![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Due to the effusive praise from some quarters of my friend list, I would just like to state for the record that I did not like the Disney Narnia film which I had the misfortune of watching at 11pm last Friday.
I did not like it for the following reasons:
1) The entire thing felt hopelessly flat and soul-less to me.
2) Lucy was precisely the kind of small girl-child I am irrationally prejudiced against based soley on appearence. This is a flaw in me rather than the film.
3) Because of the insistance of Plot Plot Plot having to come first, the characterisation was all shallow and generally not very good, and the whole Aslan coming back from the dead thing had a definite "Would you bloody kids please stop paying attention so I can do my magic table-smashing thing and go 'surprise, not dead after all, just a joke, all friends now?'" air to it. The general air of shallowness was probably because it is a Childrens' Movie and so everything had to be patiently explained to the three-year-olds in the audience.
4) Susan was maligned continually for being vaguely intelligent and having the sense she was born with, and quite harshly criticised for attempting to make some actual sense of the world rather than just going along with whatever the random talking animals said. This angered me particularly because I could see the whole "anti-intellectual" wing of Christianity applauding and being happy about this and their children absorbing this attitude.
5) I don't care what anyone has said, the bit where Lucy goes home with Tumnus is *so increadibly WRONG* and not sweet and innocent at all, especially when he says "I used to play music for dryads and centaurs to have big wild orgies to! Would you like to hear some music, little girl?" and then sends her to sleepand rapes her and she wakes up all "you wouldn't hurt me would you?" and I'm all "yes, yes he would little girl, run! get out of there!".
6) STAINLESS STEEL SWORD. And the slightly wobbly stainless-steel-tacked-onto-wood shield.
7) Jadis' costume confused me greatly, especially the huge gap for nonexistant breasts. Also some of the armour was straight out of the LARP School of Really Ineffectual Soft Leather Armour, and the children could have done with a bit more tuition in How To Cry Convincingly. But now we're getting into silly little quibbles.
I did not have an entirely awful time. The scenery was pretty. The music was pretty and moving. The CGI'd animals, centaurs etc were quite good. Fighting from the school of "Lots of people charge into each other and fall over" quite entertaining. Jadis handed Peter his ass on a plate while swordfighting and only lost the dual because of the Law Of Movie Swordfight Posing meaning that she had to waste most of her time showing off (and because he was the Good Guy). I've come to expect the whole "Evil Is Ugly" thing (there were a couple of Charismatic Animals on the enemy's side, but interestingly they were all monochrome animals - wolves, snow versions of various big cats, polar bears - presumably for similar reasons to Evil Is Ugly) by now, so that didn't irritate me so much. I didn't even notice "orcs are out of paradigm" until someone pointed it out.
As a Christian allegory, it had even less to recommend it, alas, from the anti-Susan "chuck your brain out of the window before entering here" propaganda to the "ha ha not dead really" Aslan resurrection, but I'm not altogether sure, not having read it very recently, that the book had much more to recommend it on that front. I was rather disappointed about the way the film entirely failed to build up tension or produce many heart-wringing moments (the one where Edmund is about to be stabbed with the line "Perhaps you shall know better hereafter" and there was one in the scene where Peter was woken by the dryad, but I don't remember it very well).
I did not like it for the following reasons:
1) The entire thing felt hopelessly flat and soul-less to me.
2) Lucy was precisely the kind of small girl-child I am irrationally prejudiced against based soley on appearence. This is a flaw in me rather than the film.
3) Because of the insistance of Plot Plot Plot having to come first, the characterisation was all shallow and generally not very good, and the whole Aslan coming back from the dead thing had a definite "Would you bloody kids please stop paying attention so I can do my magic table-smashing thing and go 'surprise, not dead after all, just a joke, all friends now?'" air to it. The general air of shallowness was probably because it is a Childrens' Movie and so everything had to be patiently explained to the three-year-olds in the audience.
4) Susan was maligned continually for being vaguely intelligent and having the sense she was born with, and quite harshly criticised for attempting to make some actual sense of the world rather than just going along with whatever the random talking animals said. This angered me particularly because I could see the whole "anti-intellectual" wing of Christianity applauding and being happy about this and their children absorbing this attitude.
5) I don't care what anyone has said, the bit where Lucy goes home with Tumnus is *so increadibly WRONG* and not sweet and innocent at all, especially when he says "I used to play music for dryads and centaurs to have big wild orgies to! Would you like to hear some music, little girl?" and then sends her to sleep
6) STAINLESS STEEL SWORD. And the slightly wobbly stainless-steel-tacked-onto-wood shield.
7) Jadis' costume confused me greatly, especially the huge gap for nonexistant breasts. Also some of the armour was straight out of the LARP School of Really Ineffectual Soft Leather Armour, and the children could have done with a bit more tuition in How To Cry Convincingly. But now we're getting into silly little quibbles.
I did not have an entirely awful time. The scenery was pretty. The music was pretty and moving. The CGI'd animals, centaurs etc were quite good. Fighting from the school of "Lots of people charge into each other and fall over" quite entertaining. Jadis handed Peter his ass on a plate while swordfighting and only lost the dual because of the Law Of Movie Swordfight Posing meaning that she had to waste most of her time showing off (and because he was the Good Guy). I've come to expect the whole "Evil Is Ugly" thing (there were a couple of Charismatic Animals on the enemy's side, but interestingly they were all monochrome animals - wolves, snow versions of various big cats, polar bears - presumably for similar reasons to Evil Is Ugly) by now, so that didn't irritate me so much. I didn't even notice "orcs are out of paradigm" until someone pointed it out.
As a Christian allegory, it had even less to recommend it, alas, from the anti-Susan "chuck your brain out of the window before entering here" propaganda to the "ha ha not dead really" Aslan resurrection, but I'm not altogether sure, not having read it very recently, that the book had much more to recommend it on that front. I was rather disappointed about the way the film entirely failed to build up tension or produce many heart-wringing moments (the one where Edmund is about to be stabbed with the line "Perhaps you shall know better hereafter" and there was one in the scene where Peter was woken by the dryad, but I don't remember it very well).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 12:14 pm (UTC)From:Merry Christmas. :)