The Chronicles of Narnia mini review (Minimal spoliers)

[Dominique]

The death of Aslan was a metaphor for the death of Jesus. The sacrifice, the humiliation, the breaking of the tablet (the rolling away of the stone), the resurrection.

FWIW, the Narnia/Christianity metaphors get even thicker in the end-of-Narnia story "The Last Battle", which is virtually all straight out of the Book of Revelation. And it beats me how the moviemakers are going to handle "A Horse And His Boy", if the film-series continues, because that whole book is one long Islam/Arab-bashfest.

My boyfriend and I were actually talking about this the other night, and we thought that A) "Horse and His Boy" really shouldn't be made into a movie because it brings the pace of the series to a screeching halt (which is fine in the books, but movies are a much less forgiving medium) and B) they might do well by making the Calormenes some kind of generic (and white) pagan culture, with Tash being more like a bloodthirsty god from the ancient world than a pretty nasty stand-in for Allah (if you've read much other Lewis, think Ungit from Till We Have Faces).

I LOVED the movie. Which says something, because I'm a huge C.S. Lewis fan and my expectations were through the roof. I did think that Peter's "reluctant hero" schtick got a little old, but other than that, it was great. Tilda Swinton and James McAvoy were fantastic, there were plenty of excellent foreshadowing bits for anyone who's read the whole thing (all the stuff with the Professor made me squeal like a thirteen-year-old at a Backstreet Boys concert), and I want to adopt Lucy. Plus they did a good job of making the Christian elements understated without eliminating them entirely--they don't beat you over the head with a hammer, but they also didn't make me jump out of my chair and yell, "Aslan is supposed to be Jesus, darn it!" Sure, it's not LotR, but what is?

[AdamGarou]

From what I've read (and I haven't managed to make it through the entire series yet, just the first book), C.S. Lewis never really intended the stories to be Christian allegories per se; in fact, several sources I've seen have included a statement something like the following:

"It's not allegorical. It wasn't intended to be allegorical. It all started with an idea of what form Jesus might take on entering a world COMPLETELY unlike ours."

Regardless of this type of "fine print", I really enjoyed the movie. For a bunch of mainly first-time actors (the only real exception I think is the one who plays Susan--she seems to have a number of roles to her credit on IMDB), the folks playing the Pevensies did an excellent job. Lucy obviously stole just about every scene she was in--especially the ones where she kept quoting Edmund's own words back to him. I also thought Tilda Swinton did a great job as the White Queen, even though I hadn't seen her in anything else except a snooze-worthy performance in "Constantine" with Keanu Reeves.

From a visual effects standpoint... yeah, talk about a fan-boy's dream. We got to see fauns, centaurs, minotaurs, cyclopes, giants, werebats, wererats, wereboars (I don't know what else to call the creature that stood on two crouching legs, wielded a sword and shield, and had the face/snout/tusks of a warthog), and a dozen other fantasy-type creatures.

Having Father Christmas appear like he did (presumably the name was left out so the dimmer of us Americans can make the connection with Santa Claus) was actually one of my favorite scenes.

MINOR SPOILERS...

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Okay, I don't know that anyone else will care about this being revealed, but I've learned to err on the side of caution. The scene where he says that he understands how the Pevensies and the Beavers could have mistaken his sleigh for the one driven by the White Queen, "but really, I've been driving mine a LOT longer than she's had hers" made me laugh until I hurt.

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SPOILERS ENDED

At first, I thought the Pevensies accepted their fates as the "saviors and future rulers of Narnia" all too quickly to be believable. It wasn't until I thought about it on the drive home when I realized--that's what children DO. They have the power of belief, and their view of the world is EXTREMELY wide--they don't know that things "aren't supposed to be this way" so they can accept concepts and occurrences that would drive an adult completely nuts.

So Peter's reluctant-hero attitude didn't strike me as out-of-character or overdone. He's the oldest, so he has the narrowest world view. Plus, he doesn't think he can even look after his three siblings, let alone lead an entire land in a war when the worst he's probably gotten into was a schoolyard scrape or two. Talk about pressure...

Anyway, a great movie, and one I'll definitely own when it makes it to DVD. Thought the voice-casting was also excellent--Liam Neeson and Rupert Everett do the job amazingly well.

[Joël of the FoS]

I saw it this afternoon with the kids. Fun movie, with an extraordinary sense of marvel. I loved the actresses. All of them were very good.

However, there were many scenes taken right from LotR, no?

And the Ice Queen was very cool

Joël

[DamienJ]

However, there were many scenes taken right from LotR, no?

I had the same feeling, especially during the fight scenes. The soundtrack, too, was reminiscent of LotR. Unfortunate, since LotR and the Chronicles are more or less unrelated (barring Tolkien & Lewis' friendship through the Inklings. Ha, now I've forstalled that argument!).

Anyways, I enjoyed it alot. I don't know if they can really do a sequal (though I'm sure they'll try. Bambi II, anyone?). From my impressions, Narnia wasn't really meant to be a whole world to be explored, not like Middle Earth or other "standard" fantasy worlds. It seems to have been created solely to tell a redemption story. Once it had done this, its usefulness was over (cf. The Last Battle). I do agree that they shouldn't try to do A Horse and His Boy. While I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I doubt it could really be translated to a movie very well. Besides, the four have already left Narnia. To backtrack wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. No, if they insist on making a sequal, Prince Caspian is probably the best choice.

On a different note, has anyone seen the old, cheap Narnia movies? They made The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; and The Silver Chair back in the '80's and early '90's. Don't expect the same level of FX by any means, but they are entertaining (if taken with a grain of salt), and almost completely true to the books. Worth looking into, if you want to see a slightly different interpretation of the stories from the new movie...

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

The new film didn't leave an impression on me.

I thought Aslan wasn't in it for long enough for the, you know...

[Charney]

I saw it and it was a nice movie but for me it still was too much of a kid's movie. I'm not talking about the fact that there was no bloody scenes. It's rather cause I'm not a fan of the stories where simple kids do such amazing feats. For me it simply wasn't convincing that Peter got a sword, magical or otherwise, and stood against 300 pounds minotaurs charging at him.

[Reginald de Curry]

I saw it Tuesday night, finally. Definitely for the younger crowd, but I still thought it was pretty dang good. 4/5 corpses

[order99]

Alarnik wouldn't be talking about the BBC series, would he? I just accquired them on DVD and find them pretty watchable.
One thing about blockbusters based on previous materialthe floodgates open wide for out-of-print releases...I now have my Classic War of the Worlds and King Kong due to this trend.Keep it up Hollywood!

[DamienJ]

He might indeed be talking about those! I'm glad to hear they're back on DVD...I was afraid for a while that they'd disappeared entirely.

New movies can be useful that way. Even if they're not great themselves, they still serve a purpose...