Everything's Already Been Said About the Movie...

...so I'll just add a few small points.

To the prop department: if it was so important that we see Peter's face during the climactic battle, why did you give him a helmet with a visor? He looked like a total prat lifting it up and lowering it down every five seconds.

To the hair department: kindly arrange for the prompt execution of the person who designed Jim Broadbent's hairpieces.

To everyone involved with the production at all its stages: was it actually your intention to ship Lucy and Mr. Tumnus?

And the film itself? Is exactly as I had surmised it would be the first time I saw a trailer--Narnia by way of The Lord of the Rings. Which means that it fails not only because an approach that works for one of these works will fail for the other, but because the production lacked the sheer amount of determined, devotedly fannish craftsmanship that gave the Lord of the Rings films their unforgettable look--starting with the fake-looking, plastic weapons and ending with the simple fact that no one was willing to sacrifice their lunch break in order to teach the kid who played Peter how to hold his sword. The result, therefore, is perfectly fine for an afternoon out with the kids, but as an adaptation will seem thin and unsatisfactory even to people like myself, who aren't deeply in love with Narnia.

Oh, and whoever decided to cast Liam Neeson as Aslan? Needs to die.

Comments

Abigail Nussbaum said…
Well, obviously I can't replicate your experiment, but I really don't think Aslan's looks were my problem (not that they weren't a problem. They just weren't the deal-breaker as far as I was concerned). Neeson's voice put me in mind of a kindly Sunday school teacher. Aslan should be awe-inspiring, and Neeson's voice was just nice.

Either way, can we agree that the grandeur of Aslan was not conveyed by the film?
December 26, 2005 1:57 AM

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 2023 Hugo Awards: Somehow, It Got Worse

The last month has been a busy one in Hugo and Worldcon fandom. After the shock of the much-belated 2023 nominating stats, and their revelation of serious irregularities in the compilation of the award's ballot, there was a great ferment of conversation and action. Mainstream publications have caught wind of the scandal and publicized it far and wide . Turnover in the few permanent committees that oversee the Hugo trademark and intellectual property has been high . The poor folks at the upcoming Glasgow Worldcon have been scrambling to respond to the evolving situation and to distance themselves from the previous committee—including, most recently, making a laconic announcement that they would refuse any of Chengdu's passalong funds, the budgetary surplus that is traditionally bequeathed from one Worldcon to the next. And stats nerds—of which this community is, unsurprisingly, blessed with a surfeit—have been furiously crunching the nominations numbers and EPH calculations...
Read more

The 2023 Hugo Awards: Now With an Asterisk

It's been a while since we've had one of these dramas. On Saturday, the nominating stats for the 2023 Hugo awards, which were announced in Chengdu, China in October 2023, were released to the public . There was a great deal of anticipation for these numbers, in no small part because of their much-delayed release. Though the WSFS constitution permits Hugo administrators to wait as long as 90 days before releasing the voting and nominating stats, most Hugo teams have them ready to go within minutes of the ceremony's conclusion. Chengdu, in contrast, waited the full allotted period, and even went a little bit over (the voting stats were released separately in December). Once the stats were released, it quickly became clear why the Chengdu Hugo team were hesitant to make them public. There are any number of irregularities and questionable choices in this document that suggest everything from erratic voter behavior, to incompetent collation and calculation of the nomination rank...
Read more

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The first thing that must be said about this movie is that it should not work. It's a prequel to one of the most mind-blowing, groundbreaking, and just plain revolutionary action movies of the 21st century—and prequels are a bad idea in most cases, but all the more so when the character they revolve around has already given you their entire backstory in their original introduction, which is also the final, culminating act of their character arc. (To put it another way, if you had asked me, nine years ago, which character I thought offered more fertile ground for prequel storytelling, Imperator Furiosa or Han Solo, I would have picked Han without a moment's hesitation, and I don't even like Han that much.) And it's a follow-up to a movie whose chief virtue lies in its conciseness—in being a single, drawn-out, pulse-pounding, increasingly deranged car chase. Which means you can either try to repeat that accomplishment, which will inevitably feel a bit old hat; or you can ...
Read more