The Lion et al.
11:34 am on the 15th of December, 2005I went to see the new Narnia film last night. Despite expecting it to be a huge disappointment I was pleasantly surprised. There were a few things I didn’t like about it but all in all I really enjoyed it - a good story nicely adapted for film, keeping enough of the book in without making it too long.
It was only let down really by the casting of Peter and Susan I felt, they were rubbish - if you’re going to give a kid a sword and want him to seem like a King then at least show him how to wield it properly instead of trashing it around like Peter does.
There were a few things I expected to be different, but only because of how I imagined them when I read the books - Aslan should have been bigger too and the stone table should have been round and on top of a hill that surveys the land, it shouldn’t have been solid either. I can’t really complain about them though.
One question though I’ve been pondering; did my oldest brother notice any of the religious imagery when he was reading them to me all those years ago?
December 16th, 2005 at 9:00 am on the 16th of December, 2005
No I didn’t. At least. not really. Aslan I always regarded as the god figure, and the death/resurrection of Aslan is pretty blatantly mimicing the crucifixion, but so what? I was reading a lot of fantasy books at the time. Indeed, Dragonlance devoted a trilogy to Raistlin’s attempts to become a god. And I’ve been re-reading them recently, and the religous stuff is all very subtle, and tied in with enough witchcraft to make it all very make-believe.
I’ve not seen the film, tho I want to, but one comment I have heard is that it lays on the religous imagery stuff is laid on pretty thickly. In US it’s all been analysed out (tho in the US it was of course analyzed), and apparently a lot of the stuff that religous people have pulled out is emphasised in the film.
It’ll be interesting to see if they have the courage to emphasis the other stuff in book later on - that its the black dwarves who try and bring back the White Witch in Prince Caspian, that the Calormen, the bad guys in the Horse and His Boy are arabic in appearance (bet the yanks go for that one) etc etc
December 17th, 2005 at 4:54 pm on the 17th of December, 2005
Hello there
Just saw the Narnia film last night and I thought it was really good. They have captured the spirit of the book without being too slavish to it (a problem that the first Harry Potter film suffered from in my opinion).
I wondered if the film would obscure, or de-emphasise the Christian allegory, but, as I said, I think they stuck fairly closely to the book. I disagree therefore with the comments your brother seems to have heard. As far as I could see the film didn’t emphasise the religious elements- it just remained faithful to Lewis’ story. The only thing I spotted that might fall into the over-emphasised category is (*Spoiler alert! *) Aslan saying, “It is finished!” after defeating the White Witch. However, it fitted naturally into the context and was not over-played.
I wan’t too worried about Peter being duff with a swor - it made sense. He’d not been in Narnia long, and barely had time to learn how to hold it properly, never mind wave it about convincingly! However, I did think it was unrealistic that he wasn’t chopped down fairly quickly by the White Witch who presumambly should have been significantly more adept with a sword. However, this again is fairly true to the book which describes a reasonably lengthy and finely balanced duel between the two of them.
Finally (and sorry for the long reply) I thought the stone table was a bit odd too. Were they going for a South American, human sacrifice, top of a pyramid look? I did like it’s setting though. It was kind of part temple, part circle of standing stones. I thought that looked suitably dark and menacing.
So, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, didn’t think the religious imagery was over done, and would recomend it to anyone.
December 30th, 2005 at 9:47 am on the 30th of December, 2005
well, I can comment now, cos I’ve seen it. So here goes.
First up: thumbs up.
child actors: all but maybe Lucy lapsed into wooden from time to time. They’ve added a lot of dialogue between them and it was pretty clunkingly delivered.
religous imagery: (can I point out at this point I’m familiar enough with the book to have noticed (*spolier alert*) when tumnus was explaining to lucy about kdinapping her taht he started with different (poorer) dialogue from the book and ended with sentences lifted from the book). They overplayed it at one point; when Aslan was talking about deep magic, the dialogue was changed and the christian allegory was definitely emphasised with the book.
Stone table: agreed. It should have been on top of a hill. There’s actually a stonehenge type doorway behind it, and if you chopped its legs down, that’s what it should have looked like.
However: biggest bugbear. All that stuff (spolier alert again) about getting home to mum. The whole point of Narnia is that its a different world, and the children feel at home there. Its repeated again and again throughout the books that onve there, it takes hold. They become kingly and queenly, get stronger. The only exception is Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. And the film ignores this - wrongly. It makes them less believable to my mind.
(I also have a slight gripe about riding talking horses, but that’s another story, as CS Lewis would say)
However, overall, I enjoyed it. And the rocks and boulders looked fantastic for climbing/
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