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Topic:
The Narnia Thread: "Prince Caspian"
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Valkor
Registered:
Jun '02
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 7:57am
Subject:
The Narnia Thread: "Prince Caspian"
- Date Edited:
6/4 1:33pm (9 edits total)
Edited By:
Zaz
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So Disney and Co are finally going to bring this to the big screen (w/ Shrek Producers) I can't wait! I think these books are just as loved, if not more so than Tolkiens! Thumbs up!
Discuss.
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NeoStar9
Registered:
Mar '02
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 8:08am
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
- Date Edited:
3/2/04 8:08am (1 edits total)
Edited By:
NeoStar9
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Cool. They had already done TV movies years ago. They aired on the Disney Channel. The first two novels and then Silver Chair along with the novel after that I believe. I really wish I could get a hold of them. If anyone knows anything let me know please. I love the series of novels. Really looking forward to what a big budget movie version would look like. 
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itchytasty79
Registered:
Oct '01
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 8:16am
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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From the CNN website: " 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' has many fantasy elements," Walden Media CEO Cary Granat said. "It is a film that has unbelievably great scenes for families, with four kids who leave a world consumed by war that they have no control over only to enter a world where a war is raging in which their actions are crucial to the outcome. It says a lot about empowerment and fractured families coming together."
I'm not quite sure how to feel about this. Lewis' Narnia books are heavily laden with allegory. Many people do not like his blatant use of allegory, but I rather enjoy it. I wonder if Disney will leave the overall message of the books or will try to change it. Notice that Granat said nothing about the strongly Christian message behind his stories.
Of course it could be that the message will remain. They cannot rewrite the story entirely like in Sleepy Hollow, The Scarlet Letter, etc., can they?
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Bib Fortuna, Twi'lek
Registered:
Jul '99
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 9:20am
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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Any news on casting yet? I think Dakota Fanning could be a good Lucy.
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Ty-gon Jinn
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 12:28pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
- Date Edited:
3/2/04 12:35pm (3 edits total)
Edited By:
Ty-gon Jinn
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Lewis' Narnia books are heavily laden with allegory.
I'm not sure I agree with you there, itchytasty79. I mean, yes, obviously, Aslan is a Christ figure, and so the Christian themes run heavy through the entire series. I don't think that makes it allegory.
One of the things people tend to do is call a lot of things allegory that really aren't... very little in literature really is allegory. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress springs to mind, but it's really the only one. For example a lot of people call Moby-Dick allegory, but so much of it is ambiguous that there's no real allegorical meaning that can be easily nailed down. Moby-Dick is heavy with symbolism, but not with allegory. Tolkien hated that fact that some people called his work allegory because of the Christian themes running through it... yes, there were such things, since Tolkien was a devout Catholic, but he set out to write mythology, not allegory (and if we were to take the Middle-Earth tales as truly allegorical, we'd have to imagine that Mr. Tolkien believed in three seperate Satans and at least four seperate people who, considered together, could be the historical Christ).
The fictional works of C.S. Lewis come out on the other side. People rush to call it allegory, but I think they need to recognize that sometimes, what's presented isn't exactly symbolism at all. Obviously, Aslan is a Christ figure, but he so much as says so himself -- and I don't just mean the "There is no other spring" exchange in The Silver Chair, but... oh, let me find it.
"You are too old, children," said Aslan, "and you must begin to come close to your own world now."
"It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -- are you there too, sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."
That's from the very end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Aslan isn't an allegorical symbol for Christ, he IS Christ as He would appear in this fantasy world. It's one of my pet peeves that people use the world allegory to refer to out-and-out religious content. Of course, it a simplistic representation of Christ, but they are children's books, after all.
It's the same way with Lewis' Space Trilogy. I've seen people say that "Maleldil" is obviously a Christ figure, when it seems obvious to me that he's not a "figure" at all, but just the name given to Christ in the alien language.
That said, onto the topic of the movie...
I'm not sure how I feel. Disney's liable to butcher the themes, but if they do a good job, I'd very much enjoy it. I can only hope that, if it's done well, they do the whole series, but if it's crap, that they have enough sense to stop after one. Whatever happens, I'd hate to see just two or three books made into movies and the rest ignored. (By the way, NeoStar9, how could the Disney channel do The Silver Chair without Voyage of the Dawn Treader? Eustace wouldn't make much sense, would he?)
I guess I'll just have to wait and see the previews.
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Motee
Registered:
Sep '03
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 1:34pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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The first two books from the TV series are available on DVD in Australia, Neo. If you have a multi-region DVD player you could source them from Australia.
This should be a good movie in they don't Americanize it. 
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BlueTrooper
Registered:
Feb '04
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 1:41pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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They are going to New Zealandize it since they are filming it there.
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jp-30
Registered:
Dec '00
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 2:18pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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You mean the same way they "New Zealandised" Lord of the Rings and The Last Samurai?
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Bria
Title: Manager Emeritus
-MNFF Council
Registered:
May '99
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 2:36pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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I need to get around to reading these books. I've heard a lot about them, just have never actually picked them up.
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halibut
Title: GSA
RICHARDSON/Forum Feud Champion
Registered:
Aug '00
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 3:52pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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Ty-gon Jinn:
Aslan is not Christ, because he is called Aslan, and is a lion, not a human
His acts directly parallel those of Christ (He lays down his life to save the soul of Edmund, and is resurrected), but in a different context. This is what an allegory is! It is the same with Animal Farm. The events directly parallel those of Russia, but with different names and in a different context.
The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe IS an allegorical story of Christ, and the redemption of man. This is why CS Lewis wrote the book.
A feature film MUST recognise this and bring it to the forefront, but to say it is not allegoral is nonsense.
It clearly is linked with Christ's story (as you stated), but makes no mention of that, and is set in a different context, hence it is an allegory
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Stormtrooper_Shrink
Registered:
Feb '04
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 5:25pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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Before I got immersed in Star Wars I was reading these books. They are FANFTASTIC! I still read them, and I love them.
The allegorical parts of the story are to draw in kids to think about religion, and IMO, Aslan is Christ. Narnia is a parallel universe, but God spreads through all planes of existence, and therefore exists in Narnia as The Lion.
At least, that's the way I read it. If you really want to go deep into the story, you can read Narnia as a world that was created for the Pevensies kids and their friends' redemption. It worked very well, except in the case of Susan.
Anyway, I am looking forward to these movies. And Dakota Fanning WOULD NOT make a good Lucy. Lucy is supposed to be cute and winning (has anyone seen the BBC versions - that child for Lucy was pretty terribly cast) and I don't think she is in the least.
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Ty-gon Jinn
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 8:03pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
- Date Edited:
3/2/04 9:08pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Ty-gon Jinn
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halibut: If you want to see my point, look one post down, and see a point made by Stormtrooper_Shrink. The allegorical parts of the story are to draw in kids to think about religion, and IMO, Aslan is Christ. Narnia is a parallel universe, but God spreads through all planes of existence, and therefore exists in Narnia as The Lion.
She's exactly right. Aslan is the way Christ is manifested in Narnia (he's not exactly a lion, either... during the Chronicles, he appeared in a few different forms, both as multiple lions in The Horse and His Boy and as a lamb in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). As I said, it's a children's book, so the sacrifice he makes for Edmund is a more simplistic version of the basic Christ story, but that doesn't change the fact that Aslan shows himself to be an authority in the world the children really live in (London included), as I showed in the last post. Beyond that, Lucy in The Last Battle acknowledges Christ as the authority in their own world ("Yes," said Queen Lucy. "In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.")
When you're working with a fictional universe, you can incorporate real things in a symbolic fashion, but it's supposed to BE Christ, rather than just REPRESENTING Christ. In that way, it's not allegory.
Oh, and by the way, he didn't write The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe specifically to write a Christ-story. He wrote it to provide a fairy-tale for his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield. The Christian themes were added along the way, since he was such a profound Christian thinker. If the intent was simply to provide an allegory for the story of Christ, he could have stopped after the first book, since Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Horse and His Boy have no allegorical connotations from Christianity, except for the Christ-figure significance of Aslan.
I would have to agree with Stormtrooper_Shrink's point about Dakota Fanning, too. I actually hated I Am Sam, mainly because I was unable to like Lucy Diamond (that's probably why Dakota Fanning sprang to someone's mind... because she was already associated with the name Lucy).
EDIT: Putting an S in front of He to avoid offending Stormtrooper_Shrink...
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Keeper_of_Swords
Registered:
Sep '03
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 8:10pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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I liked The Boy and his Horse most.
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Ty-gon Jinn
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 8:12pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
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Yeah, Keeper_Of_Swords, The Horse and His Boy was, I think, my favorite, too.
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Stormtrooper_Shrink
Registered:
Feb '04
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 8:59pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
- Date Edited:
3/2/04 9:07pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Stormtrooper_Shrink
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Indeed, it is the best. Lasaraleen was sooo cool! i know someone just like her!
Mate, I'm a she, dammit!!!!! And it's cool that you're another Narnia buff, like me, Tygon. Tell me, when you wrote those quotes, did you do it all from memory, or did you rush to your shelves and drag out the books to copy it. If the latter, that's something I thought only I could do. I have a rival on the horizon!
But the Narnia books are a great read whatever way you look at it.
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Ty-gon Jinn
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
3/2/04 9:05pm
Subject:
RE: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie = Much Joy
- Date Edited:
3/2/04 9:10pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Ty-gon Jinn
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I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth (or keyboard, as the case may be), Stormtrooper_Shrink. I just meant that I thought you were right about the fact that since God is a part of all existence, Aslan would be how He is manifest in Narnia. I don't think it's a full-blown Christ story either; that's one of the reason I don't think it's really an allegory.
And you're also right... whether you consider it a full-blown allegory, a piece ripe with symbolism, a fairy tale with real religious content (my view), or any other way to look at it, it's a good read in any case.
I always liked the interaction between Aslan and the kids in The Horse and His Boy... and the characters of the horses. Bree and Hwin are great characters.
EDIT: Ack, I'm sorry. I should really look at profiles before I use pronouns.
EDIT #2: I could do the Lucy quote from The Last Battle from memory, but I had to dig out The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. By the way, I'm a Lewis junkie in general. Ever read the Space Trilogy?
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