willowisp: (Serene or contemplative)
Cat ([personal profile] willowisp) wrote2005-12-26 09:21 pm
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Narnia (No spoilers)

I saw The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe today with a gaggle of [livejournal.com profile] callicrates' relatives. I liked the movie overall. I still wish James Earl Jones had done Aslan's voice but maybe (like Sir Ian McKellen being tired of playing bearded wizards and therefore not taking over Dumbledore's role), Mr. Jones was tired of playing wise lions and forewent. I have no problems with Mr. Neeson's performance of Aslan, and he did an excellent job. I guess I'm just a hopeless JEJ fangirl. Or something. The little girl they found to play Lucy... wow. They found Lucy.

Edmund's portrayal was spot on, and Peter's was very close. I was a bit unhappy with Susan's portrayal, and I'll need to re-read TLtW&tW again to see if they were just setting up for future events at the cost of her character in this book. One of Andy's elementary school friends who was best man at our wedding (and whose father performed the ceremony) is a lighting person for Rhythm and Hues, which rendered the show (or at least a large part of it; I'm a bit fuzzy on that), and he said the plan was for four of the books to be made into movies, if I remember correctly. He didn't know which three other than this one were to be made, but I'm guessing The Last Battle will be one of them.

As expected, there were some departures from the books. Most of them I didn't mind; I may be anal about adaptations, but I also understand that things need to be changed for timing, to explain things for people who may not have read the books, and due to the inability for some things to be transferred to screen properly. A few of the changes were strokes of genius which were so in the spirit that I could have seen Dr. Lewis suggesting them had he still been alive. There were only one or two I strongly disliked, and those not so much because they departed from the books. As noted before I'm ok with making changes where they're needed, but in those cases there was no need for them to do so.

I will absolutely watch the movie again if given a hint of a chance. Overall it was an excellent piece of work, and even though I had quite a few nitpicks apart from the complaints listed above, the overall whole is definitely worth it.

This is a no-spoiler post, so please don't post any in the comments. Do let me know if you might want to discuss further and I'll start a new thread with appropriate spoiler protection.

PS: Sign me up to go to Narnia if I get dresses like Lucy and Susan's.

[identity profile] suzuno.livejournal.com 2005-12-27 05:23 am (UTC)(link)
I also really enjoyed the movie and the decisions in what actor to cast as who. No spoilers, but I'm a bit sad they've optioned all 7 books but will only make 4. I'm guessing the next one they make is Prince Caspian, the Magician's Nephew, and the Last Battle. Is he sure there will only be four made? :(

Contracts and Such

[identity profile] willowisp.livejournal.com 2005-12-27 01:18 pm (UTC)(link)
I honestly don't know what the deal is with leaving three out, and Tony's information is over a year old, hence the fuzziness. He's currently working on Charlotte's Web and they're in endgame mode, so even though he's a Narnia fan, he probably won't be able to do anything remotely unrelated to the pigs running around the building.

[identity profile] celebra.livejournal.com 2005-12-27 05:31 am (UTC)(link)
I would go to Narnia too, for dresses like that..

Or, I'd just be thrilled if they put together The Last Battle. Oh, how I love that story. And they'd better include that excellent line at the end of the book, about the term being over, the morning done, etc.
platypus: (Default)

[personal profile] platypus 2005-12-27 06:46 am (UTC)(link)
I was a little sad about some of the changes -- some of the little moments or lines that really stuck with me from the book weren't in the movie. (They'd all have fit in if they weren't so pushy about showing lots of action and running about, grr.) By and large, though the feel was appropriate. I think I would have found Aslan's voice distracting if it had been done by an actor I was very familiar with. (I don't see many movies at all, so you have to be somebody like James Earl Jones or Robin Williams to distract me. The person who actually did it is rather famous, I gather, but I didn't know his voice. I'm re-reading the book tonight, and I'm pleased to find that my own mental rendering of Aslan's voice hasn't been changed at all, nor my roughly 25-year-old mental images of the people and places in the book.)

Lions and Valjeans and Lists, Oh My!

[identity profile] willowisp.livejournal.com 2005-12-27 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
I think I would have found Aslan's voice distracting if it had been done by an actor I was very familiar with.

Amusingly enough, I asked Tony how he felt about Aslan's voice, and his response was something akin to "I heard the first few lines and immediately thought "Qui Gon Jinn!", but then I got drawn in enough that the voice didn't distract me." In retrospect, I have a feeling I did the same with Mufasa when JEJ did it -- drooled over his voice for a line or two, then got drawn into the character.

Mr. Neeson did the aforementioned Jedi and the ambiguous-at-first guy in the most recent Batman movie, both of which I've seen. For big-name movies I haven't seen, he was in Schindler's List as the title character, and in the heretical no-Eponine Les Miserables movie done a few years ago, playing Valjean.

Once I'm back from seeing [livejournal.com profile] erish and [livejournal.com profile] turnberryknkn, or perhaps when I'm back in Albuquerque altogether, I'll probably start a spoiler-heavy like and dislike discussion.

[identity profile] turnberryknkn.livejournal.com 2005-12-27 03:14 pm (UTC)(link)
I admit I *liked* Neeson's voice better, after I saw it. I think a solid part of that is his performance in Kingdom of Heaven, a movie which I actually liked quite a bit. JEJ is certainly a bad-ass, but perhaps maybe too much so to be right for Aslan; Aslan needs vulnerability as well as authority, and Neeson certainly has that. Just my opinion, tho.

reDresses -- if you mean the ones they were wearing [no spoiler] in the scene where all four of them were horseback riding through the woods after the coronation, Oh Yeah. I would *love* to have SCAdian garb like *that*...

[identity profile] kater-kat.livejournal.com 2005-12-27 07:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, Lucy. I will always have a soft spot for that character. ;)

I was happy with the casting, on the whole. When I first saw Edmund and Lucy side by side, I more than half expected the credits to reveal they were really brother and sister. It must be quite a boon to casting agents to come across young kids who have that much talent AND look that similar, too.

I was giddy over this movie, I admit. I had a couple issues with it, but nothing that reduced my overall enjoyment. (Although I admit, I was mildly concerned when I first saw the movie poster. Hi, the critters dragging the witch around are supposed to be reindeer, not polar bears! ;))