I just watched the special features of the movie the other day. They said outright they didn't give Aria pointy ears on purpose, they said they didn't want to copy "other movies"
they also said outright that they did not intent to follow the book, just "the spirit of the book".
I watched the deleted scenes and they were awesome, they were all great parts, true to the book and exactly the way I imagined them, and those are the scenes that were "unnecessary". I had to turn it off, I almost had a stroke.
It was a DVD I rented from Netflix "Eragon Bonus Disc"
I think they were just dumb Koosh, if I knew where the director lived I would write him a long long letter.......