Narnia revisited

[altivo]

Why is it so hard to tell what is already a masterful story without trying to turn it into something else? Apparently, if you're Hollywood or Disney, it's just impossible. We sat through Prince Caspian this afternoon. It's not bad as movies go, it's just not the story that Lewis wrote. It's a few ideas and characters from the book, rolled into something with vaguely similar beginning and ending. The whole middle part came from outer space. Points that are critical to understanding the story are omitted. Points that are going to be needed to make sense of the episodes to follow are also omitted or even altered.

I suspect that some of this deficiency is due to scenes that were actually scripted and filmed, but ended up being cut. Why were they cut when the book was so short to begin with? To make room for a whole lot of spurious violence and battle scenes that had no place in the original. Worse, the most important character, and the one that they have done a superb job on in the first film, Aslan himself, has almost all of his good lines and best scenes completely cut. This is downright outrageous, in my opinion.

Production values are high. The work done on Reepicheep and Trufflehunter is of excellent quality. But why, oh why spend so much to make a film, and then make a travesty of an award winning book in the process? Sure, see the film if you wish. But read the book too, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than the film does.

In other irritating news, the four rip-off gas stations in Harvard raised their prices by 30 cents a gallon this morning. They are now asking $4.29 for unleaded. When I passed them on the way home from work at noon, I noticed that even though it was the lunch time rush, all their pumps were vacant. I hope people really are boycotting them. It's only five miles or less to Chemung, where the price is significantly lower. This is an annual ritual. They slam the price up as high as they dare right before Memorial Day weekend. Probably by Monday it will be back down to $3.99 again, where they started this morning.

Comments

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a nearly accurate statement. Except that even the potential of the film is marred by so much unexplained detail. For instance, the apples at Cair Paravel, which appear, and we see Lucy eating one, but all the symbolism and history behind them was omitted or else filmed but cut. The gloriously pagan and sensual restoration scenes where Aslan released the imaginative children from the school and "broke the chains binding the river god" by roaring and making the Telmarine bridge collapse. The appearance of Bacchus and Silenus, one of my favorite details, was completely omitted in favor of a whole bloody and dreary battle scene created out of thin air. I'm glad to hear that a different director will take over for Dawn Treader.

[heavens-steed.livejournal.com]

Yes, those are all fair criticisms. They completely left out Bacchus and the children.