narnia - a review

I went to see The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe with my wife and some friends of ours on Saturday night. I have a few thoughts which I'll drop here (I don't want to say too much to taint your own experience):

1. Book-to-film review: The filmmakers did a pretty solid job of following the original story within the book. The book itself is rather short, so I knew that there had to be some sort of embellishment to make the movie feature-length. A few adventure scenes were added (a thawing waterfall scene) and the battle was greatly embellished. All in all, I was pleased with the decisions made.
2. Children's movie? The movie itself was pretty violent at certain parts. Lewis refrained from exposing his audience of mostly children to the violence that would have necessarily happened. For instance, in the book, Lewis describes the slaying of Aslan as follows: "The children did not see the actual moment of the killing. They couldn't bear to look and had covered their eyes." Not so in the film. You see the full brunt of the evil nature of the Witch and her army. Lewis also refrained from gory details of the battle, but the movie presented the battle as it would have occurred (thankfully, no unnecessary blood and gore was used). Definitely not for children under a certain age to see.
3. Cinematography, effects, etc. The film was definitely not on the same budget level as LOTR. If you go planning to see another Frodo adventure, you're in for a let-down. Though the movie was clearly done on a much smaller budget, the CGI, effects and editing wasn't distracting. All in all, it flowed well together and was enjoyable.
4. The Wookie. Yes, there's a Wookie in the movie. Toward the end of the battle, after Aslan kills the Witch, he breaths on a statue and brings to life what looks to be a Wookie. I'm not the only one who thought this. Kim leaned over to me and asked: "Is that a Wookie?" right as I was about to say: "Looks like Chewbacca!" In a conversation with my brother earlier today, a friend of his had the same observation. So... are there Wookies in Narnia??

All in all, a good film. A great one to see with your family, and an enjoyable one to see with friends. The allegory of Jesus's life, sacrificial death and resurrection that is so clear in the book is also evident in the film. (I don't see how you could watch this movie and not think about the story of Christ, unless you knew nothing about it in the first place.) On my usual scale of 1 to 10 (1 = "Constantine"; 9 = "The Matrix [first movie]"... I rarely give a "10"), I give this film a 7 for a great story, middle-of-the-road cinematography and consistency with the original work.

UPDATE (Sunday, December 18, 2005): I'm #1 in Google searches for "wookies in narnia" and the like. I posted about the wookie conspiracy and my being in the Google search today.

UPDATE (Thursday, December 29, 2005): I posted a link to a picture of the wookie.

Comments

[Marty Duren]

On to Kong!

[adam feldman]

marty~ never been a big kong fan. you'll have to tell me what you think.

[Rick Marshall]

Thanks Adam for the review. Our church has rented a local theater for us all to go see the movie Thursday night. The Chronicles of Narnia was a series I loved as a child and my children are reading the series now. They are pretty excited to see the movie. I'll let you know what I think after I see it this week.

[adam feldman]

sounds pretty sweet, rick! i'd be interested to know how you and your church community respond to the film...

[Someone from NarniaWeb]

Don't worry, it wasn't a wookie. It was a Satyr. ; )

[bridget alberts]

Hey,there! I do believe in Wookies, I do believe in wookies........so much so that I blurted, "That's Chewbacca!" in the middle of the theater. LucasFilm had a credit to the movie so I wouldn't be surprised. Did you see the "mini" kong as they were fanning thru the camp?

[bridget alberts]

I have one more question..........why did people freak out over the paganism of the Harry Potter series but welcome the Narnia movie? As a Christian myself, I can appreciate that C.S. Lewis was a devoted Christian, but it is still fantasy.

[adam feldman]

bridget~ glad someone else saw a wookie in the film. check out my most recent post. btw, wouldn't a "mini" kong just be a gurilla?

regarding your harry potter question, i think the distinguishing mark between the two is that lewis clearly wrote narnia as an allegory of the christ narrative; whereas, h.p. is simply a fantastical story.... um... with witches and warlocks that are celebrated & venerated and whom are not seen from the traditional judeo/christian perspective as crafters of the demonic and inherently evil (as they are portrayed in c.o.n., not to mention throughout the torah and new testamental writings as well).

perhaps that may be a start. i've thought of blogging about this same subject, but since i haven't read the h.p. books (i've only seen the films) and i haven't finished reading the c.o.n., i don't think i'm the best person to answer that at this point in time. what's your take?

[bridget alberts]

yeah, i guess you could call it a gorilla but proportionally it was too big to be mundane..........larger then a centuar. Therefore it is "mini" kong. he he he even giants have to start out as a baby.

[adam feldman]

:)