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shirenomad"A 300 pound griffin cannot carry a five-ton boulder!"
Such are the comments that arise after a viewing of Narnia with friends as geeky as you. (But hey, those are the best kinds of friends to see movies with!)
So anyway, review time!
The Lion (the good):
- Talking animals. Incredible rendering on all counts. Gorgeous. And Mr. Tumnus was so well done, I honestly believed those were really the actor's legs under a lot of hair makeup until someone pointed out they were bent like a goat's.
- The kids, while better in battle than you'd expect four kids with no experience to be, were nonetheless not handily taking all challenges either. They looked properly nervous, and Peter was practically flailing with his sword the few times he got in a fight. In fact, I can only assume the Witch didn't take him down quickly because she preferred wands to swords herself and was also out of her element.
- Much expansion on the characters' individual personalities that for the most part I liked: Peter, trying to be the leader but mostly concerned about keeping his siblings safe; Susan, all disbelieving and trying to be logical about things (which makes a lot of sense in light of The Last Battle); Edmund, fiercely independent, in both good and bad ways; and Lucy, all innocent and wondrous about the world and "we can't abandon people in need!"
- It's so hard to end a movie based on a book with as counter-climactic an ending as LW&W. Yet they pulled it off. Kudos. (But did anyone catch what the Professor tossed to Peter? I didn't.)
- No symbolism yanked for the purposes of appeasing the "Christianity = Bad!" crowd, yet those who don't believe a word of the Bible will still appreciate the film as much as the next person.
The Witch (the bad):
- The fundamental problem that was faced creating the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was that the producers were trying to cram 500-page novels into two-and-a-half hour movies. Narnia suffers from the opposite problem: it's less than 200 pages and they're trying to fill out the same period. (After I got home, I read the book just to compare scenes, and I was finished reading in about an hour.) So the result was inevitable: you're going to have some drag, which you've got to fill, and the pacing is going to jump around.
- For some reason the matte of the Witch's castle didn't look real to me. I think it gave the impression of being too close, which made the castle appear a lot smaller than it should have been.
- By removing any explanation that the Turkish Delight was enchanted, Edmund seems far less like someone who fell in with the wrong crowd and far more like just a greedy jerk (and a moron, for believing a queen would grab some random kid out of the snow to be her heir). How hard would it have been for Mr. Beaver to explain, after Edmund went into the castle, what the effects of the Witch's food were?
- Also, since the fact that Aslan was a lion wasn't revealed until they actually met him, Edmund scribbling the mustache on the stone lion in the Witch's home makes absolutely no sense. (Though it was amusing to see the same lion at the coronation sequence... guess no one's bothered to tell him he's got something on his face.)
The Wardrobe (random stuff):
- One of my friends complained about the battle sequence, which was rather jarring in comparison to everything else (and a bit too Lord of the Rings). I'll grant him both, but you just can't do in a movie what Lewis did in the book: Susan and Lucy are gone with Aslan raiding the Witch's castle, and when they get back, "Oh yeah, there was a big battle; Edmund was incredibly brave; you should have seen it."
- I'm reminded that this is ultimately a kids' book, made into what is for the most part a kids' movie. The themes are unsubtle, and on the flip side, things like "four kids can wisely run a kingdom they just found out about a week ago" are taken for granted. Remember that as well and you'll enjoy the movie more.
- Hey! All you parents who dragged your three-year-olds to see "The Passion of the Christ"! Seeing Aslan getting kicked around at the Stone Table would have been a lot less traumatic for them and no less poignant or dramatic.
- The Beavers got totally snubbed by Father Christmas, poor guys. Geeze, Santa, you couldn't have at least said you were going to repair all the damage the wolves did to the house?
- "The name is Phillip." Best moment of the movie.
- After re-reading the book, I'm reminded how amusing I found the scene with Rumblebuffin the Giant. IMDB says he was in the movie, but I don't remember seeing him (and he would be kind of hard to miss); regardless, he couldn't have gotten much screentime, which is a bummer. (But with the battle going on at the same time, there wasn't really any way to include a comical moment without ruining the mood.)
- For some reason, when Susan shot the dwarf at the end, a good chunk of the audience started laughing. Did I miss something funny about it?
Such are the comments that arise after a viewing of Narnia with friends as geeky as you. (But hey, those are the best kinds of friends to see movies with!)
So anyway, review time!
The Lion (the good):
- Talking animals. Incredible rendering on all counts. Gorgeous. And Mr. Tumnus was so well done, I honestly believed those were really the actor's legs under a lot of hair makeup until someone pointed out they were bent like a goat's.
- The kids, while better in battle than you'd expect four kids with no experience to be, were nonetheless not handily taking all challenges either. They looked properly nervous, and Peter was practically flailing with his sword the few times he got in a fight. In fact, I can only assume the Witch didn't take him down quickly because she preferred wands to swords herself and was also out of her element.
- Much expansion on the characters' individual personalities that for the most part I liked: Peter, trying to be the leader but mostly concerned about keeping his siblings safe; Susan, all disbelieving and trying to be logical about things (which makes a lot of sense in light of The Last Battle); Edmund, fiercely independent, in both good and bad ways; and Lucy, all innocent and wondrous about the world and "we can't abandon people in need!"
- It's so hard to end a movie based on a book with as counter-climactic an ending as LW&W. Yet they pulled it off. Kudos. (But did anyone catch what the Professor tossed to Peter? I didn't.)
- No symbolism yanked for the purposes of appeasing the "Christianity = Bad!" crowd, yet those who don't believe a word of the Bible will still appreciate the film as much as the next person.
The Witch (the bad):
- The fundamental problem that was faced creating the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was that the producers were trying to cram 500-page novels into two-and-a-half hour movies. Narnia suffers from the opposite problem: it's less than 200 pages and they're trying to fill out the same period. (After I got home, I read the book just to compare scenes, and I was finished reading in about an hour.) So the result was inevitable: you're going to have some drag, which you've got to fill, and the pacing is going to jump around.
- For some reason the matte of the Witch's castle didn't look real to me. I think it gave the impression of being too close, which made the castle appear a lot smaller than it should have been.
- By removing any explanation that the Turkish Delight was enchanted, Edmund seems far less like someone who fell in with the wrong crowd and far more like just a greedy jerk (and a moron, for believing a queen would grab some random kid out of the snow to be her heir). How hard would it have been for Mr. Beaver to explain, after Edmund went into the castle, what the effects of the Witch's food were?
- Also, since the fact that Aslan was a lion wasn't revealed until they actually met him, Edmund scribbling the mustache on the stone lion in the Witch's home makes absolutely no sense. (Though it was amusing to see the same lion at the coronation sequence... guess no one's bothered to tell him he's got something on his face.)
The Wardrobe (random stuff):
- One of my friends complained about the battle sequence, which was rather jarring in comparison to everything else (and a bit too Lord of the Rings). I'll grant him both, but you just can't do in a movie what Lewis did in the book: Susan and Lucy are gone with Aslan raiding the Witch's castle, and when they get back, "Oh yeah, there was a big battle; Edmund was incredibly brave; you should have seen it."
- I'm reminded that this is ultimately a kids' book, made into what is for the most part a kids' movie. The themes are unsubtle, and on the flip side, things like "four kids can wisely run a kingdom they just found out about a week ago" are taken for granted. Remember that as well and you'll enjoy the movie more.
- Hey! All you parents who dragged your three-year-olds to see "The Passion of the Christ"! Seeing Aslan getting kicked around at the Stone Table would have been a lot less traumatic for them and no less poignant or dramatic.
- The Beavers got totally snubbed by Father Christmas, poor guys. Geeze, Santa, you couldn't have at least said you were going to repair all the damage the wolves did to the house?
- "The name is Phillip." Best moment of the movie.
- After re-reading the book, I'm reminded how amusing I found the scene with Rumblebuffin the Giant. IMDB says he was in the movie, but I don't remember seeing him (and he would be kind of hard to miss); regardless, he couldn't have gotten much screentime, which is a bummer. (But with the battle going on at the same time, there wasn't really any way to include a comical moment without ruining the mood.)
- For some reason, when Susan shot the dwarf at the end, a good chunk of the audience started laughing. Did I miss something funny about it?
