vilakins | New year's resolution

I agree completely about the animals and Mr Tumnus! I found the rest of the film disappointing, though - and I got really annoyed by the thin layer of "psychology" they added, with the children selfishly saying "We're not here to fight your war, we just want you to risk our your lives trying to save our brother, even though he's a traitor". Susan was even more annoying than she was in the books, which is quite an achievement, and the crossing the river scene was ludicrous, as was the battle. Where did they get all that matching armour from, for a start? And Peter's unicorn was a dreadful lapse in taste. It wasn't dull, but I thought it was very uninspired. I'm probably spoiled, though, as I saw the RSC's production a few years ago and that was absolutely fantastic - film has to go down the route of realism (or at least apparent realism) and that closes off a lot of options.

Ingriguing; you're the first person I've come across who hasn't liked it. I actually thought that Susan was less annoying...

I did too. I liked how they were all portrayed. Actually I felt rather sorry for Edmund up until when he lied and let Lucy down.

It did rather worry me--after I'd left--that they were hunting a stag at the end; surely it was sentient like the other animals. Or did I misunderstand that bit?

They didn't say it in the movie, but in the book it was the White Stag, it was supposed to give you wishes if you caught it. Note the word "caught"...

I haven't read the books for years. I do now possess them (but wanted to go to the film fresh). I bought them a couple of weeks ago. [sigh] I wish my mother hadn't thrown all my things out when I was overseas.

I wish my mother hadn't thrown all my things out when I was overseas.

That's... almost unforgivable.

Especially when she kept a lot of useless things like my father's clothes. I mean, his socks? They were in the bedside unit on his side for years. [rolls eyes]

I wouldn't put it past her to have been annoyed with me for some reason (I stayed away too long / didn't write quickly enough once?) and dumped my stuff in a fit of pique.

(shakes head bemusedly) The only thing for me that came anywhere close was when my second brother was doing a clean-out of our house and (a) got rid of my paperback copy of "The Return of Tarzan" because he thought it was a duplicate, since I had a hardback version. What he didn't notice was that the hardback version was abridged, and the paperback wasn't.
(b) threw out our painstakingly gathered and irreplaceable tram-ticket collection which we used when we played 7 1/2, as sort of ersatz poker chips. We tried to make up for it later with bus tickets, but they were never as nice as the tram tickets, which were more colourful and printed on heavier paper.

Usually, when we've been throwing stuff out, it's been when we were moving, and thus it was unarguably necessary.

I agree that the river was confusing because it never actually showed them crossing one; they seemed to being going along the edge. That was my only reservation (all right, apart from not seeing their breath during winter) but I'm not a director like you; I was there to be entertained and I was. Not that I'm uncritical. I said what I thought of Serenity which I found a lot of faults with; more than most did.

I enjoyed the battle scene! I'm not usually that fond of them but I thought it was very well done considering the need to cater for small children, and I was very distracted and admiring of all the different animals and creatures.

Like

kerravonsen, I thought Susan was less irritating and for that matter, Edmund more sympathetic, or at least understandable. Lucy was wonderful and if not quite the Lucy in my head, she came very close.

Lucy was excellent - I thought it was a brilliant decision to have her played by such a young actress, because it got round all the problems of her being overly twee and sugary for an older child. And I thought Edmund was excellent, too - it's the best part anyway, and he did a great job of conveying emotional pain (though I could have done without the "It's because he's missing his dad" explanation - not that that's any worse than Lewis's own "It's because he's at a progressive school" explanation.) The river bit I meant was when they're crossing underneath the waterfall and the ice starts to crack up and they have yet another discussion about how they shouldn't get "involved" and then water shoots out of the ice and they all get swept away and no-one seems to find the water at all cold, or the air when they emerge soaking wet, even though spring is only just starting. That was the point where my disbelief crashed heavily to the floor. But I thought Tumnus, as you say, was note perfect, and I could happily have fallen in love with the fox. Although the animals were very good, and the children acted well. It just didn't come together for me, largely because of the big set pieces like the battles and the river, which seemed altogether too reminscent of LotR (in a bad way - I thought the LotR battles were way too overdone to be convincing - and I was the person in the audience when Aragorn made his big speech going "No-one past the third row is going to be able to hear him, look at the size of that army and he hasn't even got a megaphone". I'm afraid I'm a terrible nitpicker when it comes to things like that, I just can't help it. So when Peter waved his sword about I was thinking "It's not a bloody pistol, pointing it like that isn't going to help, and if your arm's that stiff you'll never even be able to block a blow, let alone deliver one, and if they've been under a hundred years of tyranny and secret police, where were they hiding all those uniforms?")

Father Christmas had them? In a magic place? Aslan conjured them up?

Hah, I thought much the same about Peter with the sword, but then thought it was how a child who'd only seen guns would hold one. However that made it unlikely that he'd be so adept later. [shrug] But then I can suspend my disbelief much higher for fantasy worlds. :-) I'm known for nitpicking SF like Star Trek and Serenity (esp unrealistic fight scenes), so much so that I'm banned from doing it around one of our friends if he's watching with us.

Father Christmas had them? In a magic place?

LOL! Yes, that works.

That sounds like a good place to spend it, actually. There are lots of nice people there.

I'm glad you enjoyed the film so much!

Including you!

I did! I wasn't once bored and every scene in Narnia had something of beauty to wonder at (but then, snow alone is that for me). And I loved Lucy all over again; the actor who played her was marvellous.

The only scene that irked me was when they were suddenly in the dark (and not the usual 'day for night' where you know it's supposed to be dark, but you can still see). Gray-blind gloom went on for long enough that I really did think it was a problem in the projection booth.

Also I was startled by the abrupt way they decided to 'PC' the movie by cutting off a couple of words from a twice-used (in succession) phrase. 'Wars are ugly when.' makes no sense and spoils the accompanying smirk from the actress saying it the second time. I suspect the original sentence was filmed in full and then simply chopped up at the last moment in post-production. Even making it 'wars are ugly' would have been better- at least it would have been grammatical.

We got the whole sentence both times ("war is ugly when girls fight"); I can't imagine why they cut it over there. PC-ness gone rampant?

The only night-time scene I remember was Aslan going to the stone table and being sacrificed, but that was perfectly visible. It sounds like a problem with your film to me.

PC *stinks* I bet that's what it was. Unbelievable, isn't it?

You could also be right about the film being fubared, but the timing was right when there was a scene change... escaping from the beaver's house, where it seemed likely it *should* be dark.

I can't imagine what was wrong with that line given when it was written (and the fact that war is ugly anyway).

I think all of the beaver stuff at the house (arriving and escaping) was at night but I don't recall any of it being hard to see.

It was really strange- I could maybe understand it if they had modernized the children's characters- but bar a few odd changes in dialogue & explanations for things, they were the same.

The scenes I'm talking about were patches of light gray fuzz mixed with patches of dark gray fuzz. I hope it was only a glitch in the projection booth, and not that for some *weird* reason they mucked with the visibility of that scene for US audiences, as I really do want to get the DVD of this and *see* what happened then.

If it was the bit where they were in the beaver tunnels, you didn't miss much.

I'm glad they changed the dialogue to more colloquial speech. I read some of my book today and it's just so stilted and old-fashioned; I'd forgotten how much. I wonder how many children C S Lewis had known.

I shouldn't be surprised if the book was based on when *he* was a child. I thought the movie did a very good job of preserving the 'feel' of the book, without slavishly keeping the bits that would jar a modern audience.

I think it did too! I think it was a brilliant adaptation and I look forward to more, though surely the children will be too old in 2 years.

I'm trying to remember the time passage in the books- did the second one take place relatively soon after the first?

I think it took place during their reign: my favourite, The Horse and His Boy! But don't quote me on that, it's been so long since I read them.

I started again today though. :-)

Oh! I'd forgot that one entirely until you reminded me, now big chunks of it are coming back. Yes, that was a very good one.

I thought it was a good movie and that the actress playing the White Witch did a terrific job - you didn't know from one moment to the next if she was going to be nice or nasty.

However, I winced anew when the children return from Narnia at the end - I know I would be cursing at the thought of having to go through puberty again...

Yes, that bit's one of my huge reservations about the whole story. It bothered me even as a child: how could they return to being children after being rulers?

I'm sure it would be quite difficult - I know if I was suddenly returned to my early-teen self (scary thought!) it would be hard trying to act/sound like that age again in a way that would convince the adults...

It's been suggested that their memories faded and became dreamlike just as their memories of their pre-Narnia lives did. I'll have to see if that's in the books (I've just started to read them again). Certainly it would be an explanation for Susan thinking it was all make-believe later.

Wasn't Tumnus absolutely, completely adorable?

He was! I wanted more of him!

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