*UBER SPOILER ALERT YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*
The characters are almost exactly the same as star wars. For example:
Eragon: Teenager. Nevr knew his parents. Farm boy, lives on his farm with his Aunt and Uncle. Goes on a hunting trip. Finds an egg. Te bad guys want the egg really badly. Burn his Aunt and Uncle's house down while he was away. Turns out the local storyteller, Brom isn't really the humble guy he appears to be and him and Eragon escape away from their city, Eragon leaves everything behind. Sound familiar? That's because its a blow by blow account of the first bit of A New Hope with a slightly different setting and different character names.
Further proof: Eragon and Brom escape. Brom tells Eragon that he is unique and that he posesses special powers (the force, anyone?). In an encounter with the evil guys Eragon is about to be killed when he calls on his powers to save himself (A la wampa, Empire Strikes Back) Brom ends up dying in order to save Eragon so tha he can continue his journey. As far as he knows he is the last of his people the Dragonriders, who were exterminated by the evil King who also once was a Dragonrider (JEDI, VADER?!) The Dragonriders were supposed to be the keepers of peace in the world but one evil one cast off and exterminated the rest. (A La Revenge of the Sith, Jedi Purge)
And: Eragon gets himself to this safe haven place, supposedly hidden from the Evil guys. Shortly after the Evil Guys are attacking the place and the Farm Boy saves the day. (Deathstar/Hoth).
This is Awful: The Farm Boy travels on and gets to the next sanctuary. He meets his new master, a Dragonrider, but one who is crippled and old, but still shows extraordinary power (GOOD GOD IT'S YODA REINCARNATE!). He begins training the Farmer from where Brom left off.
Finally: In an epic confrontation between the Rebel guys and the Evil Imperialistic guys who are currently in power (my god Rebels vs. Empire) he finds that another Dragonrider decends on the field. He's one of the evil guys. He duels him, and finds out he was his old friend gone to the Dark Side. He learns that this friend of his turns out the be his brother (friendship turned sibling. My, I wonder where he got that one from? *cough*Leia*cough*) And to top it all off he learns that the evil guy he despises most in the world is actually his Father. To bad the Bastard wasn't there to tell him himself and then chop off his hand.
As you can see, even though Christopher Paolini is a genius, he was still 15 when he wrote this and a high IQ, it seems, still wont produce original plots without heavily borrowing, quite obviously even, from existing classic works. The books were decent, but the movie must be god awful since you'll constantly be sitting there comparing the two now that they're both in the same format. It's alright to borrow elements and things, but to so blatantly rip off a recent classic that most of us know and love and if not at least know, well that's just bad.
