarrassingly entertaining. It helps if you watch it with a six year old, which I did.