Absolutely NOT.
Jun. 18th, 2010 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vr_trakowskiI have now seen the trailer for the upcoming Voyage of the Dawn Treader film. And they ain't getting my money. I'm considering writing a plaintive letter to Douglas Gresham to ask him why he's permitted another travesty.
Let me be clear, here. As a lifelong CS Lewis fan, I have read the Chronicles of Narnia so many times that I could tell without cross-checking when the republished editions (mid-nineties) used the alternate versions. I liked the first of the new films, to a degree--I thought they changed too much, but it fit the spirit of things on the whole, and the Stone Table scene was spot on.
Prince Caspian was appalling. For pity's sake, one of Caspian's lines is "I'm just a kid." Not a twenty-something overbearing twit. Romance? Gah. And the whole scene with the White Witch--all they did in the book was suggest raising her. At one point past the halfway mark my mother turned to me in the theater and asked me where two of the characters were going. And I had to reply that I had no idea. Because they were so far from the actual story.
Now, I understand that some changes have to be made. Heck, I approved of the Blitz scene in the first film, because modern kids wouldn't have any idea why the Pevensies were being sent to the country. But if these stories are strong enough to stand on their own for the past forty years, they don't need to be distorted all out of recognition.
Nearly half the trailer was not from the book. Aslan was speaking lines he never said. The White Witch? Again?? Whose idea was that? Saving Narnia? From what? The biggest threat to Narnia in the book was someone's attempt to sell Caspian into slavery, and it didn't come off as all that desperate. I admit the picture scene was pretty well done, but Edmund did not try to register for the draft.
*sigh* What's worse, to me, is that so many kids are going to think that the movie is how the story goes. And maybe because of that, they'll never read the books.
Addendum: As a Christian, I have no problem with the allegory inherent in the Chronicles. I know some people do, and that's fine. But I would like to note that Lewis did not write the first book as a Christian allegory. As he said himself, the motif of the sacrificed-and-resurrected god is found in many places, including the Norse mythos that he loved his entire life. He didn't even intend The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to be an allegory, it just came out that way. The rest of the series was consciously written as such, but not the first book. *shrug*
Let me be clear, here. As a lifelong CS Lewis fan, I have read the Chronicles of Narnia so many times that I could tell without cross-checking when the republished editions (mid-nineties) used the alternate versions. I liked the first of the new films, to a degree--I thought they changed too much, but it fit the spirit of things on the whole, and the Stone Table scene was spot on.
Prince Caspian was appalling. For pity's sake, one of Caspian's lines is "I'm just a kid." Not a twenty-something overbearing twit. Romance? Gah. And the whole scene with the White Witch--all they did in the book was suggest raising her. At one point past the halfway mark my mother turned to me in the theater and asked me where two of the characters were going. And I had to reply that I had no idea. Because they were so far from the actual story.
Now, I understand that some changes have to be made. Heck, I approved of the Blitz scene in the first film, because modern kids wouldn't have any idea why the Pevensies were being sent to the country. But if these stories are strong enough to stand on their own for the past forty years, they don't need to be distorted all out of recognition.
Nearly half the trailer was not from the book. Aslan was speaking lines he never said. The White Witch? Again?? Whose idea was that? Saving Narnia? From what? The biggest threat to Narnia in the book was someone's attempt to sell Caspian into slavery, and it didn't come off as all that desperate. I admit the picture scene was pretty well done, but Edmund did not try to register for the draft.
*sigh* What's worse, to me, is that so many kids are going to think that the movie is how the story goes. And maybe because of that, they'll never read the books.
Addendum: As a Christian, I have no problem with the allegory inherent in the Chronicles. I know some people do, and that's fine. But I would like to note that Lewis did not write the first book as a Christian allegory. As he said himself, the motif of the sacrificed-and-resurrected god is found in many places, including the Norse mythos that he loved his entire life. He didn't even intend The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to be an allegory, it just came out that way. The rest of the series was consciously written as such, but not the first book. *shrug*