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"Some kids who played games about Narnia,
Got gradually balmier and balmier - "
My favorite Narnian poem. :D
Teri and I saw The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe over the weekend; a friend loaned her the DVD (in exchange we loaned her the complete Black Adder series; she looked at the first disk and didn't like it. She's a Mister Bean fan. I explained that the Elizabethan season was far better than the first one, and she may give it another try).
Anyway, about the Narnia movie: not bad. It was Hollywood-ized, of course, by which I mean it was tarted up and had some additional action sequences stuck in. But the actors seemed pretty much right for the parts, the dialog was changed but not too terrible, and there wasn't anything that actually caused me pain.
The actress who played Lucy was slightly younger than I expected, but looked right and handled the part well. The actress who played Susan was appropriately potentially-slutty-looking - I noticed that she always had lipstick on. They did play up her bitchiness a bit too much, I thought. Peter and Edward were fine. Aslan wasn't bad. I thought that the guy who played Mr. Tumnus the faun did an excellent job; he wasn't as I envisioned the character, but in this case, that was to the good.
One thing I found amusing was that the faun-pipes that he used to play a "Narnian lullaby" were actually dubbed with sounds from an Armenian doudouk. The doudouk seems to have a certain mystique to it - I've heard it used on a number of non-Armenian recordings.
One thing that did NOT work well for me were the wolves. Their voices were simply wrong - nowhere near as animalistic and frightening as they should have been. They were more like a cross between Mel Gibson and the American comedian Dennis Leary.
Come to think of it, the wolves didn't LOOK evil enough, either. This is probably a cultural issue; wolves have undergone a change of image since I was a boy (and even more so since TLTWATW was written). Teri loves wolves, although Sebastian fears them (I would too, if I were his size). It's not unlike the change that native Americans have undergone, at approximately the same time; in the old days, you simply knew that a wolf or Indian was evil as soon as they were introduced, and these days you rather expect the reverse.
An odd point: the lead wolf was called "Maugrim" in the movie, and I instantly noted the change - in the books I'd read, he was called "Fenris Ulf". It seemed like a pointless name change. I was curious enough to do a little research, and to my amazement the movie was actually more correct than my book - it turns out that the name originally WAS Maugrim. It was changed by Lewis after the initial publication and printed that way in later American editions, and then changed back again later. Speculation: perhaps Lewis felt that "Maugrim" was too close to Tolkien's "Naugrim", but then decided that it wasn't worth worrying about? I don't know.
As for the Christian elements that stirred up so much excitement in the media, you can be sure that I - the epitome of the irritable atheist - was on the lookout for them. But I'm happy to say that they didn't "Christ up" the movie at all; there was the obvious crucifixion/resurrection parallel of Aslan, of course, but that was in the book.
Incidentally, Teri was quite moved by the death of Aslan. I'd expected that, because Aslan, particularly after he was shaved, looked a LOT like our old cat, Sam. But the interesting thing is that Teri DIDN'T catch the Aslan-Christ thing, nor the whole resurrection theme. Of course, she was raised in a non-religious household.
As far as I'm concerned Lewis didn't really cross the line for preachiness until the very end of the last book - The Last Battle - so I'll credit the movie's creators with not pandering to the Christian crowd, except possibly with the soundtracks issue (if you didn't know, they released two soundtracks - an explicitly Christian one, and a non-Christian one. Oh, you know what I mean).
What else? Some parts were expanded, some reduced or eliminated. The special effects were well done, although there were a few moments that were obviously green-screened - jarringly so. I'd thought the technology was more advanced than that.
But all in all, a decent movie from a good book. Oh, they did add a "London during the Blitz" prologue which was not in the book at all, but it wasn't out of place or inappropriate, so who cares.
I find myself wondering, though: why do I find this movie so much less offensive than the Lord of the Rings movies? Perhaps it's because I don't love TLTWATW the way that I love TLOTR. I read the Narnia books every few years, and my relentless memory has gripped them almost as firmly as TLOTR, but the books mean nowhere near as much to me.
That said...no. I still think that Peter Jackson fucked Tolkien over, badly. Making minor changes is one thing, but what Jackson did to TLOTR is something quite different. And I'm reasonably sure that history will back me up on this.
Something funny: After I saw the Narnia movie, I felt like reading the books again. But they've been buried somewhere in the boxes in my basement for some time.
I was looking for the precise wording of the "balmier and balmier" poem (did you know that I worked that hard on my posts? Pathetic, isn't it?), and I found something interesting: the ENTIRE text of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in PDF format. I got curious, and found that not only had that person posted the text of all seven Narnia books, but The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarilion, and all of the Harry Potter books as well!
Check it out. I own all of those books, of course, but it's awfully convenient to be able to read them online.
Got gradually balmier and balmier - "
My favorite Narnian poem. :D
Teri and I saw The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe over the weekend; a friend loaned her the DVD (in exchange we loaned her the complete Black Adder series; she looked at the first disk and didn't like it. She's a Mister Bean fan. I explained that the Elizabethan season was far better than the first one, and she may give it another try).
Anyway, about the Narnia movie: not bad. It was Hollywood-ized, of course, by which I mean it was tarted up and had some additional action sequences stuck in. But the actors seemed pretty much right for the parts, the dialog was changed but not too terrible, and there wasn't anything that actually caused me pain.
The actress who played Lucy was slightly younger than I expected, but looked right and handled the part well. The actress who played Susan was appropriately potentially-slutty-looking - I noticed that she always had lipstick on. They did play up her bitchiness a bit too much, I thought. Peter and Edward were fine. Aslan wasn't bad. I thought that the guy who played Mr. Tumnus the faun did an excellent job; he wasn't as I envisioned the character, but in this case, that was to the good.
One thing I found amusing was that the faun-pipes that he used to play a "Narnian lullaby" were actually dubbed with sounds from an Armenian doudouk. The doudouk seems to have a certain mystique to it - I've heard it used on a number of non-Armenian recordings.
One thing that did NOT work well for me were the wolves. Their voices were simply wrong - nowhere near as animalistic and frightening as they should have been. They were more like a cross between Mel Gibson and the American comedian Dennis Leary.
Come to think of it, the wolves didn't LOOK evil enough, either. This is probably a cultural issue; wolves have undergone a change of image since I was a boy (and even more so since TLTWATW was written). Teri loves wolves, although Sebastian fears them (I would too, if I were his size). It's not unlike the change that native Americans have undergone, at approximately the same time; in the old days, you simply knew that a wolf or Indian was evil as soon as they were introduced, and these days you rather expect the reverse.
An odd point: the lead wolf was called "Maugrim" in the movie, and I instantly noted the change - in the books I'd read, he was called "Fenris Ulf". It seemed like a pointless name change. I was curious enough to do a little research, and to my amazement the movie was actually more correct than my book - it turns out that the name originally WAS Maugrim. It was changed by Lewis after the initial publication and printed that way in later American editions, and then changed back again later. Speculation: perhaps Lewis felt that "Maugrim" was too close to Tolkien's "Naugrim", but then decided that it wasn't worth worrying about? I don't know.
As for the Christian elements that stirred up so much excitement in the media, you can be sure that I - the epitome of the irritable atheist - was on the lookout for them. But I'm happy to say that they didn't "Christ up" the movie at all; there was the obvious crucifixion/resurrection parallel of Aslan, of course, but that was in the book.
Incidentally, Teri was quite moved by the death of Aslan. I'd expected that, because Aslan, particularly after he was shaved, looked a LOT like our old cat, Sam. But the interesting thing is that Teri DIDN'T catch the Aslan-Christ thing, nor the whole resurrection theme. Of course, she was raised in a non-religious household.
As far as I'm concerned Lewis didn't really cross the line for preachiness until the very end of the last book - The Last Battle - so I'll credit the movie's creators with not pandering to the Christian crowd, except possibly with the soundtracks issue (if you didn't know, they released two soundtracks - an explicitly Christian one, and a non-Christian one. Oh, you know what I mean).
What else? Some parts were expanded, some reduced or eliminated. The special effects were well done, although there were a few moments that were obviously green-screened - jarringly so. I'd thought the technology was more advanced than that.
But all in all, a decent movie from a good book. Oh, they did add a "London during the Blitz" prologue which was not in the book at all, but it wasn't out of place or inappropriate, so who cares.
I find myself wondering, though: why do I find this movie so much less offensive than the Lord of the Rings movies? Perhaps it's because I don't love TLTWATW the way that I love TLOTR. I read the Narnia books every few years, and my relentless memory has gripped them almost as firmly as TLOTR, but the books mean nowhere near as much to me.
That said...no. I still think that Peter Jackson fucked Tolkien over, badly. Making minor changes is one thing, but what Jackson did to TLOTR is something quite different. And I'm reasonably sure that history will back me up on this.
Something funny: After I saw the Narnia movie, I felt like reading the books again. But they've been buried somewhere in the boxes in my basement for some time.
I was looking for the precise wording of the "balmier and balmier" poem (did you know that I worked that hard on my posts? Pathetic, isn't it?), and I found something interesting: the ENTIRE text of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in PDF format. I got curious, and found that not only had that person posted the text of all seven Narnia books, but The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarilion, and all of the Harry Potter books as well!
Check it out. I own all of those books, of course, but it's awfully convenient to be able to read them online.
