i'm a little bored right now....
so i thought i'd share my thoughts on narnia 3!
if you know me at all, you know that i love narnia. truly. like, wish it were a real place love it. sometimes i think it would be so wonderful to walk with aslan and talk with the animals and be friends with the pevensies and prince caspian. to find a magical land through a wardrobe or a picture frame...for further evidence, see this and this.
i loved the first movie (the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe) -- i thought it was soo well done, and they followed the book really well. prince caspian was not quite as successful....in fact, i was really upset when i saw it (at midnight). i felt they had changed the book and added some stuff that was unnecessary (see those thoughts here). however, the movie grew on me, and i now love it just as much as the first one. so i was quite excited when someone decided to make voyage of the dawn treader after it had been dropped by its studio.
voyage is a wonderful book about a journey. really, it's just a collection of little adventures that happen along the way, on a quest to find the 7 lost lords of narnia. it really is soo good, though.
i kept up with the stuff coming out about the movie, and i knew going into seeing this movie that they had changed A LOT. in caspian, they changed a few little details to make the story work better for the screen. it appeared that they were changing the entire plot of the book for this movie -- including the addition of an evil force trying to take over narnia and needing sacrifices to be appeased. so i had fully prepared myself to not like this movie.
well, today i finally saw it. i knew it was going to be out of theaters soon, so i took myself to the movies to see it. and i wasn't very impressed.
there movie had its moments. a few funny places. eustace killed it -- he really did a great job portraying such a spoiled kid. i loved the interaction between reepicheep and eustace the dragon. i was glad they kept aslan's line at the end where he tells lucy and edmund that they must learn to know him by his name in their world. i thought the way they showed the picture taking them into narnia was creative. and the scenes where lucy wanted to be beautiful like susan were well done. the message throughout the movie was "you are special. you have a purpose." in fact, aslan said to lucy that in wishing to be like susan, she wished herself away and changed the course of the pevensie's lives -- the others never would have known about narnia were it not for her. and reep encouraged dragon eustace by saying he had a purpose as a dragon and that he needed to have courage and go for it.
but goodness gracious. the movie had a very dark feel to it, with the sacrificing of people and an evil mist toying with them all. they changed the whole entire plot. there were no seven swords needed to save narnia. there was no stowaway little girl on the dawn treader. the slave market scene was so much better in the book, with caspian coming in to the rescue as king, not his men in disguise doing it. no one was being sacrificed. eustace was not a dragon for the majority of the story. dark island is not where they met the sea serpent. none of the islands had names before the narnians got to them. the dufflepuds didn't kidnap lucy at night. coriakin didn't show them the danger they were encountering. the movie didn't at all say what happened to caspian and the rest of the narnians after lucy, edmund and eustace went home. and a lot of other little things. on top of all that, you could tell they tried to do it in 3d (i saw it regular) and that it probably failed on that front. the whole thing -- acting, plot, filming, location -- all of it seemed contrived, forced, weak, and certainly not magical.
all that said....if i look at it as just a movie, having nothing at all to do with the book, then it is a little more enjoyable. i probably will buy it when it comes out, to complete the series.
it was entertaining to some degree, but it didn't feel like narnia.
at least, it doesn't yet. there's always the hope that it will grow on me just as caspian did :)
so i thought i'd share my thoughts on narnia 3!
if you know me at all, you know that i love narnia. truly. like, wish it were a real place love it. sometimes i think it would be so wonderful to walk with aslan and talk with the animals and be friends with the pevensies and prince caspian. to find a magical land through a wardrobe or a picture frame...for further evidence, see this and this.
i loved the first movie (the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe) -- i thought it was soo well done, and they followed the book really well. prince caspian was not quite as successful....in fact, i was really upset when i saw it (at midnight). i felt they had changed the book and added some stuff that was unnecessary (see those thoughts here). however, the movie grew on me, and i now love it just as much as the first one. so i was quite excited when someone decided to make voyage of the dawn treader after it had been dropped by its studio.
voyage is a wonderful book about a journey. really, it's just a collection of little adventures that happen along the way, on a quest to find the 7 lost lords of narnia. it really is soo good, though.
i kept up with the stuff coming out about the movie, and i knew going into seeing this movie that they had changed A LOT. in caspian, they changed a few little details to make the story work better for the screen. it appeared that they were changing the entire plot of the book for this movie -- including the addition of an evil force trying to take over narnia and needing sacrifices to be appeased. so i had fully prepared myself to not like this movie.
well, today i finally saw it. i knew it was going to be out of theaters soon, so i took myself to the movies to see it. and i wasn't very impressed.
there movie had its moments. a few funny places. eustace killed it -- he really did a great job portraying such a spoiled kid. i loved the interaction between reepicheep and eustace the dragon. i was glad they kept aslan's line at the end where he tells lucy and edmund that they must learn to know him by his name in their world. i thought the way they showed the picture taking them into narnia was creative. and the scenes where lucy wanted to be beautiful like susan were well done. the message throughout the movie was "you are special. you have a purpose." in fact, aslan said to lucy that in wishing to be like susan, she wished herself away and changed the course of the pevensie's lives -- the others never would have known about narnia were it not for her. and reep encouraged dragon eustace by saying he had a purpose as a dragon and that he needed to have courage and go for it.
but goodness gracious. the movie had a very dark feel to it, with the sacrificing of people and an evil mist toying with them all. they changed the whole entire plot. there were no seven swords needed to save narnia. there was no stowaway little girl on the dawn treader. the slave market scene was so much better in the book, with caspian coming in to the rescue as king, not his men in disguise doing it. no one was being sacrificed. eustace was not a dragon for the majority of the story. dark island is not where they met the sea serpent. none of the islands had names before the narnians got to them. the dufflepuds didn't kidnap lucy at night. coriakin didn't show them the danger they were encountering. the movie didn't at all say what happened to caspian and the rest of the narnians after lucy, edmund and eustace went home. and a lot of other little things. on top of all that, you could tell they tried to do it in 3d (i saw it regular) and that it probably failed on that front. the whole thing -- acting, plot, filming, location -- all of it seemed contrived, forced, weak, and certainly not magical.
all that said....if i look at it as just a movie, having nothing at all to do with the book, then it is a little more enjoyable. i probably will buy it when it comes out, to complete the series.
it was entertaining to some degree, but it didn't feel like narnia.
at least, it doesn't yet. there's always the hope that it will grow on me just as caspian did :)
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