The Chronicles of Narnia

[rharpe]

To see, or not to see?

I tend to listen to personal views & haven't heard any yet, so I wondered if anyones seen this "epic" yet? Is it punchy? Is it 3-cg-filled hours? I hope not.

I enjoyed this movie very much. I never read the books, but saw the BBC version way back when I was a kid... Very nice remake! I was expecting the worse, based on reviews I read, but discovered that this movie was very well done. My grade 1 out of 5 ... I give it the highest grade 5!

[Mordalles]

i havent seen the movie, but since it is mostly for kids, is it one of those movies where everyone runs around with swords, but they never actually stab someone. they always hurt the the enemy with the hilt of the sword, or kick the enemy, but never actaully use the blade, since that would mean blood?

i always laugh at that. and when kids are wearing armour. dont know how they are suppose to stand up with all those weight. 

[Squinky]

You just described all the ninja Turtle movies....

[Miez]

Speaking of Narnia ... you may not yet have enjoyed this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=IggTu7kV7No

Phat down with Narnia and cupcakes...

[m0ds]

LoL, crazy rap - miez :p I couldn't quite catch what they were saying though;
The chronic something something of Narnia ... :p

Anyway I still haven't seen this movie but from what everyones said I've gotten a good picture of it! Thanks for that!! The old BBC version was still quite magical and I'd love to see this version simply to see how much more magical it gets (and im sure it does!) ... but I'll wait for it on video.

[Huw Dawson]

Okay, I've just been to see Narnia, and quite frankly, it was...

MEH

It's just a pretty average movie, which doesn't compare with the Lord of the Rings triology. Lucy was very much the grinning idiot, although the other three were fair. That fawn person though... BAD actor.

Numerically: 6/10
Verbally: MEH

- Huw

[Bluke4x4]

I saw this movie recently and loved it. I don't know why you are all comparing it with Lord of the Rings, though, LOTR was written as fantasy, Narnia was written as a version of the Bible for children and was not really what I would consider fantasy...

But as for the coffee/tea metaphor, I'd say this is coffee with a small bit of sugar and half a cup of milk. It's very CGI-driven, but not for the sake of having CGI. And Tumnus was an OK actor if you ask me.

eight out of ten.

[Paper Carnival]

I wouldn't call it as a children version of the Bible, but it's a Biblical allegory full of symbolism.

So this explains...

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of leaving the lion dead

...because the lion is supposed to be Jesus who chose to take the sacrifice of every man's sins (or in this case, Edmund) so that people can be saved. I do agree that this scene was cheesy though, it could be less cheesy while keeping the Aslan's resurrection.

I noticed the lip thing too, but I thought that maybe the cut did heal, but some dry blood over it remained (it's supposed to heal the wounds, not necessarily clear the blood - I think).

I'm never strict when it comes to acting, which is a good thing for me because I can enjoy movies better this way. Nothing CGI or acting-wise bothered me at all.

I give it 9/10, it could have more battles and more blood and stuff, but for a Disney children's movie it's as gory as it gets.

[bspeers]

Ye Gods.

Internet debates are like the drunk leading the slightly more drunk (I hate to single out the blind, who actually lead each other pretty well, these days).

Here's what C.S had to say about Christian allegory in his books:

"If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all."

That's just quoted from a wikipedia site on the Chronicles of Narnia.  Lewis was deeply Christian, so his works had Christian meanings, but he did not set out to put them there, nor did he approve of strict Biblical or religious readings of his books.

Finally, anyone who doesn't like the movie because it's not as mature as LOTR shouldn't have seen the movie.  The books are even *less* mature than the movie and you should have known that before going into the theatre.  The books are aimed at 6-10 year olds (10 is probably almost too old), and any adult should be able to read or skim through them over the course of a day.

Yes, Chronicles uses special effects to display a fantasy world as does LOTR, yes the two were contemporaries and part of the same writing club, but the two stories are clearly aimed at different audiences with different intents.  The aim of LOTR is to entertain but also to build a deep mythology rooted in northern european traditions; thus the huge section of appendacies at the end of RotK.  The writing is much simpler (and actually a little more awkward, including repititious word use when it doesn't quite work) in Chronicles, and in a good production, the movie should reflect that.

It would be wrong to drastically change the source material of a beloved children's classic just to satisfy 17-24 year old males and LOTR fans.

Oh, and in case anyone wonders why Chronicles has such a happy-dappy ending, A: it's more or less so in the book, and B: Super happy endings are the norm among children's stories for a reason: children react well to them.  In retrospect they seem stupid and saccrine, but as cynical as we like to be about our childhood, the vast majority of children prefer an over-the-top happy ending--this one an apt fantasy for young British children of the period.

There are 2 common endings to childrens stories--either the happy ending or the super depressing oldschool Grimm style endings, where kids learn a lesson through being eaten or squished or killed in some horrific way.  Reading kids classics today, the perverseness of these endings is entertaining, and I wouldn't disneyfy them for my kids, but their incessent moralizing is misplaced and often at odds with my own moral code.  Given the choice between either beating morality into my kids or feeding them misery simply for my own entertainment on the one hand and a fantastical happy ending on the other, I would choose the latter, 99 times out of 100.  They deserve a little happiness in their lives before the soul crushing tedium and souless manipulative greed that awaits them in their adult lives.

That said, if you [the collective, not individual you] didn't like LWW because of the acting, I thought it was OK (barely), but I will agree with you on the fact that it was sup-par.  Still, don't then go around and say that you liked any of the Star Wars movies.  Good actors maybe, good acting... Meh.

Why do I only ever post here to rant and insult people?  :

Apologies, as ever.

[esper]

Confusion...

In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all."

.....
.....
.....

That's just quoted from a wikipedia site on the Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis was deeply Christian, so his works had Christian meanings, but he did not set out to put them there, nor did he approve of strict Biblical or religious readings of his books.

Don't those two patches of text contradict each other? The first sentence says "C.S. Lewis said there was a deep religious meaning to his work," and the second sentence says "C.S. Lewis said he didn't mean to put religius meaning in his work." As a matter of fact, the sentence "so his works had Christian meanings, but he did not set out to put them there" kinda contradicts itself. C.S. said that he set out to write a book that was about what would have happened if Christ had incarnated in a place like Narnia, but then goes on to say that if there is any religious meaning in his work, he did not mean to put it there, and that his books are not meant to be read as such.

I find it rather hard to believe that the author of Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters, along with almost every other book and essay he ever wrote, meant such a thing. I can believe, however, that he was using a device (which he has been known to use in other of his works) by saying "I didn't put in the Christian parts" to mean "but Someone Else did" without sounding like he was saying "My book is inspired of God, so read it or burn in Hell."

Bluke and Guybrush apologize for using the word "allegory." They did not do a wiki search right prior to posting to make sure Lewis didn't say "It's not allegorical, it's suppositional..."

[Paper Carnival]

I apologise for my mistake. Aslan forgive me!

[Squinky]

Heh, Bspeers, no disrespect but you posted that little essay to explain how ill-informed everybody else was, when it didn't really matter.

I (and everyone else) probably was aware of many of those things, but it still dosen't change a persons opinion, which is what this thread was asking of us. I know it is a childrens book, but I still thought it was pretty sappy...I compared it to LOTR because that is the standard of which to compare fantasy trilogys, and because the advertisments lent it that look...

Nice to see you posting again though...

I read the books as a kid (Darn public schools made us) and they were cool back then. To me it was disapointing that it didn't take me back to a magical childhood place, it was just a hohum movie...And although I know it has been hyped as being christian, you really have to look hard to even notice, I think if I remember right it gets worse in the next books...

[bspeers]

I think people are just misinformed in general Squinks, not a personal thing per se.

As for the misinterpretation issue, Esper, that interpretation is something Lewis added later on in life.  He and his family maintained up until and after his death that they were not meant to have an explicitly religious meaning (elsewhere in that same article it explains such, and in many introductions to his works, autobiographical writings etc).  If you read the quote carefully, I think you will see what he is arguing.

In general, he is saying you CAN approach Aslan as an idea of what Jesus MIGHT have done, but it is not a direct allegory, IE, it does not HAVE to be read in this way, nor was such a reading originally intended.  As a non-Christian, I don't pick up on very much Christian symbolism at all, and according to Lewis's discussion of the series, that's just fine.

Thus, saying it's all a Christian myth is irrelevant, because it was never intended as such.  It's just a story, but Christianity can be found inside because the author was so deeply Christian.  He did not deny this, but asked that people approach the story just as an adventure for children, not as a metephor for some Christian ideal (although such a reading is possible and intrigued Lewis later in life).

That is the important difference between what many reviewers are saying ("This was all just an excuse for a religious message" or conversely, "The Christian message is lost in the story") to critique the movie, and what C. S. Lewis intended.  If you don't believe me on this point, read through the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.com, and check again through the previous posts.  The assumption that LWW is about Christ specifically is quite common, and my point about the Wikipoedia article is that it was really easy to do more research than many of these reviewers, though my main point is that the movies and books are for a younger audience than many reviewers seem to assume.

That said, I think the Christian underpinnings are much more problematic in something like the Horse and His Boy, where non-Christian "easerners" are clearly mocked--the villains could be made in the film to be something different, but in the book, the people are clearly Arabic and most of them are stupid/evil/power-hungry.  It will be interesting seeing how they produce that one.

[Snarky]

It's not true that the parallel between Aslan and Jesus (whatever name you want to use for the device) was not intended by Lewis. He denied that the book was an allegory of the story of Christ, he didn't deny that it referred to it. The symbolism is way too obvious to have been accidental or unconscious, and Lewis never claimed that it was.

[bspeers]

Perhaps you're right, that is a possible reading of what he said during his life, but some quotes dispute that (depending on your reading of them):

"Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion"

Lewis does admit that the Christianity came in as he wrote the book, but the Christianity came in naturally without an intent to create an allegory or to create direct parallels:

"You are mistaken when you think everything in the books 'represents' something in this world. Things do that in The Pilgrim's Progress but I'm not writing in that way."

"When I started The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I don't think I foresaw what Aslan was going to do and suffer. I think He just insisted on behaving in His own way."

In other words, there is a very Jesuslike life of Aslan but it was not intended from the get go, in fact the first book was just a myth--various elements could stand in for real things, but could be read in various ways.  He uses myth and supposal--the supposal does involve direct comparison between Jesus and Aslan, but this was not how the characters started.  Supposal is much more general than that.  A quote from a book we have in the bookstore I work at:

"Using supposal as the vehicle for getting him there, Lewis views The Chronicles of Narnia as myth. He explains that an allegory is a story with a single meaning, but a myth is a story that can have many meanings for different readers in different generations. According to Lewis, an author puts into an allegory "only what he already knows," but in a myth, he puts "what he does not yet know and could not come by in any other way.""

I should also add that while Lewis's latest biographer argues based on some quotes that Aslan IS Jesus, I would argue he's leaping a bit here.  Many people believe that comparison, but it seems clear from other quotes that Aslan is "as if" Jesus, not, Jesus literally.  Aslan could also be read in other ways, according to Lewis's stepson, who had a great deal of influence on the movie:

"You have to bear in mind that Hinduism has a dying god who dies for his people, then comes back. Norse mythology has the dying god. Greek mythology has the dying god. This myth is not new and it's not unique to Christianity. Yes, Christians who watch the movie or read the book will look for Christian symbolism. But I think that's the wrong way to approach it. I think it's far better to read the book or see the movie and try to find out where you fit into Narnia. Analyze yourself and how you would react under these circumstances. Who are you? Are you an Edmund? Are you a Peter? Or a Lucy or a Susan or a Tumnus? Where do you fit?"

There is little evidence that Douglas and C. S. were in great disagreement--most biographical works on Lewis agree.

[Snarky]

This is a stupid argument. I'm not interested in expending that much effort into quibbling over exactly what words Lewis used to describe his method. I think it's sufficient to recognize that there is a sense in which Aslan is Jesus, and that Lewis was aware of this when he wrote the book.

To quote Richard Jenkyn's in The New Republic, reviewing Jacobs's biography:

"It is just about possible to say that Aslan in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the first book of the series, is a type of Christ, who re-enacts the crucifixion and the resurrection, but in the sequels he is inescapably Christ himself. [...]

To look for Lewis without Christianity is like looking for narcotic-free heroin: whether or not you are hooked on the drug, you would be missing the point. Apart from anything else, you would be making an aesthetic mistake. As a writer Lewis is best and most original when he is most Christian. Like it or not, this is where his imagination is most fully engaged. Aslan is the best thing in the Narnia books: the conception of Christ as a great cat, lovable and furry but also powerful, terrible, and strange, is indeed brilliant, and when Aslan appears, the stories acquire a new vividness."

[esper]

I've totally got to agree. Lewis wrote Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, A Grief Observed, Miracles, The Four Loves, The Weight of Glory, Reflections on the Psalms... Not to mention the Perelandra series, which is also a very close Christian allegory. He was a famous apologist that coined the "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" argument...

I can understand how you can say J.R.R. Tolkien didn't do his allegories on purpose. Because he was a devout Catholic, things just leaked in to LOTR. When asked, Tolkien demanded to everyone that he had not written a Christian allegory on purpose... Neither had he written a novel about Hitler and the second World War, neither had he tried to be racist (the orcs are black, and the elves are Aryan)...

However, to say that C.S. Lewis didn't mean to do it is like saying C.S. Lewis was a complete moron with MPD. I'm not religious... I'm not evangelical, or denominational, or fundamental, or any of those other words associated with religionists and "churchianity." What I am is logical. It doesn't MATTER if someone translates something C.S. Lewis said as meaning he didn't mean to do it, because if Jack really said that, he's an idiot ANYWAY, and nothing he says from that point on can be taken seriously.

I think what he meant was "You can enjoy it whether or not you're a Christian, because the picture there doesn't have to be viewed as the picture I intended it to be. It's a nice fantasy story. However, Aslan is a type of Christ, and I believe, although I'm going to try to be humble and not say it outright, that God made me do it that way, like when a sculptor says 'my sculpture was there all along, I just had to trim away the stone around it...' "

[DGMacphee]

Bah, what difference does all of it make? In a thousand years time, none of C.S. Lewis' texts will matter because most of the Earth's population will convert to Jedi and wage a holy war against those who speak Klingon. Also, scientists will genetically modify trees to grow muffins. The future is bright for all.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

-Unless you happen to be a Klingon with an allergy to muffins, then you're Qop.

I agree with what bspeers is saying, in that if C.S. Lewis claimed the religious undercurrents in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe were unintentional than they most likely were.  My reasoning?  Logic, really.  Lewis wasn't ashamed of his beliefs by any means and wrote other books specifically about those beliefs.  Also, as a writer I have found occasions where my stories wander into territory I hadn't consciously intended for them to go.  Ultimately we all write about what we know (or think we know), and the knowledge, opinions and beliefs we have acquired through the years filter into that work and define it.

Now about the film (which is the topic of this thread).  I have yet to see it, but I enjoyed the books when I was younger.  I tend to be very much against book to film conversions as they show the imagined world of the novel only through the perspective of the screenwriter and director (and very rarely from the perspective of the author).  Even when the author does helm the project, though, the ultimate vision we see of a character or place may still not match what we imagined them in our minds to be, which is often disappointing.  Guess I'm just old fashioned, but I'll probably stick with the books .

[Potch]

Well, as usual, while many of you criticize a movie... I enjoyed it.  I took it as it was... a fun little romp into a mythical land.  Was it as good as LoTR?  Of course not.  But, honestly, as someone else had mentioned, I hadn't even thought about comparing the two.  They were each trying to accomplish different things, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

I thought all of the children did a decent job.  I enjoyed Mr. Mumnus.  The beavers made me chuckle.  The witch was pretty much what I pictured, although her hair was annoying.  Ha ha.

I had read the book as a kid, and re-read it before seeing the movie.  I thought it was a pretty accurate portrayal.  Although, it would have been nice for the magic in the candies to be explained, for those that hadn't read the book.

As for the Christian aspect... it's something I never picked up on, until I was told it was there.   I suppose I can see where it could be interpreted that way, but I personally don't think it was the intent.   But, maybe it was.  Guess we'll never really know.

My last question is this, and I'm not trying to start a big argument, and I'm sorry ahead of time if this offends anyone, but I'm sincerely asking because it's something I've been wondering about.... Why is that a book or movie like Chronicles of Narnia, or LoTR for that matter, which is full of magic (a wardrobe that takes you to another world, a witch that can turn things to stone, talking animals and the like) is ok according to Christians, but Harry Potter is looked as evil because of magic? 

Anyway, I thought the movie was well done.  My boyfriend enjoyed it as well, and he had never read the books.