In Which the Author Goes to See a Movie
Jan. 19th, 2006 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwex... and decides he hates it. Went to see Narnia last night and left feeling vaguely disquieted. Having slept on it, I've come to realize that I really didn't like what Disney did to this story.
My problems with Narnia were similar to my problems with the first Harry Potter movie. At the time, I contrasted that movie with the first Lord of the Rings film, as follows. In HP, the film-makers were concerned with following the events of the book more or less slavishly. The entire first bit of that film, prior to going to school, were slow and painful. Ditto with Narnia - the entire bit prior to the first entry to the wardrobe could have been shortened by half with no loss to the story. I mean, who really cares that they rode up from the train to the professor's house in a horse-cart?
The one bit that could have been useful - the German bombing of London - was totally thrown away, as we later see Peter use the same tactic against the Witch's army. But we're robbed of any sense of meaning for this act - he has become that which his childhood self loathed and it's a null act. It's a momentary special effect and that's all.
Peter Jackson got slammed for leaving out certain scenes from the first LOTR film. But I left the theater after that with a strong sense of what those books were about - explorations of heroism, of dedication and loyalty, of serving a higher purpose. Tolkein's writing is infused with strong mythic and Jungian themes and Jackson's film captured that. Similarly, Lewis's writing contains important elements of family and friendship and strong savior-based mythology, all of which Ann Peacock and crew bled out of Narnia, leaving us with an insubstantial pap built around a few nice special effects.
A digression into the effects: the creatures were generally quite good and Aslan was totally believable. But the wide shots were uniformly badly focused and the bluescreening was grotesquely obvious at times. However, that's not what I came to rant about.
I was particularly irked by the way the movie was sapped of anything meaningful in the sense of why one would tell this story, leaving the actors to deliver lines or engage in actions that struck jarring chords. For example:
- Aslan tells Peter to "Clean your sword" after Maugrim jumps on the blade and dies. But, hello, there's no blood. Anywhere. In the book, I recall the blood being part of the shock that brings Peter out of his childhood denial and starts him down the road that will lead him to command Aslan's army. Peter views the blood and must come to terms with "I did that," which he has failed to do before. Aslan delivering that line over a bloodless sword is meaningless and annoying. Later Peter tries to tell Edmund to get the girls to safety, but since we haven't seen Peter growing into maturity we can't interpret this act within its proper context of him accepting responsibility.
- The vigil at the stone table is one of the most powerful scenes in the original book. The girls cry over Aslan's body and then, for some reason, stay. Around them the night grows cold and there is a strong archetypal parallel between the physical cold and the coldness of their lives left by Aslan's death. I remember as a child how much that scene affected me but again the movie bleeds it dry. Lucy just says something, at the very end, about how cold it is, but we've missed the entire vigil so the line is a throw-away. This would have been so simple to insert - a series of 5-10 second scenes tracing time, doesn't even need dialog just the actors' motions to convey what's going on - that it shows me clearly how little the filmmakers understood of the story they were handling.
- The entire friendship between Peter and the centaur (whose name is eluding me) is absent. In the book the centaur becomes sort of the older brother Peter never had, teaching him to fight and helping him through that transition into the leader he has to be. In the film, we're left with one line "Will you follow me?" that is utterly out of context and meaningless without the back-story. Somehow Peter learns to fight (BADLY, please don't start me on the craptastic fight choreography, with the one exception of Tilda Swinton, who was totally believable two-weapons fighting). But you know, I bet that line appears somewhere in the book so the filmmakers had to leave it in. How pointless.
Finally, much has been made of the fact that the writers put in a violent act for Susan. I was hoping that somehow she'd meaningfully participate, since in the book she arrives at the turning point of the battle. But no, what we get is a toy rendition of "little girl shoots dwarf." It's farcical and depressing and would have worked equally well if she'd simply stomped over and slapped him. The act is presented as if to say "see how modern and progressive we are" and again it's out of context and meaningless.
I had serious trepidations when I heard Disney was going to do this film and everything I feared was borne out. It's not that Disney uniformly makes bad films, it's they seem totally incapable of telling good filmic stories. Narnia is a regrettable continuation of that losing line.
My problems with Narnia were similar to my problems with the first Harry Potter movie. At the time, I contrasted that movie with the first Lord of the Rings film, as follows. In HP, the film-makers were concerned with following the events of the book more or less slavishly. The entire first bit of that film, prior to going to school, were slow and painful. Ditto with Narnia - the entire bit prior to the first entry to the wardrobe could have been shortened by half with no loss to the story. I mean, who really cares that they rode up from the train to the professor's house in a horse-cart?
The one bit that could have been useful - the German bombing of London - was totally thrown away, as we later see Peter use the same tactic against the Witch's army. But we're robbed of any sense of meaning for this act - he has become that which his childhood self loathed and it's a null act. It's a momentary special effect and that's all.
Peter Jackson got slammed for leaving out certain scenes from the first LOTR film. But I left the theater after that with a strong sense of what those books were about - explorations of heroism, of dedication and loyalty, of serving a higher purpose. Tolkein's writing is infused with strong mythic and Jungian themes and Jackson's film captured that. Similarly, Lewis's writing contains important elements of family and friendship and strong savior-based mythology, all of which Ann Peacock and crew bled out of Narnia, leaving us with an insubstantial pap built around a few nice special effects.
A digression into the effects: the creatures were generally quite good and Aslan was totally believable. But the wide shots were uniformly badly focused and the bluescreening was grotesquely obvious at times. However, that's not what I came to rant about.
I was particularly irked by the way the movie was sapped of anything meaningful in the sense of why one would tell this story, leaving the actors to deliver lines or engage in actions that struck jarring chords. For example:
- Aslan tells Peter to "Clean your sword" after Maugrim jumps on the blade and dies. But, hello, there's no blood. Anywhere. In the book, I recall the blood being part of the shock that brings Peter out of his childhood denial and starts him down the road that will lead him to command Aslan's army. Peter views the blood and must come to terms with "I did that," which he has failed to do before. Aslan delivering that line over a bloodless sword is meaningless and annoying. Later Peter tries to tell Edmund to get the girls to safety, but since we haven't seen Peter growing into maturity we can't interpret this act within its proper context of him accepting responsibility.
- The vigil at the stone table is one of the most powerful scenes in the original book. The girls cry over Aslan's body and then, for some reason, stay. Around them the night grows cold and there is a strong archetypal parallel between the physical cold and the coldness of their lives left by Aslan's death. I remember as a child how much that scene affected me but again the movie bleeds it dry. Lucy just says something, at the very end, about how cold it is, but we've missed the entire vigil so the line is a throw-away. This would have been so simple to insert - a series of 5-10 second scenes tracing time, doesn't even need dialog just the actors' motions to convey what's going on - that it shows me clearly how little the filmmakers understood of the story they were handling.
- The entire friendship between Peter and the centaur (whose name is eluding me) is absent. In the book the centaur becomes sort of the older brother Peter never had, teaching him to fight and helping him through that transition into the leader he has to be. In the film, we're left with one line "Will you follow me?" that is utterly out of context and meaningless without the back-story. Somehow Peter learns to fight (BADLY, please don't start me on the craptastic fight choreography, with the one exception of Tilda Swinton, who was totally believable two-weapons fighting). But you know, I bet that line appears somewhere in the book so the filmmakers had to leave it in. How pointless.
Finally, much has been made of the fact that the writers put in a violent act for Susan. I was hoping that somehow she'd meaningfully participate, since in the book she arrives at the turning point of the battle. But no, what we get is a toy rendition of "little girl shoots dwarf." It's farcical and depressing and would have worked equally well if she'd simply stomped over and slapped him. The act is presented as if to say "see how modern and progressive we are" and again it's out of context and meaningless.
I had serious trepidations when I heard Disney was going to do this film and everything I feared was borne out. It's not that Disney uniformly makes bad films, it's they seem totally incapable of telling good filmic stories. Narnia is a regrettable continuation of that losing line.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 02:15 pm (UTC)"Even ILM has done better work than this."
ILM is still one of the top CG shops.
In most cases they are the innovators and you then see their work
trickle down through other shops.
I'm just saying, I watch a movie all the way till the credits just to see
who did the CG, and of course if it was done with Avid gear.
It's a geek thing I got into awhile ago.
oh FYI IHP is MST3K's take on ILM, IHP Industrial Heat and Plumbing. Maybe they did the work.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 02:43 pm (UTC)As for whose renderfarm gets used... meh. Avid makes good high-end gear but both WETA and Pixar that I know of get good results with much cheaper off-the-shelf hardware.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 03:08 pm (UTC)The pixar farm is not cheap, the only really off the shelf gear is the array of Mac's they use for the frontend.
What makes Avid expensive is they have the corner on the storage and streaming technology. As well Avid has a slew of patents on the hardware used not just with the storage systems but all the way down to the hardware UI for editing.
In the end I don't think ILM stagnated, I think there was a drain of talent to new companies.
It is also a rarity to see just one shop being used, the time alloted for heavily laden CG films does not allow for one shop to finish it all. And as bad as most people think Starship Troopers was as a movie, it proved a point that using several shops can give you a better look in the finished product. If one shop does everything from bugs, to scenery, to combat, to capital ships then it looks flat. They used 8 shops and I don't particularly like the movie other than for the visuals, and I think the visuals worked.
This is of course IMHO.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 03:26 pm (UTC)Narnia also used Rhythm & Hues, so they've got at least two sources but I still wasn't impressed by the result. And yeah, Starship Troopers was an execrable movie with decent effects.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 02:17 pm (UTC)