This version was pretty good:
Posted on 05/13/2005 11:51:38 AM PDT by dangus
Walden Media is set to launch a live-action version of C. S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” for the Christmas Season of 2005. At least four other movies from the series of books are planned. Disney will distribute the movies, but did not produce them.
The movie should delight fans of Lewis, since the movie should be much more faithful to the book than had been expected several years ago. Paramount had wanted John Boorman to direct. Boorman was famous for movies such as Exorcist II: The Heretic, Deliverance, Excalibur (1981), The Emerald Forest, and The Tailor of Panama. But rumors were that Boorman planned to strip religious symbolism from the film and set it in an earthquake-plagued California, instead of war-torn England. (Ironically, one character, Susan, lost her ability to visit Narnia because she moved to California to become a model!)
Boorman was replaced by Andrew Adamson, director of Shrek, who has never directed a live-action film. Adamson is filming the movie largely in Czeckoslavakia and his native New Zealand, where “The Lord of the Rings” series was filmed. Lewis’ stepson, Douglas Gresham is overseeing the production. The fourth book of the Narnia series was dedicated to Douglas and his brother, David. From the little that can be seen from the trailers, the production looks excellent. It should: Walden spent $120 million making the first Narnia movie. Little of that seems to have been spent on casting. Lucy Pevensie is played by first-time actress Georgie Hendley. Tilda Swinton (“Gabriel” from Constantine, Vanilla Sky) will play the White Witch, instead of the long-rumored Nicole Kidman. Character Actor Jim Broadbent plays Aslan. The most well-known cast member is Rupert Evert, who played Prince Charming in Shrek.
For those not familiar it, the Chronicles of Narnia was a series of Children’s books written Oxford Humanities professor and Christian apologist Clive Staples “Jack” Lewis. (A movie about Lewis, “Shadowlands,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, is a classic, romantic tear-jerker.) Lewis, who was converted to Christianity by his close friend and Oxford associate, “Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkein, wrote several Christian non-fiction classics, including “The Four Loves,” and “Mere Christianity.” He also wrote more adult stories such as the “Perelandra” science-fiction trilogy and the “Screwtape Letters,” a brilliant exposition of how evil functions.
“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (alternatively entitled, “Lucy and the Wardrobe”) tells of four children who pass from war-torn England into a magic world ruled by a lion, Aslan.
It’s even good news that “The Lion” is the first movie filmed. Later American publications of Narnia begin with the book, “The Magician’s Nephew.” That book was originally published sixth, and serves to provide the backstory for the previous books. People who read it first cannot know the significance of details it takes great care to explain. Some fans speculated, when it was announced that Walden was only producing “at least” five movies that “Nephew” might be one of the books not translated into a movie. Other candidates are “A Horse and His Boy,” published fifth, but which takes place between the first and second stories, which would mean the original cast will have aged too much to be used; and “The Last Battle,” the final book portraying the fate of Narnia. One previous, low-budget production of Narnia conflated the second and third stories, “Prince Caspian,” and “The Voyage of the Dawn-Treader.”
Whether five or seven movies get made, Narnia looks likely to be a major force in Hollywood for the next several years. The series is more friendly to adaptation than either the enormousely successful "Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter" series; the books are relatively short and unlike "Lord of the Rings," each tells a complete story, and with the excpetion of the episodic "Dawn Treader," each follows a very traditional story arc.
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The trailer can be found and a short behind-the-scenes peak can be found here
VWRCmember supplied this list of other Narnia threads:
Here is a wealth of information available just from searching for articles that have been posted here with "Narnia" in the title:
Disney's Next Hero: A Lion King of Kings (Hollywood Nervous About Christian Narnia)
New Chronicles of Narnia behind-the-scenes featurette released!
Newsweek Exclusive: Welcome to 'Narnia'!
The Wonderful World of 'Narnia'
Freepers: Please add information as you find it!
And when it fades away, and when the audiences don't show up for "House of Wax 2" and "XXX - the final atrocity", the Hollywood whiz kids will ask themselves "How come no one wants to watch movies anymore?"
I watched the trailer (in French) on Saturday and was impressed. From the scenes depicted it appears to be pretty faithful.
We shall see....
Newheart: Care to ping the Anglican list for this movie by the most famous of Anglican Christian apologists?
A bit of an exaggeration, don't you think? We still have Star Wars Ep. III, and Harry Potter IV, both of which will be blockbusters, upcoming.
Both of which will be big hits at the box office. But you don't seriously expect Star Wars III to be less than disappointing. Do you?
Havign read and loved every single book in this series, I'm a tad nervous of it (the series) being made into movies, as movies ALWAYS screw up books!
The only one that comes close to doing the book justice is "The Shawshank Redemption".
I hope they succeed.
Prelimary reviews indicate that they got SW III right -- as in, this is the movie fans have been waiting for. I don't want to get my hopes up, but at the same time, I want to point out that there are other big movies than Narnia this year. (Personally, I'm also looking forward to Serenity and The Producers, but those won't likely be the mega-blockbusters like SW, HP, and possibly Narnia.)
Fair enough. I'll see Star Wars III. But I'll be pleasantly surprised if it's not as boring as the last one.
There would be a lot of redemption in blasting Jar-Jar to smithereens.
But my original point was merely that Hollywood makes few really successful movies, those that tend to be most successul tend to be rather rather more "red state" than "blue state" if you know what I mean. And yet Hollywood seems to spend 80% of its resources making "blue state" movies.
Every Star Wars movie has made less money than its predecessor. Episode 2's take was $302 million, down from Ep. 4's take of about $1 billion, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Because Ep. 3 is the long-awaited bridge episode, I expect it will stop the slide, and make about $320.
Likewise, each Harry Potter has made less than the previous one. Last Harry Potter made $249. I'd guess this one should make nearly as much.
In any event, both movies should be beatable for the top moneymaker of 2005. That's not to say it will be Narnia, but the existence of those movies are no counter-argument for it being Narnia, either.
The slate of upcoming blockbusters do not look promising to me:
Batman Begins
King Kong
Fantastic Four (Can you say "The Hulk?")
X-Men 3
Pirates of the Carribean 2
Jurassic Park 4 (2 and 3 sucked!)
Cars (worst Pixar ever?)
The Da Vinci Code
War of the Worlds looks the most promising; Indiana Jones 4 looks like it has potential; SpiderMan 3 will be a hit, but not huge, as will Herbie the Love Bug; I'll like A Sound of Thunder, but if it's any good, it'll be too intellectual for most summer fans.
The shorter the original story, the better the movie tends to be. Short stories make for good seeds of ideas, but the more detailed a book's plots, the more difficult it is to translate to a good movie. Although Lord of the Rings was very satisfying, despite its many failures to live up to the books. As I mentionned, Narnia seems very capable of being made into a movie with modern special effects. IN that regard, we are probably very fortunate that no-one has tried to make it earlier, since the technology hadn't existed.
By the way, I'll never understand why everyone loves "The Shwashank Redeption." I hated it. It's grossly unrealistic, (I've done prison ministries) bitter (Yay! the hero learned to be as evil as everyone else! /sarcasm), and nihilistic.
One movie which did improve on the book was Contact. The book was preposterously long-winded, for instance spending hundreds of pages on the heroine's sexual history. The movie twisted atheist's Carl Sagan's original story into a unique allegory of religious experience.
"By the way, I'll never understand why everyone loves "The Shwashank Redeption." I hated it. It's grossly unrealistic, "
Maybe so (I'll take your word & experience here). My point was that the movie was VERY true to the book. Perhaps the book is unrealistic and everything else you said, but the movie is still true to the book and loses little in its silver-screen adaptation.
Speaking of "grossly unrealistic" movies, have you seen "Contact"? :)
This version was pretty good:
>> Speaking of "grossly unrealistic" movies, have you seen "Contact"? :) <<
Oh, that was downright cruel. :^D
But yes, Contact certainly was almost as unrealistic as Shawshank. :^b
This isn't a doctrinal issue, but I'd love to have some discussion about Narnia from the perspective of its spirituality. Think your ping list might be interested?
I'm sorry, but that cover soooo much has that look of Christian-niche-market-only cheap-o animation. And Peter, with his bell bottoms, 70's 'do, and turtleneck looks like he is headed for a dance-off vs. John Travolta!
One of the most deep, sincere and Spirit-led prayers of repentance that I have ever prayed was not elicted by reading scripture, but by reading the conclusion of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. (It's truly amazing how God uses everything!) Done right, these movies have serious evangelism potential.
They're remaking the Producers?!
Thanks for your comments. I believe C.S. Lewis to have been inspired.
Yep... based on the Broadway version, and starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. It's expected in December.
Amen!
All of the Narnia series are instructive to adults as well as entertaining for children. As I grow older my appreciation for Voyage of the Dawn Treader deepens as I appreciate more layers of meaning. It is an ecclesiology par excellance, even framing the topic with the metaphor of the Church as a journeying ship, a metaphor which extends back to the early Fathers including Gregory and Boniface. The sacramentology is awesome: Baptism, Pennance, Eucharist, all there. The volume is a veritable catechetical manual.
'nuff said.
I agree. I cried also reading the end and was led to worship. My children (small when I read these aloud to them) did not understand why I was crying. I deeply hope the movies are true to the author's intentions in conveying the precious story of redemption.
Backtracked to FR and did a keyword search to see if anything had been posted..
Great Job!
You've got the links and everything..
Can hardly wait until the Christmas season to see the movie.. It looks great..
I predict this will do as well or better than Lord of the Rings..
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Thanks for the ping!
I loved the Narnia books as a child, but it wasn't until I was older that I could truly appreciate the Christian message of them. I am very glad that Boorman's plan to remove Christianity from these stories will not succeed. The success of "The Lord of the Rings" movies made it clear the Christian themes could succeed in movies (though the symbolism in these is not as obvious as the Narnia books), and "The Passion of the Christ" left little doubt in Hollywood's mind that Christians will spend a lot of money to see a Christian film. C.S. Lewis and his fellow professors, Tolkein and T.S. Eliot were true champions in the fight against secular relativism in the academic world and they deserve praise for this. I for one do not believe that the anti-Christian "Harry Potter" books will become the timeless classics that the Narnia series surely is.
A few thoughts from various contents of the thread:
(1) "Jaws" (Spielberg's, not the ridiculous sequels) is another example of a movie that improved on the book.
(2) Jackson did a creditable job with Lord of the Rings. Considering how huge an epic that was, and what a massive undertaking, he really did a wonderful job bringing that tale of Good vs. Evil to life.
(3) Other veins in Tolkien that would make good, single episode movies would be The Hobbit, the tale of Luthien Tinuviel and Beren, and the tale of Turin Turambar.
The Hobbit in particular REALLY needs to be made a movie, by Jackson, and it really needs to have the same characters playing Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins.
If they do as good a job on Narnia as Jackson did on LotR, there is nothing to worry about. Of course, pleasing a Tolkien audience in a film would probably be harder than pleasing a Narnia audience, because Tolkien's epic was so incredibly DETAILED that any screen adaptation was going to have to take 15 hours. A Narnia Tale should not require 3 years of imprisoning an army of actors on a barren rock in New Zealand in order to "get it right".
Yes, the success of Lord of the Rings was phenomenal. Peter Jackson succeeded in fashioning the tale in a way to get people to spend $27 to watch a 10-hour miniseries over three years. And the film was simply beautiful. Then again, he had great material to work with. I think most Tolkein fans realized that Tolkein's vision *couldn't* be put to film, but that what Jackson did was use Tolkein as an inspiration to make a truly great masterpiece.
That said, Narnia is in some ways much easier. The books are nice, short, self-contained stories which have, with the exception of the Voyage of the Dawn-Treader, a very traditionally movie-style story arc to them. On the other hand, they are more fanciful and childlike: How does one present Mr. and Mrs. Beaver without giving a Sesame-Street feel? Will teenagers relate to a talking rodent worring," Oh, what a to-doo, what a to-doo!"
I agree The Hobbit needs to be made into a movie. And Gandalf, inasmuch as he doesn't age, needs to be played by Ian again. bUt I sharply disagree with you about Bilbo Baggins. Although he aged very slowly, he needs to make one think of the curiousity of a relatively young man.
But Bilbo was 50 when he went on his great adventure to the Lonely Mountain, There and Back Again.
And what's more, at the start of the film, they showed him picking up the ring.
Anyway, I've got fixed in my head that this is the screen version of Bilbo Baggins, and his was a good face for it. I'd like to see that continuity.
I'm not sure it's that detrimental to allow an anti-God conglomerate to try to manipulate the underlying, Christian message of Narnia. They can do only so much.
The book still exists, and it will slam the young viewers right in the heart when they see later in life how they'd been manipulated away from its treasure.
The spirituality is pretty much pagan. The Christian conflators are mostly revisionists. I'm not sure it sets a great example for children. Drinking, drugs, child nudity, bacchanalia, pagan worship... And enough Christian symbolism for people to be confused.
Not to bash Lewis - one of the greatest Christian thinkers of the 20th Century, but I'm pretty sure these books were written for his neice, before he was converted.
I will say that then end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, at the End of the World with Aslan cooking fish for them had such over tones of John 21:9-13 that it had me in waves of goose pimples.
Drinking, drugs, child nudity, bacchanalia, pagan worship?
What planet are you from?
Drugs? The closest thing to drugs in the story is an apparently laced "Turkish Delight," and if that's a drug reference, it's an anti-drug message.
Drinking? Not anything different than in the bible. There is wine, but none of the heroes do not allow alcohol to impair their judgment.
Child NUDITY? Sorry, I don't have a clue what you are talking about.
Bacchanalia? Celebrations, yes. And the grownups drink wine. But there is nothing immoral with any of the celebrations.
Pagan worship? Um,.... Aslan is a metaphor for Christ. And the series takes a very harsh tone against syncretism and false idols.
The worst that can be said about Narnia from a Christian criticism is that it creates an allegory for spirituality by referring to magic, and that he populates his world with mythical creatures from pagan (Greco-Roman) sources. Lewis was very definitely a Christian when he wrote Narnia, and very definitely teaches very strong Christian messages.
Oops: "There is wine, but none of the heroes do not allow alcohol to impair their judgment" should be "There is wine, but none of the heroes allow alcohol to impair their judgment.."
Drugs: The little bottle that one of the girls... Susan (?) carries around.
Child Nudity: They help a little girl out of her tight clothes after they liberate the school.
Drinking: They make the wine sound appealing to children by making it sound like grape jelly.
Paganism: Aslan can be interpreted as the Sun God as well as Jesus. Jesus wasn't the only avatar to be resurrected.
And Pan and Bacchus appear In Carne.
Drugs: That little bottle that Lucy carries around is a healing salve. It is less describable as a drug than is aspirin.
Child Nudity: And you think that means the girl frolicked about nude?
Drinking: O no! He describes wine as tasting good!
Paganism: There's a lot more behind Aslan as Christ than the fact he resurrected.
Since I find it highly unlikely that someone would read all seven books of a series he disliked, I'm guessing you got these objections from some sort of a tract. If so (and my apologies if I'm wrong), I would recommend that you never judge literature based on a screeding tract.
OOps, I missed one:
Bacchanalia is held as something immoral inasmuch as it is presumed to be include immoral revelry. The appearance of Bacchus does not warrant condemning the books on the charge of Bacchanalia, since there not only is no immoral behavior going on, but the children are warned against such behavior.
Another movie better than the book -- Primal Fear.
They actually cut out most of the preachy lefty politics and sex -- I didn't know Hollywood could do that!
"Not to bash Lewis - one of the greatest Christian thinkers of the 20th Century, but I'm pretty sure these books were written for his neice, before he was converted."
No, Lewis was one of the Inklings, who read their works to each other, and was quite influnenced by Tolkien's mythopoesy in what he wrote. Indeed, some of the language and concepts he uses in his stories come straight from Tolkienian "Elvish", which Tolkien didn't publish. Had Tolkien's son not assembled his papers and letters and correspondence with Lewis and others after Tolkien's death, the only echo in print of much of the things that Tolkien composed would be in their reflections through the pen of Lewis, in Narnia and elsewhere.
Lewis considered these references to Tolkienian constructions a TRIBUTE to the man (who had not yet, at that point, published Lord of the Rings) and not a plagiarism.
But these are details that only an English professor could love, so perhaps we should drop it and just say that Narnia was heavily influenced by the imagination of JRR Tolkien.
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