Below are my thoughts on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
There are a lot of things to like about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The children are all very good, the casting overall was spot-on, visually it looked like Narnia should. I had wondered about Liam Neeson as Aslan, but I really liked him. They did a good job with expanding some scenes, such as letting us see Peter and Edmund while the girls were at the Stone Table. Speaking of Peter and Edmund, both of their journeys were well done – there were times where I thought I could see Peter growing up as everything was happening all around him. With Susan, I felt like we could see a little more of why things turn out for her the way they do in The Last Battle. Father Christmas was wonderful (even if he didn’t give them tea like he should have). The Professor was not how I pictured him, but I loved him just the same. There were lots of little moments and lines that were included that were great. I didn’t care for the added bits where the wolves were chasing them down the tunnel and on the frozen waterfall, but I guess that’s because I didn’t feel like we needed any extra tension. The witch was very good, and I didn’t think the CGI was perfect, but CGI is mostly not on my radar and I was only paying attention to it because I’d heard that it was questionable in some places. If I had a slightly better memory and was a little less tired, I could list page after page of things I thought were done well, from small details to big ones, because, as I said, there was a lot to like.
Overall, though, I have to admit (and I hate to say this) that I was disappointed. I know that my expectations were very high, but I tried to go in and give it a fair shot, and I think I did appreciate the movie on its own terms. Somehow, though, as good as many of the parts were, it missed the magic for me. There was a spark that the books had that the movie didn’t manage. I read the book and I think of wide-eyed wonder, and I can’t tell you how exactly the movie missed that, but I can tell you that, for me, it did. The beginning and the end were close to how what I was hoping for, but they lost me in the middle (which I can blame only somewhat on the wolves). Someone at work asked me how one would convey magic or wonder in a movie, and I can’t explain it, exactly. I know that when I left the LotR movies, I felt a sense of wonder, like I had entered another world for a few hours. Mike said that perhaps it’s just a Disney problem – that their live-action movies are often missing a spark that they need. He enjoyed it more than I did, probably because he read the book as an adult and not as a child, so he brought a completely different sensibility to the story. I just know that, for me, as much as it pains me to say this, many of the parts were good, but the sum of those parts was lacking something.
I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, though, or deter anyone from seeing it. I just wish it had had a little more magic.
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6 Comments
It’s funny, but reading the first paragraph I thought you were going to say you liked it. Then at the beginning of the second paragraph you drop the bomb. It’s like play action fake. Great job!
Do you find, as a rule, that the book is better than the movie anyway? I always did.
Well, I wanted to make it clear that I wasn’t like, “I hated, hated, hated it,” by any means. I figure it gives my disappointment more credibility if I can say, “I liked all these things, but I was disappointed.”
I think the book is always better, but books can do things in such different ways. The recent P&P adaptation changed a lot of things around and I still loved it, so it’s not the changes in action that were disappointing to me. It was more the feel of it that I thought was a letdown.
Upon further reflection, I’ve been wondering if the emphasis on war wasn’t part of the problem for me. I felt that they were trying to draw a pretty direct parallel between what was happening in our world and what was going on in Narnia, even to the point that Susan said something like, “Mum sent us out of London to get away from war!” I think of Narnia as being untouched by our world, so I kind of resented the parallel being drawn. I also think they kept talking about war much too soon: everyone was saying, “You have to be here for the war,” etc. The battle is only a couple of pages (and that in very broad terms, not great detail), so as much as the story does need it, it doesn’t focus on it like the movie did. Of course there’s an overall war between good and evil, but it’s not fought on the battlefield but at the Stone Table.
I agree when you say the parallel between both worlds was a bit uncomfortable. The opening scene is intriguing – and it does add to the understanding of why the children were sent away.
However, Narnia does have its own magic. And to suddenly burst through that mirage and dwell on sayings things about the “war back home” tends to disappoint.
But, like you – I found an overwhelming bit of things to adore.
Excellent review, Kari! I have to agree that the middle of the movie loses something. I agree with your husband that Disney takes over at that point. Movies that aspire to become blockbusters these days always seem to need the Big Action Sequence, so the emphasis on the battle as the climax (rather than the stone table) is understandable, if regrettable.
However, I rather enjoyed the connection to the earthly war. At first, I was afraid they were going to pull a Wizard of Oz (movie version) on us…the kids get home and it was all an angst-driven adolescent fantasy based on conflicts in their real lives. The characters talking about the war back home reinforced that fear, but I became most concerned when they had the griffin “air force” fly in the exact same formation as the German bombers in the opening sequence! However, I breathed a great sigh of relief when they included the little tag sequence in the middle of the credits (which half the audience in my theater missed) where the Professor reveals to Lucy that he, too, had been to Narnia. Narnia is real!
Anyway, once they had settled that they weren’t doing a purely psychological take on Narnia, I was able to enjoy the WWII connection more. I’ve always thought it was more significant than Lewis lets on in the book that he sets it during the bombing of London. Even if he doesn’t make it explicit, there is some connection between our world and Narnia, or at least parallels. Certainly both have experienced a kind of fall that results in corruption and disruption to the whole natural order of the respective worlds, and both are in need of redemption.
I agree with you Kari. I was so disappointed. Really, the only character I thought was really perfectly cast was Lucy. And they focused on all the wrong things! Where was their fun little evening with the Beaver’s? That was my favorite part, but they just made it seem so hurried and dull. And the food didn’t even look good, whereas in the book it was a feast to their hungry bellies. And they tried to add excitement to the journey to the stone table, but they ended up just ruining it.
I think my main problem is that they just didn’t show enough respect for Lewis’s work. They felt like they needed to add more excitement and suspense, but they did that at the expense of all my favorite parts. It made me want to just come home and watch the BBC version, because it was just so much better.
I agree with you about how they added excitement and suspense at the expense of some of my favorite parts. But I have to say, I am not a huge fan of the BBC version. hehe.
I guess I’ll have to stick with the Narnia in my imagination.