[azerty]

The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

A very long title - the film makers are clearly proclaiming that "This is a film of IMPORTANCE"! I suppose they are also making sure to jam the word NARNIA in there too. Can't expect the illiterate masses to remember the name of the book and connect it with that Narnia place without hitting them over the head with it now can we?

Doesn't matter though! The marketing department probably forced the film makers to put "Narnia" in the title. (These would be the same kind of experts who knew that Harry Potter would be a flop unless they cleverly changed "Philosopher's Stone" to "Sorcerer's Stone.") Anyway, I'm ready! After all, this is a world famous book which has been in print CONTINUOUSLY for 56 years, and this film adaptation is budgeted at 150 million US dollars. How can it not be the greatest thing ever? Also, after all of the positive reviews that at least 9 of you have absolutely gushed out over the last few months, I am really looking forward to it.

Let's go...

The film does start out differently from the book. Hmmm... Now, I'm wondering if it's fair to compare the film with the book, because it shouldn't really be necessary to have read the book to enjoy the film. On the other hand, this book is deservedly famous, and was written with extreme care by a highly educated person, (first-class honors in Greek and Latin Literature, Philosophy, Ancient History, and English Literature, an English teacher at Oxford, and a professor of medieval and renaissance literature at Cambridge, etc) so if an adaptation is going to diverge from the original in any way, there had better be a good reason.

The opening two sentences of the book state

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.
This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from
London during the war because of the air-raids.

This film starts out by proclaiming

There were once some heroic airmen who were on a dangerous mission against some
evil people who were trying to shoot them down.

Strange! Why are we flying WITH the Germans who are having to dodge searchlights and anti aircraft fire sent up by the nasty British? This start is all wrong according to the standard rules of children's stories. While the book introduces the heroes in the first sentence, the film introduces a bunch of Nazi pilots in the first scene, and shows everything from the Nazi point of view thereafter. Whose side are we meant to be on, anyway?

Ok, we know that modern youth will not have any connection to the Blitz, or Evacuees, (most of them have probably never heard of World War 2 for that matter) and this scene is meant to explain how London was dangerous in 1940 because of the bombing. Therefore I suppose it's important to the story to show the effect of war. But why not show the enemy as advancing faceless hordes rather than flying with them in the opening scenes?

Not only that, but the CGI is dreadful, and totally overdone. The scene goes on and on and on. Let's look at the pilots, let's watch them flip the bomb toggles, let's follow the bombs down one by one... Why? Only because we can. Look, with computer graphics we can do anything! Yeah, terrific... except that the CG quality of these scenes might have been acceptable ten years ago, but these days it looks like a low budget history channel documentary. Maybe that's what all this is supposed to be; a bit of a history lesson.

However, if the film makers are striving for some sort of historical feeling, (yes, those aeroplanes are clearly Heinkels), why is the rest of the scene totally historically inaccurate? For instance, why is Edmund standing by an open window, with no blackout curtains in sight? Why are all the family taken by surprise by this massive 1000 bomber attack when we all know they had radar back then, and air raid warnings, and air raid wardens and all the rest of it? Are we meant to assume that the Pevensie family are a clueless bunch of morons, who still don't know what it means when the air raid sirens go off?

Not only that, but while everybody is running about in confused panic, Susan just happens to come across Lucy cringing in her bed. Yet another bizarre scene! Has Lucy never been in a raid before? Is Susan not used to looking out for her little sister? She certainly acts surprised to see Lucy in bed, (she actually acts surprised that she even has a little sister at all, to be honest.) Then Mummy leads the kids to their air raid shelter in the garden (hooray, maybe she has some sense after all), but then insists on waving her torch around in the air while the enemy planes are directly overhead (Oh, well, I guess not). She might as well just shine a big X on her house for the bombers to aim at. It's all absolutely beyond stupid.

That's all just petty nitpicking, you might argue. But this 5 minutes or so was SPECIFICALLY ADDED TO THE STORY BY THE FILM MAKERS! It was never in the book. They thought it critical that we should see all this, and yet not important enough to bother to be either intelligent or accurate while doing it. Why? Well, it will just look more exciting this way. Shut up.

Another part of this scene that is "over the top film making" is the time it takes for the family to run from the back door of the house to the shelter. They show us an overhead view revealing that everybody will have to traverse about 15 meters, and yet it takes forever for them to cover the distance. We see them running from above, we see them running from the side, we see close ups of their faces, we see close ups of their feet, they run towards us, they run away from us...(Actually, the film makers seem to love this sort of time and space dilation, because later in the film they will do it again. More about this down the page.)

We jump to the train station, where the children are tagged and sent off by themselves. There is a moment here in the film when there is a slight attempt to explain where they are going, and this whole "Evacuee" thing. At one point, Edmund looks up at a sign which states:

"Help the Children. Housing Evacuees is a National Service".

Unfortunately, to be able to actually read this informative message requires use of the "pause" button on the DVD player, since the sign is on screen for less than a single second, and for most of that second the sign is obscured by 2 people who walk in front of it. If the point of having this sign in the film is to help explain why all these children are leaving the city to live with total strangers, why doesn't the director have the sign on the screen long enough for the audience to be able to read it? It would only have taken another second or two!

These many additions that the film makers are making to the original story - do they have a point? Almost... but it's more likely that the director merely wanted some cool aeroplanes and a teary eyed train station scene, rather than thinking about what it might add to the story. For instance, the teary eyed departure might imply that there will be a joyful reunion at the end of the adventure. But no, in the end it's just a pointless extra scene, largely irrelevant to the story.

All this extra stuff becomes even more interesting when we think back to something that Peter says very early on with intense fervor. He exclaims "Why can't you just do what you're told!" Odd that the script writers would write a line like this, and yet for the first time I am in agreement with them... Why can't they just do what they have been told! The book is excellent, and has been a classic since it came out in 1950. What exactly is the purpose of all this CG bomber stuff, and train station drama? Does Peter's staring at the soldiers indicate some sort of desire help in the fight against evil? Will we see a parallel later in the Narnian war, when he has the chance to help there? Not the slightest hint of it. Quite the opposite in fact. So what exactly IS the point of these scenes?

Maybe the point is we are supposed to learn something about the characters. Well, we see that they are all pretty clueless, and mostly unpleasant to one another. Mummy yells at Edmund, Peter yells at Edmund, Susan is unpleasant to Lucy, Edmund snaps at Susan "Get OFF me!", Susan snatches the train tickets out of Peter's hands, Edmund whines about having to go away, and Peter snubs him back immediately. Are we supposed to be sympathizing with these children? Is this constant bickering and whining the only trace of character that they possess? Only Lucy is remotely likeable at this stage.

Lewis, in the book, made an effort to tell us a bit about the characters of the four children with a simple bit of dialog after they arrive at the professor's...

"You might find anything in a place like this. There'll be hawks." said Peter
"Badgers!" said Lucy.
"Foxes!" said Edmund.
"Rabbits!" said Susan.

No tedious descriptions of each child. No long boring conversations. However, this exchange is a powerful prediction of each child's personalities. Peter thinks of hawks, which are noble birds. Lucy thinks of badgers, faithful, friendly and hardworking. Edmund thinks of foxes, which are sly and not trustworthy. Susan thinks of rabbits, which are shy, sweet animals. Lewis concisely describes the children, and then illustrates their personalities through their actions in the book. Then, Lewis begins to write the main adventure of the book in the first few pages. The film makers ignore all this, for reasons of their own.

The film also decides to change secondary characters, too. Mrs Macready is made to be rather unpleasant, the house is full of oppressive rules, and Professor Kirke is a scary and remote fellow, (at least at first).

However, the Professor Kirke of C.S. Lewis was

a very old man with shaggy white hair, and they liked him almost at once; but on the first
evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy
(who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him, and Edmund (who was the next youngest)
wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.

We've fallen on our feet and no mistake," said Peter. "This is going to be perfectly
splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like."
"I think he's an old dear," said Susan

The manor house, rather than being full of rules about "no shouting", "no running", "no touching", and "no disturbing the professor", is described thus:

"There's sure to be a row if we're heard talking here" said Lucy.
"No there won't," said Peter. "I tell you this is the sort of house where no one's going to
mind what we do. Anyway, they won't hear us. It's about ten minutes' walk from here down
to that dining-room, and any amount of stairs and passages in between.... I'm going to
explore."

If you prefer the film's version of events, you can hardly prefer the film's children. Having been told the rules, they immediately start to break every one of them - they shout, they run, they touch, they disturb the professor. And they CONTINUE to be unpleasant to each other; Edmund whines, Susan bosses him about, Peter snaps at him, Susan sighs histrionically. These are to be the noble Kings and Queens of Narnia are they? Is there any inherent decency in these whining brats?


*Next Part*

In the book, the children explore the house, all of them see the wardrobe together in the spare room, but only Lucy bothers to check inside it. The game of hide and seek comes later. In Lewis' version, Lucy is only out of the others sight for a second or two, not the "count to 100" we get in the film. This makes her claim in the book to have been "gone for hours" more astounding than it becomes in the film. In the book, there wouldn't even have been time to make up the story about Tumnus, much less experience it for real.

Enough, you say! Maybe the film makers aren't that interested in following the book EXACTLY. Maybe they want to make things a little bit different when they tell the story this time! Okay, fair enough.

Why, then would the director take this line from the book:

There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead blue-bottle on the window-sill.

and decide it was an extremely important item and choose to include this ONE detail, to the exclusion of all the others? AHA, they seem to be saying, you may think that we haven't actually read the book, but you see here? We have! Except, unable to leave well enough alone, they have to have a CGI blue-bottle actually DYING on screen as we watch! Why? Because they can. You see, with CGI we can do anything!

Let's talk about the wardrobe. It is supposed to be perfectly ordinary. Neither Lucy nor anyone else expects anything strange inside it. That is the whole point about the wardrobe: it's a perfectly ordinary thing which leads UNEXPECTEDLY to an extra-ordinary realm. And yet in the film it's obvious that the wardrobe is "important" the moment it shows up. The camera zooms in on it, we are nearly bludgeoned to death by the awed look in Lucy's eyes, and the crappy new age music. It is even covered by a sheet, which is removed in ultra dramatic super slow motion! I'm almost waiting for the flashing neon sign to light up on the door saying "This Is The Magical Wardrobe"!! It's all very subtle, isn't it? (Hint to the director - It isn't the magic wardrobe YET you tosser!)

Inside, we meet Tumnus. It's snowing, and has been snowing continuously for one hundred years. Do you think you should be wearing some sort of jacket, Mr. Tumnus? But Tumnus is a faun, he doesn't feel the cold! What's he wearing that scarf for then? What is he carrying an umbrella for then? Why does he have a nice warm crackling fire in his nice warm house for then, if he doesn't get cold?

The Tumnus cave scene doesn't make much sense either. In the book, (sorry to have to keep bringing that up), Tumnus realizes on his own that what he is doing is wrong as he is talking with Lucy. He tells Lucy what he WAS planning on doing, but that he can't go through with it now. Even though he says that if the witch finds out she'll turn him into stone, he takes Lucy back to the lamp and sets her free, all of his own accord. Tumnus of the book is basically good. Lucy likes him because he is basically good.

In the movie, he admits that he IS in fact kidnapping Lucy RIGHT NOW. He feels a bit bad of course, but he is still going to do it. Lucy wants to go home, but "It's too late for that now," Tumnus says. Even when Lucy give him the chance to do the right thing, ("Mr. Tumnus, you wouldn't...") he won't immediately redeem himself until Lucy more or less shames him into letting her go. He doesn't really make up his own mind, as he does in the book. He isn't as likeable, for this very reason, and yet the whole point of his character is that he is MEANT to be likeable.

It feels like a lot more of this scene was filmed, but then edited out. When Tumnus says "You've made me feel warmer than I have felt in a hundred years," there is something we've obviously missed. What has Lucy done to make him warmer than he has been in 100 years? In fact, she hasn't done anything, not that we've seen, anyway. It’s as if the filmmakers figure that if they can show the main stuff, the magic will arrive by itself. That’s a sloppy way of telling any story, let alone one with such potential for enchantment.


Next, Edmund enters the wardrobe and meets the witch. The witch says "You're the sort of boy I could see one day being the prince of Narnia, maybe even king" So does Edmund ask what or where Narnia is? Nope, cause it's all part of this "You're already supposed to be anticipating the story" thing that the film makers have going, the same way they expect us to know the wardrobe is special before we've even had a look inside. OBVIOUSLY this is Narnia, people! Everybody already KNOWS that! Stop being dumb!

Let's go back to the real world and have a bit more character development, . The kids accidentally smash a window playing cricket. What's the best thing to do? Run like hell of course! Do they think of owning up, being honest, facing the music like decent children? Hell no. And these are the future Kings and Queens of Narnia remember. Of course, before they run for it, they have to fight about whose fault it is.

So for no apparent reason they decide to run away, and end up in the wardrobe room, and of course decide to hide in the wardrobe. Why? Macready is suddenly chasing them. She sees them go into the spare room, and is following them. But of course, when she gets there, she won't think to look in the wardrobe, even though it's the ONLY place to hide in the whole damn room. That's clever scriptwriting! Especially since Macready will no doubt realize that the wardrobe was covered a couple of days ago and now the sheet is in a heap right next to the thing. Totally stupid.

Also, since the children are supposed to be HIDING in there from the wicked Macready, why are they all SHOUTING so much? Doesn't anybody writing the script think for a single second? The whole scene from start to finish makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Okay then, how did the children end up in the wardrobe in the book? Macready was showing a bunch of tourists around the house, (because the house was "so old and famous that people from all over England used to come and ask permission to see over it. It was the sort of house that is mentioned in guide books and even in histories.")

and the children are just trying to stay out of their way:

"Look out! Here comes the Macready and a whole gang with her."

"Sharp's the word," said Peter, and all four made off through the door at the far end
of the room. But when they had got out into the Green Room and beyond it, into the
Library, they suddenly heard voices ahead of them, and realized that Mrs Macready must be
bringing her party of sightseers up the back stairs-instead of up the front stairs as
they had expected. And after that-whether it was that they lost their heads, or that some
magic in the house had come to life and was chasing them into Narnia they seemed to find
themselvesbeing followed everywhere, until at last Susan said, "Oh bother - let's get into
the Wardrobe Room till they've passed. No one will follow us in there." But the moment they
were inside they heard the voices in the passage-and then someone fumbling at the door-
and then they saw the handle turning.

"Quick!" said Peter, "there's nowhere else," and flung open the wardrobe. All four of
them bundled inside it and sat there, panting, in the dark.

The urge to be polite and stay out of the way, plus magic get them to Narnia, not a broken window, and trying to avoid blame. And at least when they are hiding in the wardrobe, they keep still, and quiet. It is the Narnian sunrise, lighting up the darkness in which they are all quuietly crouching, which lets them know they actually have made it into Lucy's woods.

When they arrive at Tumnus' house, the door is open and there is some snow across the sill, but there is zero sign of any trouble. It's not like the door is torn off it's hinges and Tumnus' possessions are strewn over the place. Well, it's a good thing we already know the story, because the children already seem to know it! Lucy looks shocked and the rest of them try and stop her from running up to the cave. Obviously something horrible has happened - Oh my God, the door is open! How can the children possibly sense danger? Hold on, you say! It's because Lucy KNOWS that something might happen to her pal Tumnus, remember?

Correct! Except that Lucy looks around and then wonders "Who could have done this?" I guess she forgot that Tumnus himself his told her this was what might happen. Did she forget that he told her about the witch and everything, and didn't Lucy herself asks if he will be all right? If Lucy isn't an idiot, then the film makers are.

What are the children to do? Well, they follow the robin, and meet the beaver. They learn the history of Narnia, the prophecy, and what their place in the story is. This decision to follow the robin (and the beaver,) is a significant moment, because it marks the LAST TIME the children, (Kings and Queens of Narnia mark you) make a single decision in the film. From this point on, the promise of fantasy is mortally wounded by its insistence on delivering a pre-defined story dressed up in fancy clothing. The children happen upon a magical world. The potential for story here is ever widening. Remember Peter in the train station looking at the soldiers, and most likely wondering what it would be like to go and actually do something and fight the enemy. These are children who have presumably been listening to Churchill’s speeches on the radio. "Fight them on the beaches... never surrender... finest hour" and all that. Why doesn't Peter at least want to do something? If he doesn't, what exactly is the point of all that war rubbish we've been watching at the beginning of the film?



*Next Part*

All right, back to the film, and dinner at the beaver's. The children are served some "fish and chips", which look pretty disgusting - dried fish, complete with heads and scales, covered in either snow or salt and some shriveled bits of potato. Lucy looks fairly dismayed, and nobody eats any of it. What's the point of this scene supposed to be?

Well, in the book the dinner is quite different:

You can think how good the new-caught fish smelled while they were frying and how the
hungry children longed for them to be done before Mr Beaver said, "Now we're nearly
ready." There was a jug of creamy milk for the children (Mr Beaver stuck to beer) and
a great big lump of deep yellow butter in the middle of the table from which everyone
took as much as he wanted to go with his potatoes, and all the children thought - and I
agree with them - that there's nothing to beat good freshwater fish if you eat it when it
has been alive half an hour ago and has come out of the pan half a minute ago. And when
they had finished the fish Mrs Beaver brought out of the oven a great and gloriously sticky
marmalade roll, steaming hot, and at the same time moved the kettle on to the fire, so
that when they had finished the marmalade roll the tea was made and ready to be poured
out. And when each person had got his (or her) cup of tea, each person shoved back his
(or her) stool so as to be able to lean against the wall and gave a long sigh of contentment.

Not only is it different in the original, it is a foil to Edmund and the Turkish Delight. With the beavers, Lewis emphasizes wholesome food and the healthy hunger the children feel. They are completed satisfied by the meal. Edmund, however, is not satisfied by the unwholesome Turkish delight, (and never will be) but will always need more and more to satisfy his greed. Lewis also tells us that Edmund does not really enjoy the beaver's meal, despite his hunger, because his taste has been tainted with the "evil magic food." So we see that this scene of dinner at the beaver's house WAS meant to have a point (and a counterpoint) - but unfortunately the film makers seem to be utterly unaware of it.

Edmund goes off to find the witch. The scene with Edmund and the statues as he is entering the witches castle is very odd, but the oddness only comes about later in the film. We see him draw a moustache on a stone lion, but later, after the lion is un-frozen, we see the lion with spectacles drawn on his face. Add this to our list of complaints - extremely poor continuity. I assume Edmund drew the spectacles, but why on earth don't we see him do it? And WHY does he do it? Well he does it in the film because he did it in the book, but why does he do it in the book?

Edmund does this because he thinks the lion is Aslan, and that the witch has already defeated him. (The children in the book know Aslan is a lion by this point).

"Probably," he thought, "this is the great Lion Aslan that they were all talking about
She's caught him already and turned him into stone. So that's the end of all their fine
ideas about him! Pooh! Who's afraid of Aslan?"

He took a stump of lead pencil out of his pocket and scribbled a moustache on the lion's
upper lip and then a pair of spectacles on its eyes. Then he said, "Yah! Silly old Aslan!
How do you like being a stone? You thought yourself mighty fine, didn't you?" But in spite
of the scribbles on it the face of the great stone beast still looked so terrible, and sad, and
noble, staring up in the moonlight, that Edmund didn't really get any fun out of jeering at it.

The film makers didn't get the point of all that, but they did understand that Edmund drew a moustache on a statue, and that's enough. Stop complaining!

Edmund rats out his family, and all of Narnia, and the wolves and the witch set out in the sleigh to catch the three good children and the beavers. The chase across the ice is another poorly executed scene, similar to the run across the lawn to the air raid shelter that occurred at the beginning of the film. We see the sleigh, (which turns out to be Santa) about 100 meters behind the kids, approaching at a full gallop. It should overtake our heroes in about 5 seconds. Yet 45 seconds later, the sleigh still hasn't caught up with them. It hasn't even gotten any nearer. What the hell happened? (Piss poor editing is what happened.)

Luckily the heroes have seen "The Fellowship of the Ring", and hide in a little hollow just below the road like the hobbits did when the black riders were after them. How original! Unlike the hobbits, however, they don't hide in the hollow BEFORE the enemy has sighted them, so that their clever ruse might actually work. But it DOES work, even though the sleigh is only a few meters away, parked on the trail!. Yes, the director can make anything happen.

Five seconds later, Lucy the genius states "Maybe she's gone," (even though we haven't heard the slightest bit of evidence that the sleigh, the six jangling reindeer and the enraged witch have moved off..) Absolutely ridiculous.

Luckily, of course, its actually Santa's sleigh. Santa's gives out a few presents. "Juice of the fire flower will cure ANY INJURY!" he says gravely. Let's hope their are no intelligent children watching, because they might remember this line later, when it might be incredibly apropos to do so. Peter and Susan get some weapons. Too bad the children don't say what they are really thinking - "But Sir, we aint fighting, not for you and not for Narnia. We thought we had made this pretty damn clear. Thanks, but no thanks, we don't need the sword, the bow, or the dagger."

Next comes another absolutely stupid scene. The river is melting, (because of the coming of spring), but they must get across it to meet with Aslan. They are all at the top of a waterfall and the river below is obviously unsafe. So instead of crossing up where they are (where the river is still frozen, and is a much shorter route), they decide to climb down an icy precipice to cross where it is melting, and will then have to climb UP the cliff on the other side. Any reason for this? I guess this allows the CGI guys to show off their stuff again or something. Who the hell knows?

The wolves show up and surround the children. Peter thinks about defending them all with his new sword. Susan goes back to her whining ways screaming "Just because someone in a red coat hands you a sword doesn't make you a hero! Just drop it!" Why didn't she say that to Santa? I thought maybe she had accepted her role in this adventure, now that it seems fated that she will have to see it through to the end.

Peter decides to ice-pick the floe they are all standing on. Don't worry about reality... instead of the inevitable smashing of the ice at the impact point, (we have all smashed ice before have we not?) the sword goes into the ice like a toothpick into a warm turd. Well, the ice breaks up everywhere (except where the sword cracked it of course.) Everybody is submerged into freezing water and crashing ice floes, but don't worry, even though the wolves didn't survive the swim, the beavers and the children do of course. How convenient.

"Don't worry dear" says Beaver, "Your brother has got you well looked after" Well, he doesn't actually, but I guess we can ignore that for the moment. Well, now it's spring. The best part about this is that we are FINALLY outside of the green screen studio, and actually on a real set. No more fake winter scenes, and heads cut out on and pasted on a fake background. I have been amazed so far at the number of talking heads superimposed on poorly executed CG backgrounds. From
Mrs. Macready sitting on the horse buggy, to the witch in her sleigh, to the children looking out over the wintry landscape, almost none of it has looked remotely real. Why the hell did they bother to shoot this film in New Zealand? We haven't seen any of it yet!

The children approach Aslan in the camp. "Why are they staring at us?" asks Susan. Wait, don't tell me! I know! Because of the prophecy! You are the Kings and Queens of Narnia, you stupid cow. Have you not been watching the film? Have you not been listening? These creatures have been waiting 100 fucking years for you to show up!

Peter walks up to the Centaur, draws his sword like a dweeb, and pointing it at nothing, says is a peculiar stilted voice "We-have-come-to-see-AS-LAN" What are you going to do with that sword, cut his head off? Put the sword away, you idiot. You aren't going to fight anyway remember? And why are you speaking like that? Something wrong with your tonsils, old boy? Oh look, everybody is bowing down, you'd better bow down too.

What! Edward has betrayed us? "My fault" Says Peter. "I won't own up to breaking a window with a cricket ball, (I'm the kind of guy who runs away and hides), but I'm different now." Oh, really? I wonder what caused this sudden change?

Susan and Lucy decide to splash each other in a stream. Oh no! The evil wolves surprise them and want to "Kill them quickly." But not so quickly that two little girls can't run past them up the stream bank, grab the magic horn, blow it and then climb a tree before the wolves can just bite them both. But they don't climb quite high enough to stop their feet from dangling inches above the wolves' sharp teeth. Look at this scene carefully. It's an easy tree to climb, but the girls have made the effort to NOT CLIMB quite high enough to be safe. It's more exciting this way says the director.

Luckily Peter arrives. "Watch OUT!!" yells Susan. This is standard film dialog these days, along with "This is bad", in obviously bad situations, or "RUN!" when everybody is already running, or "Hold On" when somebody is holding on to a swinging rope, or "Quickly!!" when time is obviously running out. It adds to the tension of the scene, say the experts. Luckily the wolf manages to hurl himself directly onto Peter's sword and impales his own heart. That took some skill actually, well done wolf! Sorry, I mean well done Peter. Now you can become a knight. After you clean the blood off your sword of course.

All right, I've had enough! Yet another Lord of the rings rip off at the witch's camp. As if the camera diving down the side of the witch's castle as she leaves in her sleigh, the tracking shots, the hiding in the hollow below the road, etc, wasn't enough, now we have a bunch of orcs beating on their weapons with hammers, readying themselves for battle. Hey it was cool in Saruman's factory, it will be cool here too. Just stop arguing with me and do it, I'm the director of this film god damn it!

So they rescue Edmund, and Aslan gives him a bit of a lecture. "You’ve been a naughty boy haven't you? Well, I guess you just ratted out me, your family, and the whole country to the evil witch, but never mind." This is touted as a religious allegory isn't it? Wasn't Judas consigned to the lowest level of Frozen Hell, to be chewed forever in giant Lucifer's disgusting toothy mouth? None of that for our Edmund though.

While Aslan is on the stone table, the witch whispers in his ear that she is going to kill Edmund anyway. Incredible that Lucy and Susan, hundreds of meters away hear this whisper and give each other shocked looks.

After he is dead, Lucy unscrews her bottle of magic potion. Quite intelligent for a change, actually. "Nope, it's too late" says Susan, who is suddenly an expert in these matters. Don't even try. When Santa gave you that bottle, it was just a McGuffin, or whatever you call it. So Lucy doesn't even make the attempt. "There's no time" says Susan "The others must know" Why is there no time? Did I miss something? Oh who cares.




Peter is leader, Good thing he has leadership skills. "There's too many of them" he shrieks, "Fuck the prophecy, let's go home. I may speak with a British accent, but I am really a Frenchman! Let's run away, it's too hard, we won't fight them on the beaches, in the fields or streets, we will surrender! Let us therefore brace ourselves to just give up and if Narnia lasts for another 5 minutes, men will say, 'this was their weakest hour". Even the damn beaver suddenly changes his mind and wants to haul ass.

Aslan shows up, kills the witch, and the enemy simply give up. "It is finished" He says. Well that was easy. Can we go home now?

150 million bucks and a classic beloved book. How could anybody fuck anything up this badly? Well, by ignoring most of the salient parts of the story, adding a bunch of stupid scenes that were never there in the first place, dropping in a bunch of pointless computer graphics, and a bunch of overly dramatic music you would have a good start. Then by forgetting logic, story, pacing, editing, and internal consistency you could just about manage to do what Andrew Anderson accomplished with so much effort. The result is a movie about magic that never feels magical. He understood, (somehow) that "this book was very popular,", (but I doubt if he ever understood why), "So if I just kind of copy bits of it in my movie, the film will be popular too!" It can't fail.

The thing is, he was right. It COULDN"T fail. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I wonder if there will be a sequel?

[civilian_number_two]

Wow, that was a great read, Azerty. I disagree with some little things here and there - Tumnus had no shirt and a scarf because that's how he was drawn in the first edition - but basically that's about right. It's a dumbed-down, cinematic approach to a story that was, like most, meant to be read. I actually enjoyed it more than you appear to have, despite many weaknesses, but then I have this built-in resistance to comparing movies with the materials they were based on. I figure the book is the book, and the movie is something different.

As for a sequel, I hope there won't be one. After all, not one of the other books is any good.

[azerty]

Thanks Civilian Number Two, with a post that long I didn't think anybody would bother to read it, much less post a reply! You are right in not comparing books to movies, but this film just bludgeoned me so hard and so relentlessly I couldn't help but do it. It was begging for it! Anyway, even without the comparisons it is still a really badly made film. And I mean REALLY BAD, both on the grand scale and the small.

There were a couple of things that the film DID add to the book though - the dancing flames in Tumnus' house while Lucy is being mesmerised, the way the witch points to Edmund and tells Tumnus (right in front of Edmund) that it was Edmund who turned him in.

The best scene in the entire film for me is early on when Lucy is awake in bed and thinking about Narnia after her first visit. She decides to get up on her own and look into the wardrobe again. She nearly puts on her slippers... but then reaches for her boots instead. Even though Narnia wasn't there in the afternoon when all the children looked for it together, she has total faith that it will be there for her now. That moment is subtle and fantastic. If the removing the sheet in slow motion scene had been the next thing we saw, it would have been made perfect sense, and been brilliant.

I see that Douglass Gresham was involved as a producer. You would think that if anybody might know what the story was about, it would be him. But he seems to have have missed or misunderstood every single point that the story had to make, both large and small.

If you were sitting next to him (or Andrew Anderson) in the cinema watching this picture, you could keep up a nearly non stop set of "Why?" questions from start to finish, and he wouldn't be able to answer a single one. The film cannot be justified, (or at least I cannot see how someone would begin to justify it.)

That's is why I wonder how these nine positive chefelf reviews can be defended:

S A
I thought the movie was great.

K
...the film was excellent. Everything looked convincing to me. Overall, great movie. I felt a true sense of wonder and discovery ...

Z
not only did it exceed well beyond my expectations...The CGI meshed well with everything else....everything was so great. Honestly, everthing just felt real to me.

F
I think it was a fairly solid movie overall...

B
but htis movie was awsome!!
i was really scared that disney would screw it, but they didn't.
AWSOME!!!!

S
I liked the movie. I entered the theather thinking that some scenes would be cut ... but I was surprised that instead of cutting, they just ADDED more to the story.

C
overall I'm impressed... they managed to IMPROVE on the books in my opinion.

M
Though at first I was distrustful of it, that cleared up in about thirty seconds. I had overly high expectations for the Chronicals of Narnia, but it exceeded them. I practically had tears in my eyes during the most dramatic parts, and at one point was almost crying...
But I liked it...

J S
I just saw it today, and to be completely honest...I have nothing to bitch about. Nothing at all.
Glad I wasn't the only one with tears in my eyes...
* * *

I am really interested to know what these people saw to make them feel that way...

[Mirithorn]

I had a brilliant response to that which was about as long as your original post, but then my computer crashed and I lost it. So, here it is, in a nutshell, without evidence:

It's pointless to nitpick. The movie is not the book, because the movie took care to expand the story out of a retelling of biblical stories and into a story about human endurance rather than superhuman perfection. Children squabble. Children break stuff. Children cope badly with losses in their family. Heck, people as a whole do that. Edmund was portrayed as nothing more sinister than a messed up kid with a lot of problems he spend a lot of energy refusing to acknowledge. Peter cared very little about anything but looking responsible and caring for his mother and sisters. He had abandoned Edmund because he was too difficult. And it was that exact fighting that made it so gratifying when, in the end, they managed to work together to defeat the white witch. They fought constantly, but it wasn't idle squabbling. Their arguments were clear patterns of ways of dealing with stress that went back a long time, and that everyone was sick of rerpeating. The wardrobe was a way out, a way to take a break from the fear and worry for just a little while- long enough to learn to deal with their problems in another world before having to face them in this one. Children have to deal with things all the time that children should not have to deal with- wouldn't it be nice if they had a chance to see their life take a different route, where they were the hero, not the helpless victim, before facing stark reality again?

There is already a series of movies which are word for word translations of the books into movies. If extreme accuracy is what you want, I suggest you watch them instead. But while you tally up the tiny differences between the movie and the book, you miss the beauty of the movie itself.

[TruJade]

WOW that was a long but good read....
sad to say that apparently we can't just have books anymore
we have to have movies on everything that carries even a little bit of interest. as long as there's
an audience there isn't really a movie those hollywood producers won't make.
and rumour has it that they are in talks to do a sequel of Narnia...
so nothing is ever really sacred.
Forget about your imagination
it's a thing of the past

[Lord Aquaman]

I liked the movie. Read the book when I was 12, so it's a bit of a blur.

[azerty]

You don't have to have read the book to dislike the film... but it helps. I didn't even like the book all that much, to be honest. As for Mirithorn's brilliant response, now lost forever, too bad. I'd like to read an erudite appraisal of the film, (if such a thing is possible.) Possibly something beyond "I don't care, I just loved it it ws so beautiful and moving, and if you can't see that you just don't get it" sort of thing. Yes, people like me even laugh at beautiful romances such as Jack and Rose's in the Titanic movie.

The original post was hardly nitpicking - I mean, it wasn't exactly minute and unjustified criticism, was it?

There are lots of ways to adapt books into movies. "The Maltese Falcon" copies Hammet's book word for word, scene for scene, and loses nothing by doing so. In fact, after seeing the film, the characters become richer, and ypou can't read the book again without hearing Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, and Humphrey Bogart voices coming off the page at you.

"The Man Who Would Be King" takes Kipling's basic premise, and massively expands his short story into a full length movie. It's a huge improvement on the original work.

Take "Out of Africa" - both film and book are classics, but have almost nothing in common with each other.

The point is, if you are not totally clueless, you don't need to follow your source material word for word to end upwith a decent film. That isn't Narnia's main problem. But you do have to understand the basic points of your original material.

* * * *

I see that they ARE making "Prince Caspian" into a film. How could they not? Plenty more fish in the barrel to shoot. I expect it will be an improvement for several reasons. First, they won't spend as much money on it, and second, the story is much more pliable and thinly written than the "Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe". It isn't meant to have a point, it's just an adventure story. Adding more ingredients might actually spice the thing up a bit, rather than destroying the flavour entitrely.

* * * *

To derail the thread entirely, I see that there is a new film opening here today called "El Labyrinto Del Fauno", (Faun's Labyrinth, or Labyrinth of the Faun). Looks to be pretty hard core. I saw the trailer yesterday. The Faun isn't Tumnus, that's for damn sure. I don't know when it's getting dubbed into English. It looks kinda dark and scary.

* * * *

Un thread derailment - read the Original C.S. Lewis Story on line for free

http://soft.rosinstr...e.txt-ps100-pn1

[Slade]

If you don't even like the book, why are you slagging on the movie as it doesn't relate to the book and toting the book as a better source? Yes, a lot of your post was nitpicking and very tightly focused on a few things.

I'm not trying to defend the movie or the book, just commenting.

[civilian_number_two]

I dare say that Azerty's point - which I am not necessarily endorsing - is that contemporary translations of English books, and especially of period works, wash out any depth and allegory and make the pretence that children always behaved exactly as they do in the United States of America, circa 2000ish. Effectively, the religious allegory in LWW was lost amid the adventure story. A great example of this, only for the 90s, was the relatively recent - and terrible - film adaptation of LORD OF THE FLIES. Making it American and removing all the religious allegory from it pretty much removed all point in making it at all. But make it someone did.

I'm glad at least that the filmmakers had the sense to set the thing in England during the blitz. Imagine if they had instead chosen to update it. Maybe the White Queen could have tempted Edmund with an iPod.

And yes, looking at it I have to agree with Azerty's point about the Beavers' tea. It should have been a wholesome and nourishing meal, to contract with the magic food that tempted Edmund. Otherwise, we're tempted to ignore the notion that there's something magical about the temptation of the Turkish Delight. After all, why would anyone, when fed very little, not want something more? Like he said, if you're going to amke a change to the material, there should be a point to it.

[Jacaranda]

I dare say that Azerty has no point at all. Who are you to criticise a film that other critics and all the fans love? You don't even know anything about Narnia, and the Directors name is Andrew ADAMSON, not Andrew Anderson. If you are going to be so smart you could get the names right. Maybe you need to pay attention and stop being so negative.

By the way, Mrs Macready WAS mean in the book why don't you read it and remember this part if you like the book so much its in chapter 5

Mrs Macready was not fond of children, and did not like to be interrupted when she was
telling visitors all the things she knew. She had said to Susan and Peter almost on the first
morning (along with a good many other instructions), "And please remember you're to
keep out of the way whenever I'm taking a party over the house."

As if you know more about it than the people they chose to make the movies. If you don't like it don't see it.

And the other movie you probably don't even like it is PAN's labyrinth, so get a clue for a change

hello to everyone else at chefelf movies, especially all the people who like good movies

[Gobbler]

Oi, oi... you might have mentioned some good points, but I wouldn't know about them because I stopped reading your post after this:

Who are you to criticise a film that other critics and all the fans love?

An independently thinking human being perhaps?

[David-kyo]

What Gobbler said, and a few more things:

Firstly, this is a public forum, where everyone is free to share his or her opinion about certain issues, regardless of whether it's positive or negative opinion. You may not agree and express your points, but accept that SOME people do not feel as though they were a part of a big stupid herd of rabid fanboys/girls, but prefer to "move to the beat of their own drummer".
Moreover, saying "If you don't like it don't see it" is one of the stupidest things to say, because the reason people usually go to see a film is because they HAVEN'T seen it before. He probably won't go to see it again, and I won't either, because I share his opinion about this film being total utter CRAP.
Oh yeah, and trying to invalidate someone's arguments by pointing out typos is just lame. Who the hell cares what the director's name was? Does it make a crappy movie any better? No it doesn't.

[Slade]

To only very slightly paraphrase Nietzsche, "Why should we be bound to accomodate a power whose strength lies solely in numbers?"

But hello, and we all hope you'll be slightly kinder in your next posts!