Posted on 12/27/2005 11:28:47 AM PST by Bob J
After reading all the hype in the media and on FR, I was excited to see the film of the CS Lewis book. I have to say I was disappointed. For all it's grandiosity and provenance, I found it clunky, sometimes difficult to follow and worse, unbelieveable (even a "fantasy" movie must reasonable enough in the story and behavior of it's characters to hurdle the initial "willing suspension of disbelief")
The religious basis and backdop to the story has been argued at length on FR, so let's leave that at the doorstep and discuss it's cinematic achievements, or lack thereof.
The Story.
This may have been why I had a problem with the movie. After the presentation of the premise and the characters, I found myslef resisting acceptance that an entire fantasy world filled with magic, mythologic creatures, witches, generals and armies was waiting for a four small children to come and save their world....by prophecy and design. It would have been more believeable if they happened into the world by accident and through clever plot twists were responsible for the salvation of Narnia. But there was nothing really special about these kids, no ancestors with a special connection/knowledge to Narnia, no special abilities, expertise or talents, They were not exceptional in any way...they were just kids. Why did the land of Narnia need them? They added nothing that wasn't already there and in fact detracted from it.
The opening.
The setup took far too long. I wasn't watching my watch but it must have taken over 20-30 minutes for the first kid to walk out the back of the wardrobe closet into the land of Narnia. I didn't understand the emphasis placed on this part of the book as it had little to do with subsequent events. Did it matter that much to the story that the the kids were sent off to the professor because their mother was concerned about the danger of WWII? There was a passing reference later about being shipped off to avoid the effects of war only to be dropped in the middle of the war in Narnia (and whether they should get involved at all), but it fell limply to the ground.
The characters.
Ouch. Let's go by the numbers.
The Professor and his maid (?).
Good cop bad cop. The maid is stern, the professor, kind. So what? The movie feints toward this professor knowing more about Narnia and the wardrobe, but it leaves it there. You think he is going to add some specific knowledge or experience that the kids might benefit from (if not be involved himself) but they movie drops it and he becomes a useless figure in the overall plot. Why waste screen time on it?
Lucy - A typical, precocious, British eight year old. The most likeable character in the movie (which might not be saying much) but I grow weary of the English tendancy to cast their child characters beyond their years. I had three "laugh" moments in this movie, two concerning her. First, when she hits the bullseye with her magic "knife" and then when she "flashes it" and heads off to vanquish the armies of evil. A real laugher.
Susan - The most annoying, negative character in the movie. At first I made parallels to Wendy from "Peter Pan, but you believed Wendy was concerned about the younger children while Susan comes off as a party killing shrew. They needed to soften this character but didn't. Throughout most of the movie I kept wondering when she was going to use those damn arrows...had to wait until the last 2 minutes and by then it was anticlimatic.
Edmund - The anti-hero who becomes hero. I busted out laughing (third instance) when they put he and his brother in those stupid looking suits of armor. We are asked to believe this 10 and 14 year old are going to take part in a "Braveheart" type battle with huge warriors and mythological creatures and vanquish all? I might have believed it if they were given extrahuman strength, speed and agility. Even with their magic "implements" the battle scenes with these two were comical. Think of William Wallace in a sword fight with Doogie Howser.
Peter - Peter is supposed to be the 14 year old hero of the story, protecting his siblings while winding their way through the dangers of a mystical kingdom. The residents of Narnia wait for his arrival to lead their armies of druids and gargoyles againt the forces of evil in a final battle of epic proportions and historic finality. Sorry. Through the first 4/5ths of the movie Peter comes off as an effeminate British girlie boy and it is too much to ask the audience to believe he is the saviour of Narnia. Why would they want or need him?
The Witch - Huh? Tilda Swinson does comes off as an evil bitch but I never did beleive she, or anyone, would want to be the King or Queen of Narnia. It would be like Sauron of Moldor and his legions of Orks waging an epic battle for the control of The Shire. Snooze.
That's my nutshell of a take. If you ave seen narnia and would like to comment, feel free to do so but let's keep it clean.
I just read this website about the order. It's interesting.
http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk/narnia.htm
Thorough review but missed the mark, IMHO. I loved the movie, as did my kids (13 and 9). I think the Christian allegory makes the movie even better for me. I noticed several Christian themes throughout the movie, though I don't think they were too overt. I didn't see Lord of the Rings, and have only half-seen one or two of the Potter movies and didn't really care a whole lot for them. That's why I was a little surprised that I really enjoyed Narnia. Now I'm going to have to go read the books (and have my kids read them).
"I don't know how you managed to miss every single important thing about this film..."
What important things are those?
"You are missing the point, especially from a Christian standpoint."
You're saying only kids and Christians will understand this movie?
I liked it. But there's a rendition that I like better, in some way, and that's the one made by the BBC (in the '80s?).
But, if I were going to read them, I would read them in the original order as written and published over a period of about 10 years:
LWW
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician's Nephew
The Last Battle
It actually makes sense in a way. All the books dealing with the modern (at that time) English children come first, first the Pevensie children and then Eustace and then Jill. Then the Horse story - which is told as a tale that happened long ago (and is mentioned by the way in The Silver Chair as a ballad sung by a minstrel at a feast -- Lewis I'm sure got to ruminating on it (his day job dealt in part with the jongleurs and troubadours) and took it from there.) The last two stories are mirror images of one another - the Creation and the End of Narnia - and have a good deal more frank Christian themes and imagery in them than the others.
The order as originally written makes more sense to me for those reasons.
Two fine writers and devout Christians; which goes to show that fantasy that goes beyond anything Hollywood is doing, can be written because each let faith inspire their writing.
I haven't seen Goblet of Fire, though my two daughters saw it last night and said it was "OK". The editing of the Sorcerer's Stone was really choppy too. They left the best parts of the Harry character on the cutting room floor with that movie too - supposedly to limit it's length.
I think the person you want is BobJ. I am a long time friend of Narnia, and I loved the movie.
"You are missing the point, especially from a Christian standpoint."
You're saying only kids and Christians will understand this movie?
No, I am saying YOU don't understand this point.
No flames from me. I thought FoTR the best of the three and worth the hype. Two Towers I thought the biggest stumble: great opening but all the padding around the Helms Deep battle basically derailed the story and, on balance, sucked. RoTK was good, but not great. More over-the-top fighty-fighty (though Theoden's speech and the launch of the charge was awesome) and more goofy material not found in the books reduced everything to mundane action-adventure.
Nanria I found truer to the source material, more evenly paced, just as funny, and just as much of an effects spectacular. My only change would be more screentime for Aslan and more dialogue to set up the sacrifice.
I happen to be one of those people who agrees with what George MacDonald remarks to the Narrator in Lewis's The Great Divorce -- when the Narrator asks him what Keats meant in a particular passage ("I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections"), MacDonald replies that he's by no means sure that Keats himself had any idea what he meant. IOW, a story grows as the writer tells it, and the act of telling it has implications that even the writer may not necessarily grasp. (R.L. Stevenson also noticed this while he was writing - he told a friend that he solved a writer's block problem by "letting the characters do what they wanted.")
I like to follow along behind the writer as he originally wrote the works. Lewis was planning to revise them (which would have made a more unified whole for the "Chronologists" as your article calls them) but he never did get around to it before his death.
Then you didn't read the bottom of my initial post where I specifically asked we keep the discussion to it's cinematic qualities as the religious extensions had already been discussed at length.
If you are saying one may not appreciate the movie without looking at it from a Christian persepctive, that may be true.
I would not be surprised if that dialogue was truncated because of the distributor's fears that the movie was already "too Christian."
Thank you. I would tend to agree that the order in which they were written would be best, so I'll make that suggestion to my wife. Thanks again. :-)
Well, the characterizations and the reasons for them, the meaning of the plot, the target audience for the book, you know, that sort of basic stuff.
The McCready.
I thought the Island had a lot of other "borrowings" in it: Logans Run, THX1138, 1984, The Matrix, Star Wars, and Blade Runner. Still, I really enjoyed it.
Starship Troopers was good, shoot-em-up action. Just don't confuse it with the (much better) book.
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