(Written by ninja5)
You may have heard of the book Eragon, which is the first in a series of four books by Christopher Paolini
In case you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, Eragon is a fantasy novel, somewhat like Lord of the Rings. It is about the land of Alagaesia, and the wars of the people living there. There is an evil king named Galbatorix, and the protagonist is named Eragon. Basically a story of good versus evil. As far as The LEGO Movie, as a LEGO fan you have likely seen it already so I won’t summarize the plot, but instead dive right into the similarities between the book Eragon and The LEGO Movie.
➡ Eragon & The LEGO Movie Similarity #1: The main character is clueless and powerless at first, and is an average person. He randomly finds an object that suddenly makes everyone wanting to kill him. That’s the similarity, but there is also a difference. In the book Eragon the main character hides the object (a dragon egg) and – at least for a while – is fairly safe. In The Lego Movie, Emmet is captured immediately after finding the Piece of Resistance.
➡ Eragon & The LEGO Movie Similarity #2: The main character accidentally runs into a girl, and falls into love with her at first sight. However in Eragon, his “girlfriend” does not rescue him from jail, instead he rescues her as he finds her when he gets chucked in prison by the badguys. In The Lego Movie Wyldstyle rescues Emmet.
➡ Eragon & The LEGO Movie Similarity #3: In both Eragon and The Lego Movie, the protagonist is woefully ignorant, and is guided along by a wise and old mentor. A difference though is that Eragon hates king Galbatorix, but Emmet likes and believes in President Business.
➡ Eragon & The LEGO Movie Similarity #4: Galbatorix has a Dragon Rider under his command, named Murtagh. However, Murtagh is unwilling to work for Galbatorix at first, until he is forced to follow Galbatorix’s orders by magic. Bad Cop is similar to Murtagh, because they are both the right-hand man of the badguy, but Bad Cop is dominantly bad and only sometimes good even at the beginning, and later he is forced to be evil at all times. Both of them change sides at the end of the story.
➡ Eragon & The LEGO Movie Similarity #5: In both Eragon and The Lego Movie the goodguys have a hidden base that gets invaded by the badguys. However while in Eragon the Varden (the goodguys) win, in The Lego Movie Cloud Cuckoo Land is completely destroyed.
➡ Eragon & The LEGO Movie Similarity #6: The final similarity I found is that in both stories the protagonist makes it through the battle outside the badguy’s base, and then goes through a gauntlet to get to the main badguy. They almost fail (coincidentally, they are both suspended motionless, but Eragon is released to fight Murtagh for Galbatorix’s amusement), but then they finally win by showing the badguy the wrongs he has committed. In the book Eragon, however, the hero does not try to convince Galbatorix to change sides and right his wrongs, instead Galbatorix is consumed by his own evil and explodes, destroying the palace with him.
I was quite surprised by the number of similarities that book Eragon and The Lego Movie share, and had a lot of fun writing them up. I enjoyed The LEGO Movie, and all four of the books (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance). If you haven’t heard of them before I definitely recommend reading them yourself. They should be available at most bookstores and also on Amazon. Here are the links:
➡ INHERITANCE CYCLE (all four books in the Eragon series)
➡ ERAGON movie – DVD on Amazon
➡ THE LEGO MOVIE – DVD on Amazon
So what do you think? Do you find these similarities between The LEGO Movie and Eragon interesting? Have you already read Eragon and noticed the similarities yourself? Did you find any other ones that I have missed? Feel free to share in the comments section below! 😉
And you might also like to check out the following related posts:
FIRST! Funny, my friend reads this series!
Interesting post. Good work, Ninja5!
Looks like there is going to possible be a new LEGO Batman movie and a LEGO Movie 2. That’ll be awesome.
There’s even rumors of adding Spiderman to the cast of the LEGO Movie 2.
Btw, there’s a second trailer out for the Avengers Age of Ultron. It looks amazing.
really? where Meneldur, YOU MUST TELL ME!!! 🙄 Very interesting post. I’ve never read the book, but the similarities between these are interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZoO8QVMxkk
Looks like Tony’s reputation has been diminished. And Thor doesn’t like him very much. I’m not surprised. 😕 Thanks for telling us, Meneldur. 🙂
Not a problem! I really like how they brought Andy Serkis into the cast for the part of Ulysees Klaw. It looks like Avengers 2 will be an interesting film.
thanks guys. Yeah, that’s weird about his reputation being ruined, it’s the agent carter show all over again. I can’t wait to see it!
Interesting comparison. I would add though that many of the similarities are common elements and plot-lines in movies and books. Hero who doesn’t know he is a hero, guy meets girl, wise mentor, badguy with a sidekick. I haven’t read Eragon, but it seems like it follows every cliche in the fantasy novel genre.
I guess you can find similarities between most two movies or books as they often follow the same predictable pattern. Interestingly, I just ran across a video on YouTube that analyzed The LEGO Movie and its similarities to hidden world powers, reptilians, biblical messages and shamanic symbolism. Yeah, it was at the dark side of YouTube and I don’t know how I got there… 🙄
Speaking of Biblical messages, Ninjago has many of these, Iron sharpens iron, the best way to defeat an enemy is to make them your friend, never put off until tomorrow what can be done today, if you can’t change your circumstances you change your self/mind. etc. Awesome huh? And yes, some things in the LEGO movie where Cleshe (or however you spell that. ) But that might have been the point.
Yeah admin I saw that too. He was talking about that the master builders are master masons (illuminati people) and that they are fighting God (lord business) breaking the rules of the bible
And that they are leading an army of Devils fight him.
I think that guy is just trying to make movies sound bad by making up things and putting references that don’t even make sense.
I guess if someone has an overactive mind they can read anything into anything!
Hm…I never thought about that. I have Eragon (and only that book from the series), but I read it once, probably about two years ago, and so don’t remember it well. But I thought Eragon was a dragon, not a human. 😕 I recall the kid raised it, learned to communicate with it or something, then… something. I can’t remember. 🙁 Anyways, good comparisons, definitely some relationship in storyline, but then, aren’t they in almost all good stories? Your #5, for instance: good guys’ secret base attacked by bad guys… sounds like the Battle of Hoth to me. Only difference there is that the base is destroyed, but the good guys still win. 🙂
Also: https://brickset.com/article/13885/january-cock-up-at-shop-lego-com-lego-responds A humble response. I didn’t see that much mess, only one set out of place, and all the new OOS. But I guess Europe was different. 😕
Eragon is the boy who trains the dragon. The dragon’s name is Saphira. I haven’t read the books, but I did see the movie. 🙂
Oh, I remember now. Although I still can’t remember the old guy’s name, all I can think of is Vitruvius and Ben Kenobi. 😐 You should read the books, that way you will no longer like the movie (which I haven’t seen, I’m just guessing it’s not as good based on others). 😉
The mentor is named Brom, who is SPOILER ALERT!!!! actually Eragon’s father.
Great, thanks. I read the spoiler. 😕 I remember Brom, but I don’t think I knew he was his father… that’s not in the first book, am I right? But I’m going to guess that I won’t read the rest of the series anyways, as I have too many long and boring books to read for school, and then I have other books I got for Christmas I’d like to read. 😕
I may check out the books at some point. Haven’t had time to read much lately. But I do like fantasy books. 🙂
(Come back to the light side admin, don’t let the power of the dark side tempt you. ) It is a common thing for the hero to be the one you least expect . Look at THE LORD OF THE RINGS and STAR WARS . I guess we are all hero’s ,villains, the side kick and the female that falls in love from time to time.
Don’t worry, I’m back from the Dark Side. Or am I? 😈
There’s a dark and light side on Youtube? I thought is was just one big jumbled mess?
Yeah, they make you believe it is a jumbled mess, but it is actually a clever plot by the dark-side to suck you in. You know, you are just watching an innocent video, and at the end you will see these suggestions. So you click on one that looks interesting. Then you look at the suggestions at the end of that one. As you go down this rabbit-hole the videos get more and more bizarre, and after about the third click you wonder how you got there. 🙄
So true…
Haha, I’d never thought of that. I’ve read the whole Inheritance cycle as well as seen Eragon and the Lego Movie.
And something to add, the bad guy’s base blows up in both ^^ (Unfortunately, Eragon didn’t fall out of the sky like Emmet did, which would have been hilarious)
Murtagh has always been my favorite character in Eragon, and I’m quite fond of Bad Cop/Good Cop too.
Angela and Vitruvius would get along quite well, I would think. As would Unikitty and Solumbum (if they didn’t tear each other to pieces first).
Yeah! That’s very funny to think about. I REALLY need to read those again, since it’s been two years.
I don’t want to be that guy, but honestly if we’re gonna compare The LEGO Movie to other films and books, Eragon is a stretch.
As in the tearing rubber band sort of stretch.
If you want to talk about similar movies, it’s GotG, not only was Chris Pratt (coolest white person alive btw) the main star, but both were about average people pulled away from what they know with their favorite music to stop a bad guy they didn’t really know existed with a rag-tag team of awesome characters. And both have LEGO Sets!
Your comparison of The LEGO Movie and The Matrix is perfect:)
When the Eragon movie came out, many people compared it to Star Wars. George Lucas famously studied the works of Joseph Campbell while writing Star Wars. Joseph Campbell is a guy that identified all the commonalities to stories, myths, etc., that make them feel great and epic. Probably any movie that fits the Campbell mold could be compared to the Lego Movie like this.
Of course if you want a simpler path, go read the TV Tropes page on the Lego Movie.
Ray, thanks for sharing that. Very interesting.