Narnia

[telophase]

Just finished watching Narnia and ... ya know, I never got into it. I spent most of my time wandering around the apartment and tormenting the cat and checking to see how much longer the movie had to go. I didn't get into any of the characters, wondered why all the denizens of Narnia accepted the humans as their rulers for no other reason that "Aslan said so," and wondered why, as I always do when confronted with anthropomorphic animals and nonhuman races in children's fiction, good and evil are always divided along species lines. It bothered the hell out of me in Brian Jacques' books because I think that "They're evil because they're weasels!" is a stupid way to go, and that's why I stopped reading his books, and why I put down any book that seems to be heading towards a species divide in morality.

I haven't read the Narnia books in a good long time - I bought an omnibus edition of them and plan on taking it on the cruise with me - but is Susan anything other than Queen Susan the Bloody Useless in the book? I vaguely remember that in the final one she didn't get to join in with everyone else because in the real world she'd become interested in boys and makeup and stuff like that, and there being a lot of to-do somewhere areound LJ about that.

And now I'm heading to bed. I'm at the point in the cold where it tends to settle in my throat and make me feel like I've got something stuck in there, which feels even worse when I lie down. OH JOY.

Comments

[scorpionocean.livejournal.com]

ugh Narnia. I want those 2 hours of my life back. The girls sucked. I mean they had weapons and all that jazz and maybe ONE arrow was shot. The little girl had a dagger, she should've been running around stabbing animals in the knees or something. Wtf. Boooo

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I forgave Lucy not doing anything during the fighting when she started to go take care of the wounded at the end, because that's a perfectly respectable thing to do (although it would be nice to see a boy doing it instead of a girl occasionally), but Susan got a token arrow shot and other than that, spent the entire battle moping over Aslan ... when I hadn't gotten anything from the movie that would make the tight bond to Aslan make sense (well, other than knowing it was a Christian allegory and they're taking the place of the women weeping at the tomb of Jesus, but it makes no sense otherwise).

[taer-silveroak.livejournal.com]

Looks like it's time for some Weasel stompin.

It's pretty graphic in it's claymation-ish performance... but that's Weird Al for ya.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAqqwCJ9u5g

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was ... special.

XD

[taer-silveroak.livejournal.com]

lol XD

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad someone else had this reaction. When the movie hit theaters, my flist was all a-squee over it, and when I got the DVD I was bored and felt guilty.

Now I feel less guilty.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I read a lot of squeeing about it too, and now I'm pretty glad I didn't go see it in the theatre, because at least this way I could make fun of it out loud while it was on. :)

The Problem of Susan

[amberley.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaiman addresses that in his short story "The Problem of Susan" conveniently just collected in Fragile Things, along with "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire", and other stories with title lengths somewhere between those.

I liked Voyage of the Dawn Treader but mostly for Reepicheep and the nature of Dragons, not the kid baggage. Instead of cruising with Narnia, what about Pamela Dean's The Secret Country / The Hidden Land / The Whim of the Dragon trilogy instead?

Re: The Problem of Susan

[telophase.livejournal.com]

And coincidentally I have a copy of Fragile Things sitting right here in my Take With Me pile for vacation. XD Yay!

I read The Secret Country long and long ago, but have never been able to get back into it since.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Hmm, Narnia the books and movie have christian values and fantasy (C.S. Lewis did that quite deliberately, much like Tolkien did, as we know from their Inklings writings): some other young adult books in that vein hold up better to repeat reading, I believe (although I don't think the Christian background is as strong) - Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence(there are five of them).

I hope you have read them, if not you've missed out ^^. These started me on reading English in the original since the only one translated into German was the second book (The Dark is Rising) and I needed to know all about it.

http://www.thelostland.com/darksequence.htm

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I knew that Lewis was writing Christian allegory (although as a kid, I totally missed it XD). We had to read Out of the Silent Planet in highschool, which is another of this allegories, although I don't remember much of it.

I read Susan Cooper's books a long time ago and loved them to death, although it's now been long enough that I don't remember anything about them other than that I loved them. XD

[usmangaka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Narnia sucked. I remember loving the books when I was a kid, but the movie was a huge disapointment. Reinforces my belief that I should ignore any and all movies in which children are the main stars... Still haven't bothered to watch any of the Harry Potter movies.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Hee. :) I enjoyed the Harry Potter movies, although they tend to suffer from the screnwriter and director being too afraid to toss out even more of the book to make it work as a movie - in a two or three-hour movie, you can really only do a short story or novella's worth of book, and when you've got a huge novel to film, you *have* to get rid of most of it. So the movies' pacing is too fast and you don't get much time to develop characters or their relationships.

[edric00.livejournal.com]

Susan is pretty useless. I don't remember her doing much in "Prince Caspian." In anycase, I'm a fan of Narnia, but disappointed in the movies. In my opinion, it suffered from the director and/or producer forgetting that Narnia is NOT Middle Earth and shouldn't be treated that way.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It's pretty obvious it got big-budget funding because of the success of Harry Potter and LotR, and even in the titling they were leaving it open for possibly doing more of the books if Narnia was a success. (And they might - I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that even the worst of kids movies tended to profit because of the video-rental and -buying market, because kids would watch them over and over and over again.)

[smithereen.livejournal.com]

I reread The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when the movie came out, and it wasn't as good as I remembered it being when I was a kid. As far as uselessness, I think it's worse in the books. There's a bit when Santa gives them their presents, and he tells Susan and Lucy that they shouldn't really use the weapons he gives them cause they're wimpy girls and the battlefield is no place for them. I liked Prince Caspian better because the kids got to actually DO THINGS a bit more, and Susan does get to show off her archery skill a little in that one I think, but yeah...she remains mostly useless.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Ah well. Maybe I'll skim through TLTW&TW and start in on reading the others. XD

[derjmeister.livejournal.com]

I agree wholeheartedly. Like, there was no reason for me to root for any of the characters other than I've read the book and know they're supposed to be good (and children are inherently good unless they're bullies who pick on good children) and that the ugly monsters are all bad. I didn't connect with any of the kids, though I think that one thing the movie did better than the book was give this story a sense of setting, what with all the war references in the beginning. A lot of people I know were absolutely freaking out over this movie, but I wasn't impressed at all. Okay, they managed to make a pretty CGI lion. Big deal. The whole thing was like watching a video game cutscene.

The thing that annoyed me the most, though, was that they spent a billion dollars on a pretty CGI lion, but they used SOAPFLAKES for the snow. That was jarring. Watch when the kids first show up in the wardrobe, they have "snowflakes" all stuck to them. Real snow melts pretty quickly when it comes in contact with something warm (which skin is and which the kids would be if they were in a warm place previously). I guess this WAS a movie for kids, but they really dropped the ball on that particular detail, IMO. It should be easier to make realistic snow than it is to make a pretty CGI lion.

Bahhhh. I liked the books when I was a kid, but I was a kid. I liked Brian Jacques' books, too, until I figured out that he was writing the exact same book over and over again. In Outcast of Redwall, there's a weasel or ferret or something who is raised at the abby, but he's still just as much of a murderous brat as any other weasel, more or less. Except at the very end where he OF COURSE has a small change of heart or something (I hope that's not too much of a spoiler), but it's more of an obligatory LOOK AT WHAT LOVE CAN DO EVEN TO EVIL and is really kind of out of place.