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"Prince Caspian" - stop C.S. Lewis before he novelizes again!
I couldn't resist doing this riff, inspired by my previous complaint about The Lord of the Rings. It's posted over at GoodReads.
Who is this "C.S. Lewis" hack, and who did he sleep with to get the novelization contract for the brilliant Prince Caspian movie?
Lewis took a wonderful PG movie and turned it into a saccharine G-rated book. Or a mostly G-rated book, anyway; his desperate attempts to spice up the novelization with the addition of coprophagy and cannibalism ("...the feasts on the poop and the musicians") and nudism ("...helped her take off some of the unnecessary and uncomfortable clothes she was wearing") are likely to go completely over the heads of the target readership market, in large part due to Lewis' ever-so-precious and painfully old-fashioned language.
Apparently Mr. Lewis didn't realize that the lead roles were only cast as Brits because those accents are generally viewed as sexy by key American demographics. America's where the money is, baby - and by aiming the book at an audience of middle-aged Brits, Lewis has almost certainly killed off the lion's share of the profits from the novelization (hey, that's a pun! Lion's share, get it? Never mind).
Every character has been painfully flattened, deprived of all the hot-n-juicy details which made the movie such a smash success. They all act like kids, for god's sake! Where's the primal struggle for domination between King Peter and Prince Caspian (with a racy subtext of incestuous yearnings)? Where's Peter's pivotal moment in which he gives up on Aslan? Where's the gorgeous complexity of hot-blooded Spanish (I mean "Telmarine") culture and those neat historical costumes? Where's "you killed my father"? Where's the hot-blooded passion between Caspian and Susan? Where's the kiss, damn it - where's the kiss?
And what about the catapults? What about the collapsing battlefield? Those are a huge part of the special effects budget, gone! Lewis left them out, the no-talent idiot! Things HAVE to go smash, or the teens won't pay attention. Nobody will ever read the Prince Caspian book!
And what about the White Witch? Tilda Swinton is KEY to the whole series. Does Mr. Lewis have the faintest idea of how much it cost to get her in the movie? And yet he fobbed her off with only the slightest mention. That's just criminal, and I'm not using a figure of speech. Disney should sue Mr. Lewis all the way down to his pocket lint. He should never work in Hollywood again!
Shameful. Just shameful. I don't know who dropped the ball, but someone did. And this isn't the first time that some talentless British hack has screwed up a world-class cinematic property; look at the crappy job that the fake-sounding "J.R.R. Tolkien" did on the novelizations of Peter Jackson's wonderful Lord of the Rings movies.
Say..."J.R.R. Tolkien"..."C.S. Lewis"...could it be just a coincidence that the novelizations for two boffo fantasy series were both screwed up by fake-sounding English guys with too many initials? Could "C.S. Lewis" and "J.R.R. Tolkien" actually be the same guy? That would explain a lot!
Maybe Lewis (or whatever his real name is) has compromising photos of key Hollywood producers. Or maybe he's just related to someone big. Either way, someone has to do something to stop him before he screws up another valuable novelization. Millions of dollars are at stake!
Who is this "C.S. Lewis" hack, and who did he sleep with to get the novelization contract for the brilliant Prince Caspian movie?
Lewis took a wonderful PG movie and turned it into a saccharine G-rated book. Or a mostly G-rated book, anyway; his desperate attempts to spice up the novelization with the addition of coprophagy and cannibalism ("...the feasts on the poop and the musicians") and nudism ("...helped her take off some of the unnecessary and uncomfortable clothes she was wearing") are likely to go completely over the heads of the target readership market, in large part due to Lewis' ever-so-precious and painfully old-fashioned language.
Apparently Mr. Lewis didn't realize that the lead roles were only cast as Brits because those accents are generally viewed as sexy by key American demographics. America's where the money is, baby - and by aiming the book at an audience of middle-aged Brits, Lewis has almost certainly killed off the lion's share of the profits from the novelization (hey, that's a pun! Lion's share, get it? Never mind).
Every character has been painfully flattened, deprived of all the hot-n-juicy details which made the movie such a smash success. They all act like kids, for god's sake! Where's the primal struggle for domination between King Peter and Prince Caspian (with a racy subtext of incestuous yearnings)? Where's Peter's pivotal moment in which he gives up on Aslan? Where's the gorgeous complexity of hot-blooded Spanish (I mean "Telmarine") culture and those neat historical costumes? Where's "you killed my father"? Where's the hot-blooded passion between Caspian and Susan? Where's the kiss, damn it - where's the kiss?
And what about the catapults? What about the collapsing battlefield? Those are a huge part of the special effects budget, gone! Lewis left them out, the no-talent idiot! Things HAVE to go smash, or the teens won't pay attention. Nobody will ever read the Prince Caspian book!
And what about the White Witch? Tilda Swinton is KEY to the whole series. Does Mr. Lewis have the faintest idea of how much it cost to get her in the movie? And yet he fobbed her off with only the slightest mention. That's just criminal, and I'm not using a figure of speech. Disney should sue Mr. Lewis all the way down to his pocket lint. He should never work in Hollywood again!
Shameful. Just shameful. I don't know who dropped the ball, but someone did. And this isn't the first time that some talentless British hack has screwed up a world-class cinematic property; look at the crappy job that the fake-sounding "J.R.R. Tolkien" did on the novelizations of Peter Jackson's wonderful Lord of the Rings movies.
Say..."J.R.R. Tolkien"..."C.S. Lewis"...could it be just a coincidence that the novelizations for two boffo fantasy series were both screwed up by fake-sounding English guys with too many initials? Could "C.S. Lewis" and "J.R.R. Tolkien" actually be the same guy? That would explain a lot!
Maybe Lewis (or whatever his real name is) has compromising photos of key Hollywood producers. Or maybe he's just related to someone big. Either way, someone has to do something to stop him before he screws up another valuable novelization. Millions of dollars are at stake!