Narnia

[kythe]

A few things added for dramatic effect, I think. It's been a few years since I saw it but if I remember right, they added a fox character who warned the beavers of their impending danger. The fox later ended up turned to stone in the Witch's castle. Edmund and Mr. Tumnus met each other in the Witch's castle, adding another scene which was supposed to provide character development. When Peter needed to kill the wolf Captain of the Guard, he didn't at first but instead escaped by using his sword to cut off a block of ice. I think it was supposed to emphasize that he wasn't ready to be king, but I found it jarring because he disobeyed Aslan's orders and delayed his fate.

Then there was the battle, which looked a lot like Return of the King. In the book, the main reason the Witch was winning was because she kept turning her enemies to stone. We see a little of this in the movie, but we see more of a traditional battle.

The Witch wasn't really very scary. She had quite the temper in the book, especially as we see her in The Magician's Nephew. She was too stoic here, and just appeared stiff and poised most of the time - not really up to the level of action we actually see of her in the two books she appears in.

Okay, I didn't expect this to be so long. I guess you've just heard my entire rant about the newer movie. I'm too much of a perfectionist, I think. It's why I would never do well working in the movie industry. Nothing would be to my taste.

To be fair, the book doesn't excell at character development. There is a point that they needed to add scenes to make the characters more 3-dimensional, people the viewer can relate to. I do like the background story given on Edmund in the opening scene, where they show his father off to war and how their family was hiding in a bomb shelter. He ran back inside just to grab a picture of his father. This scene wasn't in the book at all, but it worked for me because it explains why Edmund is so angry and brooding.

Maybe I do need to lighten up a bit about it. They did care about the characters and tried to make their motives realistic.

[The Ace]

To be fair, the religious overtones are there for a reason, Lewis recent conversion to Christianity.

I was raised an atheist and didn't even notice these at the time.

[Grimward]

Just to elaborate on that opening scene, The Chronicles of Narnia were published between 1950 and 1956. I will make a statement here which may be considered presumptive for a born-and-raised-tail-end-baby-boomer/first-generation-X-member, United States Citizen: Most adults (and many children!) living in England at that time would have very little difficulty painting the backdrop of WWII and the Luftwaffe's bombing raids over Lewis' setting and proceeding, I imagine. Contrast that to the release of the film in December of 2005, and the sad but true statement that a fair number of viewers (especially the younger children who make a fair part of Lewis' audience) wouldn't have the knowledge to make this association without the opening scene, and one has to give a thumbs up to Walden's screenplay writers and editor for the inclusion.

[mercs]

Anyone else read Michael Ward's Planet Narnia yet. I bought that to go on holiday and have started re-reading the books again to see if he's right. The idea being that rather than the chronicles being a random mish-mash, the seven books actually represent the seven medieval planetary bodies...

LW&W represents Jupiter, Silver Chair the Moon, Horse and His Boy Mercury, Voyage of the Dawn Treader The Sun, Prince Caspian Mars, Magicians Nephew Venus and Last Battle Saturn...

I can't go into all the details (it is a 200 page book!!) but some of the sentances and descriptions do support the idea. Adds another dimension to the books...

[Moggle]

I read book 1 and watched the film and found the film much better. The books don't appear to have much depth. It's a very basic type of storytelling. I suppose this was simply how children stories were written back then.