Disclaimer: What follows may seem trivial in light of all the much more important things we could be talking about — world hunger, war, politics, whatever. But it rattles around in my head and I need to get it out somewhere, and I think putting it out here is probably better than boring someone in person. This way, when I see you face to face, we can actually talk about things that matter, instead of my meaningless analyses of popular films.
Would you like to hear another short spiel about the movie adaptions of Narnia? You WOULD? Well, since you asked…
It occurs to me that what Walden should have learned from the enormous success of the Lord of the Rings movies was that the way to make bank is to honor the fanbase and create a movie faithful to the spirit of the books.
Instead, they broke the other way. All they learned was how to hire Weta Workshops to make “historically realistic” fantasy worlds, when that was never Lewis’ thing at all. So they bucked the spirit for the style. That’s like going to a five-star restaurant and then trying to copy it by buying the same tablecloths and light fixtures. If there isn’t a good chef in the kitchen, the food will be bad, no matter how many hand-fashioned links of chain mail clothe your minotaurs.
(I feel I may have mixed my metaphors in the sentence above. Let’s move on.)
I’ll put the same disclaimer as last time … this is all armchair coaching, and it’s easy to call fouls from the sidelines. I’d just so love to see a Narnia movie that was character-driven, lyrical, collage-ist, and intimate, like the books are. I’d love to see a Narnia that started from a killer script and was released in the fall, rather than greenlighted because of some cool concept art and a summer popcorn release date. An arthouse Narnia would be amazing.
Also, I’d like a pony and a hoverboard. Until then, I’ll just pop in the good old BBC Narnia, rubber beaver suits and all.