In this ninth non-canon review, team RWBY spends some time with Pyrrha and Nora in their dorm room to watch the movie Eragon for the night. However, an unknown figure takes over the broadcast during their movie night, prompting team RWBY to review the flopped fantasy movie adaptation.
BEACON
"I cannot believe you guys have never seen this movie before. That movie must been popular in the... Well, okay, it was never popular, but they tried to make them popular back in 2006 to make a franchise.", said Ruby and Yang, as Blake, Weiss, Pyrrha and Nora were settling in for their movie night.
Nora rose her hand in perplex, "Is the movie any good? Sure does because it has dragons!"
"I honestly love dragons myself. How they fly, how they breathe fire...", dreamt Pyrrha.
Blake and Weiss mention, "Well, you know the visual effects of Terminator 2, Twister, Saving Private Ryan, The Perfect Storm, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events that were done by one Academy Award-winning smug asshole?"
"Uh...no?", the two JNPR members shrugged.
The Faunus and the Schnee reply, "Well, here, the smug asshole is the director himself."
"You sure about that?", Pyrrha smugs.
Ruby and Yang said, "All set up!", putting the DVD in.
"Speaking of Eragon, from what I've heard, Eragon also made a video game that same year.", Nora mentioned.
The leader of team RWBY exclaims, "Really?"
"Yeah, they're both based on that book written by that 18-year-old that impressed people 'cause it read like a book written by an 18-year-old.", biographed Pyrrha.
Yang supposed, "No, no, no. They made a game with it too? You see, movies have something unique like the incorporations of styles, and even bad ones have something that separate them from the others! Trust us, this is just a generic fantasy movie with a million generic fantasy cliches like a million of them."
"I don't know, guys. I don't remember it being advertised and everything other than the movie and the video game.", unsurely said Nora.
Ruby mentions, "I know a friend who reviews on video games, but let's watch the movie.", as the girls settle themselves on the couch to watch.
However, a mysterious person appears on the screen and said, "Greetings, adventurers."
"Whoa! This must be an interactive menu or something. You see? I told you it's just nothing to be taken that seriously.", Ruby, Yang, Blake and Weiss says.
The person introduces himself on the TV screen, "I am the evil king Galbatorix. With my minion Durza, I will rule all of Alagaesia."
"How serious is this supposed to be?", team RWBY questioned, her friends snickering to the weird names.
Galbatorix introduces, "Begin your adventure with Eragon."
RWBY's Commentary of Eragon (Part 1)
"Yeah, even though it wasn't a big hit, Eragon still holds a certain place in people's memories. It's a story of swords and princesses and dragons and...absolutely nothing else. Yeah, nothing really separates it from a million other fantasies and myths that you've heard a million times, to a point where it's...kind of intriguing. After all, it is a 2006 movie. Next they'll be telling us he worked at Stepphenwolf.", Ruby and Yang introduced the movie.
Galbatorix continued on the TV screen, "Begin your quest at the beginning where you begin."
"Okay, fine. We'll go through the whole thing to see if this generic fantasy movie is worth watching or not!", challenge Blake and Weiss.
Nora looked with caution, "We...always wanted to do that."
"I also recall high levels of interest in this plan.", Pyrrha said to her fellow JNPR member.
Team RWBY says to the readers, "Let's go through and see what's wrong with this mess-terpiece..."
"What are your eyes even looking at? We're down here!", Nora noticed.
Team RWBY finished, "Let's take a look at Eragon!"
"Who are you talking to right now?!", exclaims Pyrrha, confused.
Nora simply said, "The fourth wall, I guess."
Eragon
"Ooh! A dragon film with Jeremy Irons that opens with white clouds.", Ruby excites as the film opens with a Jeremy Irons narration before she signalled, "Oh, god, no! Hide every working Wayans!", mentioning the movie adaptation of Dungeons and Dragons, as the opening shows a POV of someone riding a dragon.
Yang joked, "Fun fact! This is what Inspector Gadget sees every time he unzips his pants.", as the others felt a bit disgusted, "Can't help it.", before discussing, "There's apparently a handful of people known as the Dragon Riders...who make pies. The name is quite decieving, but speaking of which...", as the viewers see Galbatorix in the movie.
"Ah! This must be the 'villain from powerful group that used to be friend, but turned evil traitor', like many famous Disney and non-Disney villains. He killed all the dragons and riders and rules with an iron fist covering his mouth, trying not to laugh at his own name.", Blake described.
When the movie mentions the villain's name Galbatorix, Weiss snickers, "I swear, that sounds like a foreign soup. I bet a person would be like, 'Uh, yes, I'll have a bowl of the Galbatorix?'", and continued, "Cut to the forest of ancient-poor color corrections, where we see a fleeing rider named Arya.", giving an honest opinion, "A girl has no dragon film. There, it's out of the way, let's continue."
"She's ambushed by the king's minion, Durza, played by Robert Carlyle. And for a guy who had to look like this in Once Upon a Time,he still seems pretty silly here.", said Ruby, as the same scene had Durza corner Arya, but not before transporting a big blue dragon egg by using a spell, "Oh my god! This would be amazing if it turned out this was all just a NyQuil ad before the story started! Arya would be like, 'I will relieve your nighttime sniffling-sneezing-coughing-aching evil!'", all the six girls laughing.
Yang synopsized, "She teleports it away to...ooh, Jimmy Kent...who figures he might be able to sell it to quit being Downton Abbey's first footman.", as the next scene shows Eragon, the main character who finds the dragon egg, examines it and senses Arya on some sort of bed in the villains' dungeon; "Okay, so if he swallows that, the story ends and he wakes up in his bed believing whatever he wants to believe. It might kill him if he swallows it, but I say that's worth the risk."
"This isn't a Matrix film.", Pyrrha and Nora corrects.
Blake and Weiss introduced, "Actually, this is our title character Eragon, played by Ed Speleers."
"Mmm, the poor, good-looking farm boy who dreams of adventure...", Galbatorix suddenly said on the TV screen and interrupts the movie.
The leader of team RWBY told her friends, "There, you see? What movie would be that bare minimum with its main character?"
"Well, maybe there's other defining traits about him-", ponders Pyrrha.
Galbatorix inqueried, "There are no other defining traits about him."
"I'm...really learning not to like this guy.", uneased the red-haired girl.
Ruby's sister explained, "It's John Malkovich, he's used to it. That's what he does."
"Ah, ah! That must be the 'gruff uncle, looking after the main character after something happened to his parents'. I can't wait to see him to get all the way to the end!", said the Faunus in anticipation.
The Schnee girl tells the next part, "He lives with his uncle and cousin in the shitty Shire, where they...uh, let's see...", as the girls see the part where Eragon was playing with his brother Roran playfully and happily together, "Yep, yep! Insert playful action sequences posing as character-bonding!"
"Why, we're discovering that he enjoys fighting and gets along with his cousin! Just like the two of us, sister and sister!", Ruby and Yang smiled, as the girls saw two birds flying outside, "Oh, look! Two birds! And me with the stone!", pulling out a small skipping stone as she said, "Go now and speed well!", throwing the stone out the window.
The small stone suddenly stops in mid-air just before reaching the birds, suddenly falling down straight out of their sight. They then heard Glynda Goodwitch's yelp as the skipping stone offscreen hit her head down below.
"Oh...", Ruby and Yang gasped, feeling apologetic.
Blake and Weiss smirk, "Wow. That not only missed and hit someone, but it was both boring and awkward.", before resuming; "But it looks like his cousin named Roran is off to join the king's army.", while the said scene shows Roran saying his emotional farewells to his fellow relative Eragon, "They'd be like, 'Which one is going again?' 'We look so much alike, I sometimes forget who we are.'", as the following part shows Eragon watching over the sunset while emotional Patrick Doyle music was playing.
"Yeah, I'm really gonna miss the way he fought for a minute and said he was gonna join the army and then joined the army.", solemnly says Ruby, "All in the Family has nothing on these dynamic relationships!"; as the next scene showed the dragon egg hatching to reveal a blue baby dragon, "The Harry Potter jelly bean hatches, though, giving birth to a blue bouncing baby Spyro."
Yang sarcastically says, "Very good! Eragon, the Moron of Dragons!" when Eragon in the movie that the egg was a stone earlier and now realized it's an egg and as he touches it, he, another character named Brom, Galbatorix and Arya, "A few select people feel their connection, though, making Arya's budget-saving invisible chains even tighter.", as Durza asked Arya where the egg was, but she says to him he's too late.
"Arya must have said, 'My time has come. There are shivers down my spine, body's aching all the time!'", Blake synopsized, "And thus, Eragon discovers all sorts of things about his new pet."
The scene shows Eragon now bearing a spiral mark on his palm after he touched the dragon, as Weiss imagined, "Eragon should also include, 'You pushed my hand really hard on a cinnamon bun!'", noticing as they watch a cute scene with the blue baby dragon, "Ho-ho-ho, we smell a DreamWorks spin-off, How to Lame Your Dragon. And in an ironic twist, Jay Baruchel will voice the dragon! Christ, it's like they grounded up Gizmos, fed it to that baby from Storks, and then it farted out a pregnant Bolt who gave birth to this! I'm very disgusted by the thought of it."
"Thus, we're finally introduced to the evil Galbatorix, played by Transformers 3's master of subtlety, John Malkovich.", said Ruby.
Nora suddenly said to the girls while they watch the movie, "Wait, isn't John Malkovich that pretentious actor who isn't good, but everyone has to pretend is good for some reason? And they also made a movie out of him called Being John Malkovich?"
"If you're at this scene, you were probably talking about my acting right now. Many people would say I enunciate too much and speak in a patronizing tone that even patronizing toads would call patronizing tone.", Galbatorix interrupted the Eragon movie once again on the TV screen.
Team RWBY all said in unison, "To this, we believe the techincal term is Malk-splaining."
"But I do this because for half of my life, I was a mute.", Galbatorix explained on the TV screen.
Pyrrha spoke quietly to her friend Nora, "Never knew that."
"Thus, if it looks like I am showing off how I just learned how to talk is because I am. Don't I say everything like I just learned how to speak and flaunting it? I know you mock me, but I am just so excited to hear words coming out of my mouth that I have to relish it. So, please, be kind to my performance, but everything else about me you can mock.", spoke Galbatorix on the TV screen, with Pyrrha and Nora nodding in agreement.
The team leader of RWBY continued when the movie resumed, "So you know how this goes. Eragon has to raise the dragon over the course of months, even years, to establish a strong connection with her-", just before the girls watch the blue infant dragon suddenly transforms into a fully-grown blue dragon, landing in front of Eragon.
"They grow up so fast, we guess. We can still go off the basic connection they started to establish when the dragon was younger-", the blonde huntress states before they heard the dragon speak telepathically out loud without moving its lips, with the voice of Rachel Weisz, "Done. This- This isn't going work."
The black-haired Faunus sarcastically says, "We now have Rachel Weisz playing the dragon, who calls herself Saphira, communicating telepathically with our hero... Why?", explaining; "First off, while there's usually nothing wrong with Rachel Weisz in general, wouldn't that Cate Blanchett, or Helen Mirren, or Angelica Huston, or somebody with a more commanding voice make more sense? I keep expecting this voice to ask George of the Jungle to save her!"
"Second, their connection is surprisingly weakened once he can hear her.", added the Schnee girl, "We had them originally connecting through silence, and that was working out fine. Granted, there wasn't a lot of time to it, but you know, it was on the right track. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you go from a baby to a grown-up, so not only is that practically a different character, but now there's a different form of communication as well. So it disrupts the natural flow of their relationship."
Ruby included, "Third, and most importantly, she says nothing of importance throughout the entire film. Yeah, every once in a while, she'll explain something in a sentence, but it's something he or one of the other characters easily could have explained. Even if you wanted to go the route of a mental bond, it would be made stronger if it was left open what and how she was saying it. We don't need it spoon-fed to us. Think of a timeless connection like Lassie, and you'll see what we mean."
Yang continues the story, "Okay, so she says he is meant to be her rider. He doesn't know what to think of all this, so he goes to Brom, an old merchant, played by Jeremy Irons."
"Ah, this must be the 'quirky old mentor, the teacher who used to be the thing the hero wants to be'.", Blake and Weiss presumed, "You and the uncle should look into real estate. You've got such long lives ahead of you!"
Ruby mentions, "Speaking of which- Uncle Owen!", as the girls saw the scene where Eragon (after practicing on riding the blue dragon Saphira) goes back to his home to find his uncle dead, "It would be sadder and a bit funnier if he said, 'I will be a Jedi- I mean, a knight- I mean, Spider-Man- I mean, whatever the hell Link is!'", the same scene showing Brom arriving at the site, to which Eragon tries to attack him, "Eragon can also say, 'You did nothing to cause this, I'll kill you!'", as Brom uses the stave that Eragon used to try attacking him with to burn the farriery as he says 'a funeral fit for a king', "Also, Brom should add 'I'll decorate him in 11 herbs and spices when we get back.'", as in the end of this scene, Eragon asks what Brom's name is, but the latter answered to him he must ride now.
"'Thank you, Mr. Ride Now! My uncle's Kentucky Fried funeral will not be forgotten!'", Yang joked again as the girls all laughed to this together, "So our main character begins his quest."
Nora tells her, "What is it?"
"Well...actually, I don't know.", Yang said in an honest manner, "We mean, things are set up, there's a bad king, he has a dragon, we guess bad men are after him; but in terms of what the actual goal of his quest is, if it's mentioned, it's not made very clear. This, surprisingly, is not super uncommon. For example, the world isn't very well-defined."
Blake and Weiss both said, "I mean, you see a shot from Avatar, you know you're on Pandora. You see a shot from The Wizard of Oz, you know you're in Oz. This could be...anywhere. Middle-earth of the Lord of the Rings universe, Fantasia of the Neverending Story universe, that Warcraft movie nobody saw... Nothing separates it as unique. But, again, I shouldn't be too harsh. After all, it is shot beautifully for a 2006 movie."
"Girls, at some point, you have to realize this is an especially bland theatrical release for suckers.", truthfully told Nora.
Pyrrha pointed out, "Yeah, it's trying to be something we've never seen, but instead, it's...everything we've ever seen."
"Good point. But that's just gonna lose your Malkovich enunciation points.", Ruby shrugs, "So they start their quest to...find their quest."; while they saw the next scene where Eragon and Brom saw some people fighting, "Okay, cool. Finally, some action in this movie. I feel like this took forever."
Yang reacted when Brom then trained Eragon to fight, "Ah. So it's the...same action we had before. Two good guys playfully fighting...while no real conflict is going on.", as the two characters continue training and with Brom at one point making a joke that he sees the effect in his training, "Yeah. Just keep joking! Those people are probably dead, but still, you gotta laugh! This is fun! And may I add what Brom could say after the training scene ended, 'You suck. Let's go.'"
"Sad to say, there's actually a lot of what you just saw for a while. They sit down and talk, they ride on horses. They sit down and talk, they ride on horses. And even when they do sit down and talk, all I'm thinking is how much more interesting it would be if the dragon shut the hell up.", Blake sincerely said, "Like look at this scene.", as the girls saw the part where Brom and Saphira explain what happens the consequences on if either the dragon or the rider dies, with the latter answering that if the rider dies, so does the dragon, "Yeah, it's generic, it's nothing, it leaves no impact."
Weiss explained and imagined, "Now, let's try this scene again, expect take out the dialogue and see if not only do you get across what she was saying, but do you actually read even more into it.", as the girls imagine the same scene, but without Saphira saying what happens if the rider dies, "Wasn't that more interesting? Wasn't it cooler when you had to feel what she was trying to get across, rather than be told? Would've been better in that version."
"But don't worry, even when they do get to exciting scenes, they don't do them right. When they finally fight some soldiers, it's so dark and shaky you can't even make out what's going on. Eragon gets so ticked off, he lights up the scene throughout his goddamn will alone. But Irons tells him...I believe it's magic! Nah, we're just kidding! It's mido-chlorians from Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace.", brightened Ruby when commenting about the next scene.
When they see the part where Brom teaches Eragon about the ancient language of the Elves, translating tree to traevam, Yang stated, "Well, that's a happy coincidence. What's the word for Hand? Handvam! And the word for Branch? Branchvam! Haven't you been listening?", as she summarizes, "So they figure if he's gonna be a Dragon Rider, he should ride a dragon.", as one of the following scenes show Eragon riding Saphira, landing before he was suddenly attacked by one of the Ra'zac.
"Ah! This must be the 'evil black monster people who make annoying sounds for no reason'. Always an obnoxious addition!", Blake commented as they saw Eragon cast a spell to kill the Ra'zac, "Eragon should be saying, 'Wow, that's the first man I've ever killed-'", before Eragon runs over to Saphira, "'Oh, never mind, going over here now.'", and the movie shows Brom killing another Ra'zac with a sword, "Effects by Industrial Light and...Come On!"
Weiss aggravated when Eragon finds a similar mark on Brom's sleeve and Saphira spoke, "Oh, my God! Will you shut up?! I'd use the term "show, don't tell", but I'd rather replace them both with Shut up! SHUT UP!", while the same scene had Brom telling how his dragon was killed by the Za'roc dragonslaying sword, "Oh, is that why he said he killed a dragon? You had nothing. Again, watch the scene with the dialogue cut out, instead of listening to her just repeating what's already been said. Read her facial reactions.", as they imagine the scene all over again without Saphira talking, "Again, night and day."
"I don't care if the original book had this or not. Here, it turns an interesting relationship into a standard relationship. And that's not what you want from a fantasy that's trying to stand out.", Ruby said, "But, it could be worse. It could be made even more standard by throwing in a princess-"
Galbatorix interrupts the movie thrice and spoiled, "A princess needing saving up ahead."
"Of course.", the four members of team RWBY figured.
The villain of Eragon continued speaking on the TV screen, "You will notice her suffering and torment, psychically sending images to Eragon of her twirling in the forest and skipping to pleasant imagery.", showing a scene with Arya in Eragon's dream twirling and skipping in the forest.
"That doesn't sound like torment.", Pyrrha uncertainly answered.
Nora joined, "That actually sounds really nice."
"It is totally not nice. It is to show how brave she is, by portraying peaceful imagery, even though she is suffering.", Galbatorix explained.
Pyrrha sighs and shuddered, "You sure you didn't just want to work in some whimsical forest porn that's trademark of fantasies now? Can't imagine that in Forever Fall."
"Yeah, I've even seen it in commercials. You could slap a shampoo logo over it.", Nora concepted.
Galbatorix guarantees, "I assure you, it is deep and stuff. What Jeremy Irons' Brom said-"
"Yeah, how can someone be happy to make a sacrifice?", questioned Pyrrha, "Doesn't that technically make it not a sacrifice?", to which Galbatorix does not answer before the JNPR member asked team RWBY, "Can we turn this off?"
RWBY nods, "Yeah, we're gonna take a break. We'll be right back.", as the six go to the bathroom to brush their teeth.
To be continued...
