Phy
05-23-2008, 08:45 AM
I already know some here will be screaming 'blasphemy.' I'm impish, that way. (Wait 'til you see what she says about LOTR!)
http://tinyurl.com/5fyofs
Every once in awhile, a movie improves on the book on which it is based. In my bold opinion, Prince Caspian , the second Disney film drawn from C. S. Lewis’s beloved Chronicles of Narnia, is such a movie. Criticism of C. S. Lewis is rightly taboo, but facts are facts: Prince Caspian , the book, is a dud.
It was the second to be written in the series, and it’s rushed and thin. You’ll remember from the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe , that the four Pevensie siblings find their way into the land of Narnia through a mysterious wardrobe. In Prince Caspian they are called back to Narnia again, where they must help young Prince Caspian claim his rightful throne. Unfortunately, they land nowhere near Caspian, so most of the book is occupied with the Pevensies’ struggle to cross mountains and rivers to get to him. (The action also pauses for four chapters so that a dwarf can fill us in on Prince Caspian’s life so far.) When they finally meet Caspian there is a brief battle and a happy ending, and before you know it you’re running into the opening pages of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (a much better book).
Prince Caspian, the movie, fixes all this. It knits a whole lot more story around that spare frame, and the plot gains traction while the characters gain complexity. The movie is just plain better than the book.
8. The Lord of the Rings trilogy . Them’s fightin’ words, I know. Among respondents there was a feeling that the series, as J. R. R. Tolkien wrote it, is just plain ponderous. A couple of years ago I recorded the whole thing for my local radio station for the blind, and found that reading all that inverted syntax and archaic terminology out loud, hour after hour, makes parody nearly irresistible. Director Peter Jackson had a better idea . He saw the essential beauty of the story, and brought it to the screen unimpeded.
The situation is nearly opposite with The Chronicles of Narnia. While Tolkien’s works are vast and grave, Lewis’s Narnia stories feel unaffected, sympathetic, homey. If in The Lord of the Rings someone is always swinging an axe at the head of a monster, in The Chronicles of Narnia he is getting out of the rain, warming up by the fire, and having some tea and biscuits. I think that Lewis had a better knack for storytelling than Tolkien did; I recorded the Narnia books as well, and could feel the difference.
But as charming as the Narnia stories are, the movies give them more body, more strength. That’s especially true with this latest, Prince Caspian. One of my correspondents, Stuart Koehl, sketches out a theory:
In many ways, Caspian is the weakest of the Narnia books, showing the effect of hurried composition, imperfect familiarity with the characters, and the need to present a message about the role of Christians in a time of war (it was a propaganda as well as an apologetic piece). A screenwriter would have the whole Narnia corpus in front of him, and knowing the mythology from beginning to end, could remove inconsistencies and sand down the rough edges.
Peter Jackson, likewise, has not just the Ring trilogy texts to draw on, but fifty years of reflection on those stories by those who have savored them.
There is admittedly one unfortunate aspect of translation to the silver screen: in movies, the loud part is the memorable part, and the clamor of CGI battle overwhelms the subtler moments in these films. Still, the Lord of the Rings movies are more bright and lively than the novels, and Prince Caspian is built up into something more satisfying, more complete. For that I’m grateful.
http://tinyurl.com/5fyofs
Every once in awhile, a movie improves on the book on which it is based. In my bold opinion, Prince Caspian , the second Disney film drawn from C. S. Lewis’s beloved Chronicles of Narnia, is such a movie. Criticism of C. S. Lewis is rightly taboo, but facts are facts: Prince Caspian , the book, is a dud.
It was the second to be written in the series, and it’s rushed and thin. You’ll remember from the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe , that the four Pevensie siblings find their way into the land of Narnia through a mysterious wardrobe. In Prince Caspian they are called back to Narnia again, where they must help young Prince Caspian claim his rightful throne. Unfortunately, they land nowhere near Caspian, so most of the book is occupied with the Pevensies’ struggle to cross mountains and rivers to get to him. (The action also pauses for four chapters so that a dwarf can fill us in on Prince Caspian’s life so far.) When they finally meet Caspian there is a brief battle and a happy ending, and before you know it you’re running into the opening pages of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (a much better book).
Prince Caspian, the movie, fixes all this. It knits a whole lot more story around that spare frame, and the plot gains traction while the characters gain complexity. The movie is just plain better than the book.
8. The Lord of the Rings trilogy . Them’s fightin’ words, I know. Among respondents there was a feeling that the series, as J. R. R. Tolkien wrote it, is just plain ponderous. A couple of years ago I recorded the whole thing for my local radio station for the blind, and found that reading all that inverted syntax and archaic terminology out loud, hour after hour, makes parody nearly irresistible. Director Peter Jackson had a better idea . He saw the essential beauty of the story, and brought it to the screen unimpeded.
The situation is nearly opposite with The Chronicles of Narnia. While Tolkien’s works are vast and grave, Lewis’s Narnia stories feel unaffected, sympathetic, homey. If in The Lord of the Rings someone is always swinging an axe at the head of a monster, in The Chronicles of Narnia he is getting out of the rain, warming up by the fire, and having some tea and biscuits. I think that Lewis had a better knack for storytelling than Tolkien did; I recorded the Narnia books as well, and could feel the difference.
But as charming as the Narnia stories are, the movies give them more body, more strength. That’s especially true with this latest, Prince Caspian. One of my correspondents, Stuart Koehl, sketches out a theory:
In many ways, Caspian is the weakest of the Narnia books, showing the effect of hurried composition, imperfect familiarity with the characters, and the need to present a message about the role of Christians in a time of war (it was a propaganda as well as an apologetic piece). A screenwriter would have the whole Narnia corpus in front of him, and knowing the mythology from beginning to end, could remove inconsistencies and sand down the rough edges.
Peter Jackson, likewise, has not just the Ring trilogy texts to draw on, but fifty years of reflection on those stories by those who have savored them.
There is admittedly one unfortunate aspect of translation to the silver screen: in movies, the loud part is the memorable part, and the clamor of CGI battle overwhelms the subtler moments in these films. Still, the Lord of the Rings movies are more bright and lively than the novels, and Prince Caspian is built up into something more satisfying, more complete. For that I’m grateful.