I was disappointed. I read the books, which were fine (not terribly great, but pretty good for a young author). I knew from reading previous reviews that the movie deviated from the book a lot. I was prepared to keep an open mind and view the film as it is, and not what the book is. I was looking forward to it! The sets were beautiful, had a good cast, CGI was fantastic (great Saphira!), and a prepared storyline what went wrong? The two biggest problems were: the terrible dialog and the overly dramatic music (made you roll your eyes). Both could have been remedied with a longer movie. They crammed it all in to an hour and a half. They didn't have time to flesh out the characters, develop the plot so the dialog was sparse, often cheesy, and just didn't make you like the characters. It felt forced. Jeremy Irons is a great Brom!! Too bad his lines were so lame. What was that scene with Angela? The scene with the Urgals working you could tell they were just trying to look busy. You could see through the "acting" because the time was so short, they had nothing to do. I also felt they tried to make the Urgals into too much like the Uruks of the LoTR. The overly dramatic music worked in Lord of the Rings because it was a longer movie and so were able to really hook you into the world. You weren't "in" this world. You weren't part of the problems. The music felt corny. I felt like they tried to make it like Lord of the Rings, but failed because you just can't do it in 1hr 42 min. That's why the LoTR movies were up near the 3hr mark. Granted, I'm not saying make this a 3hr movie. But a good 2 or 2.5 hours, better dialog, more attention to detail (Arya's ears), more character development (mention Hrothgar, Naduada) sure would have helped. Too bad. My husband, who didn't read the books, gave it a 6.8.
