The Chronicles of Narnia

Without any explanation, and off the top of my head (which are both unusual), here is my ranking of The Chronicles of Narnia.  Do you agree?

1. The Horse and His Boy
2. The Last Battle
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. The Magician's Nephew
5. The Silver Chair
6. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
7. Prince Caspian

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The latest Narnia film is the best, but the least faithful to the book.  It is the best, in fact, partly because it is the least faithful to the book.  Allow me to explain by means of a short review and some comments on adapting novels to films.

The latest Narnia film is good.  Its particular strengths are:

• Peter is gone.  This is the biggest strength, because William Moseley was shocking.
• The effects look good, on a par with Prince Caspian, which is an improvement on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
• There is only one lame gag (when Eustace faints after seeing a minotaur).
• Eustace (Will Poulter) is excellent.  Fact.
• The adaptation is good (see below).

Its weaknesses are:

• The adaptation is not perfect (see below).
• William Moseley's face appears on screen at one point.
• They're still trying to force romance into the films.
• At the end of the day, the stories aren't outstanding - what makes the books so good is the theological depth.  This depth is seen to an extent in the films but is limited.

The adaptation:

The book is essentially a series of tenuously connected island episodes.  It has very little plot.  The overarching storyline is the search for the seven lost lords, and it's just not very good.  The film needed to adapt this plot.  Therefore they added into a driving force to the plot and changed the order of the islands.

The driving force that was introduced was the idea of an evil dark island (the island of nightmares from the book), which produced a green mist which acted as the embodiment of evil throughout the film.  The quest was to find the seven swords of the seven lords, which would enable to dark island and the mist to be destroyed.  The mist was introduced at the lone islands and explained at the dufflepud island.  Then came deathwater island and dragon island (merged into one island), Ramandu's island and dark island - the order is changed to make the plot work.

Other than that, the incidents at the islands are similar to in the book.  The exceptions are that the Lone Islands section is condensed, so the overthrow of Gumpas and appointment of Lord Bern is excluded, and that Ramandu does not feature, his daughter takes his place.  Both of these are mistakes.  The Lone Islands now seem rushed and the only reason for Ramandu's exclusion is that his daughter is prettier.

The adaptation gave the story drive, momentum and purpose and gave it more of a climax than the book.

If this film had stuck to the book like the first one did, it would be a very poor film.  What works in books doesn't always work in film, obviously.  Prince Caspian did the same thing - it is the weakest of the seven books, because very little happens, so the film-makers fleshed it out with an extra couple of battles.  To the purists out there, this is called adaptation.  It is necessary.  LOTR did exactly the same thing, e.g. the removal of Tom Bombadil.  Adaptation sometimes works well and sometimes doesn't.  With The Dawn Treader, it generally worked well.  Not perfectly, but well.

Random Humour

Christianity magazine sometimes has little cartoons. I found a couple of old ones which amused me...

(shown as a bookshelf)
Apocryphal books of the Bible not included in the final shortlist:
The Letter to the Editor
Psalm Like It Hot
Ready Steady Habakkuk
The Proverbs of Nancy
The Epistle to the Epistlonians
The Book of 1st Class Stamps
The Book of ASDA
The DaVinci Code: Revealed
The Gospel According to Gary
The Axe of the Apostles
The Catalogue of Argos
The Guinness Book of Records
The Illustrated 4th Book of Moses, commonly known as Painting by Numbers
The Jokes of John the Baptist - "You'll Laugh Your Head Off"


(with a picture of CS Lewis working at his desk)
One Evening, C.S. Lewis is struck by a brilliant idea for a series of books...
The Chronicles of Banarnaramia:
The Magician's Nostril
The Iron, the Fridge and the Bathrobe
The Horse and His Boil
Prince Caspar the Friendly Ghost
The Voyage of Dawn French
The Silver Stairlift
The Second to Last Battle
The Last Battle
The Timetable of the Last Train to Battle

Prince Caspian – The Good and the Bad

I’ve seen the latest Narnia film twice now. I often have to watch films twice before working out what I think of them, especially films which I care about a lot, such as those adapted from books of which I am a fan. Here is what I thought of the film, divided into the good and the bad.

The Good

1. It’s a good story. The book is good, and the filmmakers adapted it well. The major plot change from the book was the assault on Miraz’s castle, and I thought it worked well. It was an excellent action set-piece and also fleshed out Peter’s and Caspian’s characters a lot.

2. The visuals were excellent. Obviously it was filmed in New Zealand so the scenery is quite spectacular, but I thought the CGI was also very good, where it hadn’t been in places in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. There was a large variety of creatures, which all looked good, and sets such as Aslan’s How and Miraz’s castle look awesome.

3. As an action film, it really delivers. Two big set-piece battles are both well thought out and original. There is even one tactic I doubt anyone has even thought of before!

4. It didn’t try to be LOTR. When I saw the trailer I thought it looked similar to a lot of things in Rings, but it’s most definitely different. Obviously there are parallels, both being fantasy novels written by two best friends. But Caspian is very much its own film and doesn’t try to live up to LOTR. I feel this is critical, to distance itself from such an epic.

5. The religious themes and analogies are not avoided, and there are quite a lot of interesting ideas in the script. It’s been over a decade since I read the books so I’m not sure how much of this was original to the film and how much is from CS Lewis, but either way, it gives the film a nice theological edge.

6. The acting (in general) was good. Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Anna Popplewell and Ben Barnes all do a good job (though restricted by the script – see below), and the adult cast are all very competent in their roles.

7. The ending song (The Call, by Regina Spektor) is as good an ending song as I’ve heard apart from LOTR. It fits perfectly with the knowledge that Peter and Susan won’t be returning, and contributes a great deal to reason 8…

8. The sense of loss at the end of the film is very poignant. It is built up from the very beginning with the Pevensies, developing what they go through in living the double life between England and Narnia, and concludes in the final scene as they return to England, the older two for the final time. I found I could really empathise with them. I can't remember the last film that made me feel like that.

The Bad

1. William Moseley is often not convincing as Peter. It’s hard to know how much is due to him and how much to the director, but he just seems to be taking himself to seriously. I know this is part of Peter’s character, but it’s just not convincingly done.

2. The infamous romance between Caspian and Susan is a little silly to be honest. It’s added in to try to give extra interest, but it’s really not needed and doesn’t really work. It looks like it’s just there to keep the little girls happy (which, to be blunt, it probably is).

3. The script is inconsistent in its quality. Bits are good, but bits are very poor. It feels like they ran out of time and interest in the writing stage. This makes it difficult for the actors at times.

4. The filmmakers tried to cram in too much comic relief. The banter between the Pevensies is good and works well, but many lines from the Narnians just aren’t funny if you’re any older than 8, and some of them are just stupid.

Many of the downsides to the film are a consequence of it being a family film, but I really do think the silly one-liners and romance could be removed and the film still be appealing to kids. But overall, the film was good. I thought it was more exciting and convincing than the first one, and I was significantly moved by it. The plot was great, the pace was fine, the action was exciting. Bring on The Dawn Treader!

P.S. This film had an ‘epilogue’ section nearly as long as that at the end of Return of the King…I wonder if anyone will be complaining about this one? (see earlier post from May 14^th)

P.P.S. Interesting trivia: Actor Warwick Davies (Nikabrik) portrayed the characters Reepicheep and Glimfeather in the BBC productions of Prince Caspian and The Voyage of The Dawn Treader (1989) and The Silver Chair (1990).