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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 3238078" data-attributes="member: 32740">I would reiterate that fans of fantasy are MORE forgiving of bad writing, wooden acting, and poor direction in a fantasy film than they would normally be.  By rights they have to be.  The heavier the fantasy elements the higher the budget required to do it right, but making it LESS likely that it will live up to its potential.  Since it has for so long been a disrespected genre (and in many ways still is) it does not have a tendency to attract the best writing, the best actors or superior effort in their performances, nor directors with any greater vision and motivation than a paycheck.  Bad movies are still bad.  Bad fantasy movies; those that draw disrespect even from fantasy fans; are actually somewhat worse for having managed to lose the extra credit the genre is given by those fans.The fantasy genre is thus filled with dreck and the really good ones are quite uncommon.  Eragon, IMO, is passable entertainment, but it is NOT a good movie.  Even its fantasy status cannot fully make up for its faults.  The wooden acting and cheezy (by todays CGI standards) stop-motion animation of any Ray Harryhausen title (i.e., the Sinbad movies) would be at least as entertaining and those are movies that are 30-40 years old, not to mention utterly forgotten by all EXCEPT fantasy fans and effects buffs.I CAN say that shortly after having seen Eragon I caught Dragonslayer on cable.  Undoubtedly being shown simply to feed off of any interest created one way or another by Eragon.  Up until now I had held unshaking to the opinion that Vermithrax was STILL the best dragon ever on film despite every advance of CGI.  Now I certainly can't say that Eragon's Sefire (sp?) is actually superior simply for having been surrounded by such an inferior screenplay and acting, but I finally see Dragonslayer and its Go-Motion animation showing its age in comparison to CGI.  One reason that I would consider Eragons dragon to remain inferior is that the editing (not mentioned specifically in my earlier review) still struck me as distractingly fast-paced.  In other words, I think they were intent on using fast cuts and the impression of unnecessarily extreme speed to attempt to substitute for the excitement that was NOT being provided by script or acting.Yes we DO need more family-friendly entertainment, but that MUST NOT be gained at the cost of technical and artistic adequacy.  Movies of inferior quality should never be praised simply to encourage g-rated content.  The two objectives are not mutually exclusive.</blockquote>

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