I took my 7 year old son to see Eragon, because it seemed like a fun movie for a 7 year old. I knew that the story was written by a home-schooled teenager, and contained lots of cliches. In some sense, it was very interesting because it shows that teenagers just don't have that much interesting to say. The plot develops very predictably, imagery is obvious, and there is absolutely no humor.

The evil that fell over this land was caused by a mean king, who because of his meanness, makes his subjects miserable. In the past, good-spirited dragon riders helped keep people happy. This is a comical view of history, unfortunately present in many adults who seem to think all we need is a president/governor etc. who 'cares' and all sorts of misery disappears. The worst places in world history weren't so much the effect of aristocratic malevolence, but people operating on a bad theory, so that the 'means to an end' never delivered the end. As Orwell said of Stalin's quote 'to make an omelet you have to break eggs', where is the omelet? Pol Pot, Hitler, Mugabe, Mao, all thought they were helping the underdog along with themselves. They were horribly wrong, but I think they were generally sincere (Hitler really did believe Jews were parasites on gentile Germans). The world's misfortune is less the cause of Snidely Whiplash than of Noam Chomsky-types, but that's not the way a teenage looks at history.

Every once in a while my local suburban paper has a letter to the editor from some high school kid bemoaning poverty or the Middle East, offering a totally banal prescription ("why don't we get everyone involved!"). I think until a kid is 25, he should focus on tactics, not strategies. The bigger picture simply needs more information from experience and reading than even the most precocious child has. They aren't stupid, but they are ignorant.