the voyage of the WHAT?

[jazzfish]

I've been trying lately to suppress my outrage at stupid films made from decent books. It's not the book: it's an adaptation. It's a different thing entirely. It has different demands, different audience expectations and needs. It's okay that they change things.

And I thought that the film of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was about the best film they could have made of that book. Even the random chase sequence on a frozen river didn't detract from it. Plus, Tilda Swinton imbues everything she touches with a degree of awesome. Not always enough awesome to save it, mind you, but still, awesome. And they started with LWW instead of Magician's Nephew, which lends them a certain credibility.

(Of course, pondering LWW leads one inexorably to Aslan Shrugged, and from there to John Rogers's dictum:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Which in turn brings up thoughts of the LotR movies, and thus back to the topic at hand, or at least its environs. What was I talking about?)

Right, anyway. I never did see Prince Caspian, although it wasn't really much of a book to start with so I can't imagine I missed much. I confess to being somewhat curious as to how (and why) they brought back Tilda Swinton's White Witch, since I'm told she's in it. I was kind of interested in seeing the new Dawn Treader movie: that's always been one of my favorite of the books. Then I read the plot summary in Roger Ebert's Dawn Treader review:

"Lucy and Edmund, now in their mid-teens, seem uncommonly calm about being yanked from their everyday lives and put on a strange ship in uncharted seas, but these kids have pluck."

Fair enough.

"They're briefed on the situation: Narnia is threatened by evil forces from the mysterious Dark Island, which no one has seen but everyone has heard about."

What?

"There is a matter of seven missing magical swords representing the Lords of Telmar, which were given to Narnia by Aslan the Lion..."

WHAT?

"...and must be brought together again to break a spell that imprisons the lords."

I just what I don't even.

(I note with some bafflement that Tilda Swinton is once more listed in the credits as the White Witch. This is not nearly enough inducement to get me to see this trainwreck.)

On the other hand, TRON Legacy will be out in eight days, which will soothe some of the hurting.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Man, I re-read all of the books before the first movie came out, and I was shocked at how distasteful I found the religious stuff and "isms" were reading it as an adult (though still not as shocked at "squeaking bedsprings" in The Phantom Tollbooth). However issues aside, I still liked Horse & His Boy the best. That may be just because it was my favorite as a kid though.

I may have to reconsider seeing DT now though...

[vond.net]

... damn. That was me.

[rbandrews]

Squeaking bedsprings? Huh?

[vond.net]

"Now remember, they're not for eating, but for listening, because you'll often be hungry for sounds as well as food. Here are street noises at night, train whistles a long way off, dry leaves burning, busy department stores, crunching toast, creaking bedsprings, and, of course, all kinds of laughter. There's a little of each, and in far-off lonely places I think you'll be glad to have them."

So, "creaking" not "squeaking", my mistake. Either way, reading it as an adult I can't help but take that in a naughty direction.

[rbandrews]

Sorry, misunderstood, I thought you meant there was something distasteful in Tollbooth, like the Narnia racism thing.

[jazzfish]

Oh, awesome. And it's almost certainly meant to be taken like that, the book's full of things that you totally miss as a kid. "Most people can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and come out dry as a bone," that sort of thing.