[Dean's World] Dean: Chronicles of Narnia

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Posted by Dean:
Chronicles of Narnia
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1149455204.shtml


   We finally got around to renting [1]Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion,
   the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

   The cinematography was gorgeous. The special effects quite beautiful.
   The story and characters... meh. The Queen fell asleep in the middle
   of it, and our 8 year old son Jake got bored in the middle and
   wandered off to watch cartoons in his bedroom. I'm the only one who
   made it all the way through the movie.

   I think they did as good a job as they could with the material, but
   that the material is weak. I always thought so, from the first time I
   read the Narnia books at the age of 14. Dramatically, things happen in
   them because they just happen. People become close friends
   immediately, and the enemies are bad just because they're bad. Very
   little is dramatically revealed, things just plod along on a sort of
   obvious predetermined path. No one and nothing has any depth. The most
   interesting character is Aslan, and if he were a man and not a giant
   talking lion, we'd be mystified as to why we cared about him at all.

   Compared to J.R.R. Tolkien's books, it's clear that Narnia is inferior
   in just about every way. My saying so may surprise some people, for
   I've often written that I don't much care for Tolkien's work either.
   But the reasons are entirely different, and have more to do with the
   style of his prose than what's at its core. My lack of enthusiasm for
   Tolkein can be summed up as: I take no pleasure in reading three pages
   of action crammed into every 20 pages of scenery. I recognize that
   some people fall into this lush descriptive prose and wallow in it
   happily, but I don't. Nevertheless I recognize the depth of the
   mythology that Tolkien created, and why people love the books so much.
   I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies quite a bit more than the
   books. In the end, the writers of the Lord of the Rings movies had
   much more to work with: there's just so much there, and the depths of
   it are almost bottomless.

   There's no such luxury with Narnia. There's a sort of emptiness at the
   center of all C.S. Lewis's stories and characters. There's no "there"
   there. Neither very good allegory, nor very good fantasy, we have no
   reason to love the characters or hate them. They're just sort of
   there. Things just sort of happen, and when they're over, they're
   done, and the whole thing comes off as very parochial.

   Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker wrote an excellent summation of C.S.
   Lewis, his life and his work, here: [2]Prisoner of Narnia: How C.S.
   Lewis Escaped. It pretty well sums up my feelings on the man and his
   work.

   I understand that the same creative team who made this Narnia movie
   plan on going on to produce the rest of the books. The Lion, the
   Witch, and the Wardrobe is only book one of seven. My prediction: just
   as each book in the series gets less and less interesting, so too will
   the movies, and interest will drop off with each subsequent sequel.
   Indeed, I bet they never get to the 7th and last movie, because by
   then most people will just be too bored.

References

   1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E8M0VA/qid=1149452332/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/102-2442798-4236140?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130/deansworld01-20
   2. http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/051121crat_atlarge