The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Dir. Michael Apted, 2010.
I dragged my sister to see this, and we liked it, with several important reservations.
It's been at least a dozen years since I read this book, and I don't quite recall everything that did and didn't happen in it, though obviously, the bits with "Dark Island" and "the evil" (SERIOUSLY, screenwriters!?) and the Sea Serpent (not that that's a Metaphor or Anything) and the seven swords were out of whole cloth or highly played up. I didn't mind them so much, just as I didn't mind the fact that the movie was clearly making some choices to lead into The Silver Chair (green mist, anyone?), and I don't mind the constant presence of the Witch, either--it's ambiguous in the books themselves whether Jadis is the same as the serpent who captures Rillian, though the character guide in my 1994 edition equates them, but them being the same is certainly a defensible interpretation, particularly in light of the fact that they actually summon her in the PC movie.
What really got me was the screenwriters deciding to beat the audience over the head with the Christianity of it all. I was prepared for this to some extent by my sister, but it got really unartistically blatant at times, and particularly after the second movie did so many things right (I really should rewatch LWW), it was quite annoying. And, you know, whatever Aslan says, as far as I'm concerned they went to Narnia to save Narnia, not to meet Jesus.
But! I liked the important parts, Reepicheep, and Eustace being turned into a dragon, and Lucy taking up Susan's bow and arrows, and Edmund (EDMUND I ♥ YOU), and even Caspian's doubts, and Edmund and Caspian, and Reepicheep at the end, I teared up. And as much as the Witch constantly shows up to bother Edmund he never really seemed to be listening to her; it's the more subtle temptation of wealth and independence that really gets him. The movies are also really good at foregrounding the fact that all the Narnian adventures thus far have taken place during the war, which I like. And at the end, on the beach, when Caspian says that they're his only family, UGH. It's just so sad. Awesome at the same time, but sad. Eustace gets to go back, of course, but Caspian is an old man on his deathbed when he does, and--and my heart aches for all of them.
And, you know, having Aslan's country there at the end of all the journeys would be totally acceptable to me, except when Reepicheep was telling Eustace that he has an extraordinary destiny in front of him, I sat there thinking, "Yeah, in five years you're going to die in a horrible railway accident!" (Actually I said that out loud, there were only like four of us in the theater.) Fuck you, C.S. Lewis. Way to sabotage the meaning of your own fucking books, seriously. I kind of want to write an AU where they all live, if I thought that would actually make me feel better about the whole thing. As TLB stands it does have that horrible quality of awful realism which is supposed to separate life from fiction, in the other direction, and as awful as it is, it's plausible to me in a way that a happy ending wouldn't be, after the fact. If Lewis had written it differently, it'd be another story, literally. Also I kind of want them to be able to stay in Narnia.
So, yeah. The movie doesn't have the marvelous, slightly meditative or mystic quality of exploration and questing that I recall loving about the book, but I liked it all the same; I like this vision of Narnia, warts and all, and I'll definitely go see The Silver Chair when it comes out. Has anyone heard anything about whether they're planning to make the other three books into movies? It occurs to me that they could totally make HHB after SC, since the Pevensie actors would be the right general age for it then.
I have to say, though, that Caspian was not as pretty in this movie. But that's okay; Skandar Keynes is pretty freaking hot, IJS.
And as has become traditional (!), after I came back from the movie I sat down and I looked through the comments I'd gotten and I started reading all of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bedlamsbard's amazing Narnia fiction--thank you, people who recommended her work to me! Her writing basically falls into three rough divisions, the Warsverse stories, which concern the Pevensies' reign in Narnia, her Royal House of Pevensie stories, which are an AU expanding the reign of the Pevensies before the White Stag, and getting into the reigns of their children and descendants (don't miss Jump in the Fire, a very AU retelling of Prince Caspian);, and Dust in the Air, a very welcome AU of The Last Battle in which the Pevensies are summoned back to Narnia five years after the Calormene conquest and which uses the Warsverse as background.
Most of these stories carry a warning for (same-generation, consensual) incest, and many earn their warning for violence, and I should mention too that her view of Aslan is not particularly charitable, even if like me you don't or can't believe that Aslan = Jesus. But they are brilliant, not shying away from what the real consequences of everything that Narnia and leaving it entails, and deeply engaged with the Deep Magic and the politics and society of that world, and I really like her interpretations of the characters, particularly the Pevensies, and the OCs are wonderful, as is the plotting. Um, yeah. If like me you saw LWW and thought, "Dude, there should be so much blood right now!" after the White Witch stabbed Peter, or if you didn't want the world to end in TLB (she totally ducks the Problem of Susan, which is so great), or you wondered what the Pevensies' reign was like, these are the stories for you.
I dragged my sister to see this, and we liked it, with several important reservations.
It's been at least a dozen years since I read this book, and I don't quite recall everything that did and didn't happen in it, though obviously, the bits with "Dark Island" and "the evil" (SERIOUSLY, screenwriters!?) and the Sea Serpent (not that that's a Metaphor or Anything) and the seven swords were out of whole cloth or highly played up. I didn't mind them so much, just as I didn't mind the fact that the movie was clearly making some choices to lead into The Silver Chair (green mist, anyone?), and I don't mind the constant presence of the Witch, either--it's ambiguous in the books themselves whether Jadis is the same as the serpent who captures Rillian, though the character guide in my 1994 edition equates them, but them being the same is certainly a defensible interpretation, particularly in light of the fact that they actually summon her in the PC movie.
What really got me was the screenwriters deciding to beat the audience over the head with the Christianity of it all. I was prepared for this to some extent by my sister, but it got really unartistically blatant at times, and particularly after the second movie did so many things right (I really should rewatch LWW), it was quite annoying. And, you know, whatever Aslan says, as far as I'm concerned they went to Narnia to save Narnia, not to meet Jesus.
But! I liked the important parts, Reepicheep, and Eustace being turned into a dragon, and Lucy taking up Susan's bow and arrows, and Edmund (EDMUND I ♥ YOU), and even Caspian's doubts, and Edmund and Caspian, and Reepicheep at the end, I teared up. And as much as the Witch constantly shows up to bother Edmund he never really seemed to be listening to her; it's the more subtle temptation of wealth and independence that really gets him. The movies are also really good at foregrounding the fact that all the Narnian adventures thus far have taken place during the war, which I like. And at the end, on the beach, when Caspian says that they're his only family, UGH. It's just so sad. Awesome at the same time, but sad. Eustace gets to go back, of course, but Caspian is an old man on his deathbed when he does, and--and my heart aches for all of them.
And, you know, having Aslan's country there at the end of all the journeys would be totally acceptable to me, except when Reepicheep was telling Eustace that he has an extraordinary destiny in front of him, I sat there thinking, "Yeah, in five years you're going to die in a horrible railway accident!" (Actually I said that out loud, there were only like four of us in the theater.) Fuck you, C.S. Lewis. Way to sabotage the meaning of your own fucking books, seriously. I kind of want to write an AU where they all live, if I thought that would actually make me feel better about the whole thing. As TLB stands it does have that horrible quality of awful realism which is supposed to separate life from fiction, in the other direction, and as awful as it is, it's plausible to me in a way that a happy ending wouldn't be, after the fact. If Lewis had written it differently, it'd be another story, literally. Also I kind of want them to be able to stay in Narnia.
So, yeah. The movie doesn't have the marvelous, slightly meditative or mystic quality of exploration and questing that I recall loving about the book, but I liked it all the same; I like this vision of Narnia, warts and all, and I'll definitely go see The Silver Chair when it comes out. Has anyone heard anything about whether they're planning to make the other three books into movies? It occurs to me that they could totally make HHB after SC, since the Pevensie actors would be the right general age for it then.
I have to say, though, that Caspian was not as pretty in this movie. But that's okay; Skandar Keynes is pretty freaking hot, IJS.
And as has become traditional (!), after I came back from the movie I sat down and I looked through the comments I'd gotten and I started reading all of
bedlamsbard's amazing Narnia fiction--thank you, people who recommended her work to me! Her writing basically falls into three rough divisions, the Warsverse stories, which concern the Pevensies' reign in Narnia, her Royal House of Pevensie stories, which are an AU expanding the reign of the Pevensies before the White Stag, and getting into the reigns of their children and descendants (don't miss Jump in the Fire, a very AU retelling of Prince Caspian);, and Dust in the Air, a very welcome AU of The Last Battle in which the Pevensies are summoned back to Narnia five years after the Calormene conquest and which uses the Warsverse as background. Most of these stories carry a warning for (same-generation, consensual) incest, and many earn their warning for violence, and I should mention too that her view of Aslan is not particularly charitable, even if like me you don't or can't believe that Aslan = Jesus. But they are brilliant, not shying away from what the real consequences of everything that Narnia and leaving it entails, and deeply engaged with the Deep Magic and the politics and society of that world, and I really like her interpretations of the characters, particularly the Pevensies, and the OCs are wonderful, as is the plotting. Um, yeah. If like me you saw LWW and thought, "Dude, there should be so much blood right now!" after the White Witch stabbed Peter, or if you didn't want the world to end in TLB (she totally ducks the Problem of Susan, which is so great), or you wondered what the Pevensies' reign was like, these are the stories for you.
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I love Tilda Swinton, and I don't mind seeing her as much as possible, and I don't mind the movies embracing the Jadis = the White Witch = the Enchantress equation. But I do think this one had some rare stumbles that stood out in comparison, and the writing was definitely one of them.
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As for the Christianity . . . as I said to my friend afterward, that would have really offended me if they had shoehorned it in, or if this had been an original property, but I don't feel like it's a misrepresentation of Lewis, so. I winced a bit when they went past "in your world, I have another name" to club you harder with the idea, but it didn't bother me that much.
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I don't have a problem with the Christianity per se (I loved these books long before I ever understood what about them was supposed to be Christian), but I really just did think that at a few points it was just unartistically blatant. Lewis lets his didactic purpose get the better of him at times too, but the screenwriters have so far refused to follow his missteps in that regard, and it was disappointing to me that they didn't in this film. But otoh in the book Aslan actually appears to them in the form of a lamb at the end, so they did make some choices against that tendency too.