The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

[Digger]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

didnt know that it was from a book, but i saw a preview when i went to see harry poter and i was more exited to see that preview than the movie itself hehehe......pretty cool effects.....

[CrazyMadFlyGirl]

Chronicles of Narnia

This movie was Absolutely Fabulous!! I read & LoVeD the Lion, Witch & the Wardrobe series when I was younger & This movie is visually Spectacular & the special effects are Awesome! Aslan's character was everything you could ever dream of him being as a child (or a big kid in an adult's body )
For anyone else who followed this series when you were younger, it's a Must See while it's in the theater! It Won't let you down!!
& for anyone who didn't read the stories see it anyways....
((& be like us & go at 11:15 am, so there's no crowd there )

[CrazyMadFlyGirl]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

sorry- re-post

[sooper]

Re: Chronicles of Narnia

I never read the books.

The movie was worse than smelling my own ball sweat after a 3 hour hike in the middle of summer. Not that I've ever done that before, but after seeing Narnia, I'd choose my ball sweat over seeing that movie again.

I have to remind myself that this movie was intended for children. Kids would love it - but kids are dumb like that

The oopma-loompa needs a beating... he seemed out of place in Charlie and the Chocolate factory, let alone Narnia.

[day_for_night]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

definitely for kids, skip this one...

[CrazyMadFlyGirl]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Wow! You thougt it was that bad huh? Did you read the books when you were little? Did you go cuz you wanted to, or was it someone wanting you to go with them, so your attitude was already kinda ball sweaty!?!?

[darkmark]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

anyone else really looking forward to this? i saw a show the other day about the graphics used to make a lot of the characters... amazing!
the way they bring Aslan to life.. I can't wait to see it

I saw that too. The computer graphics for the animated, talking and walking Lion were stunning. The film makers said that the technology and artistry had finally reached a point so that they could make this movie. There are tons of other creatures in it also.

As far as "only children should see this" goes, they showed some battle scenes that looked like Lord of the Rings...

[sooper]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

As far as "only children should see this" goes, they showed some battle scenes that looked like Lord of the Rings...

Some battles scenes seemed like left over stock footage from Lord of the Rings... I swear I saw orcs on many occassions!

CrazyMadFlyGirl: I took my little brother... but my balls were fresh & clean before the movie started! Go Baby Powder!

[day_for_night]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Wow! You thougt it was that bad huh? Did you read the books when you were little? Did you go cuz you wanted to, or was it someone wanting you to go with them, so your attitude was already kinda ball sweaty!?!?

umm no, you moron. read what i said...i said it was for kids, not that it was bad.

i am well aware of the books, i read them when i was young. some more kid-oriented books work well as movies that can appeal to both children and adults (ie. harry potter or LOTR), unfortunately narnia didnt. it was well produced, and its obvious they put alot of money into it...but it was definitely only trying to appeal towards kids. the entire group of people i saw it with were laughing inappropriately just because of how silly some of it was...

[sooper]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

umm no, you moron. read what i said...i said it was for kids, not that it was bad.

I think her comments were meant for me

nonetheless, you've made very valid points about why Narnia sucked donkey balls.

I never read the books. I didn't see the movie because I wanted to, but rather because I took someone who did. So my expectations weren't high to begin with...

~SPOILER~

...but when Santa Clause started giving away weapons to kids I realized that this movie wasn't made for people like me - that is, people with good taste

~endSPOILER~

[day_for_night]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

haha woops, she was definitely talking to you. either way...

[Kobe]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

I came across an article today which suggest that this movie is thinly veiled Christian propaganda.

'Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion'
Children won't get the Christian subtext, but unbelievers should keep a sickbag handy during Disney's new epic, writes Polly Toynbee

Polly Toynbee
Monday December 5, 2005
Guardian

Aslan the lion shakes his mighty mane and roars out across Narnia and eternity. Christ is risen! However, not many British children these days will get the message. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opens this week to take up the mantle left by The Lord of the Rings. CS Lewis's seven children's books, The Chronicles of Narnia, will be with us now and for many Christmases to come. Only Harry Potter has outsold these well-loved books' 85 million copies. How suitable that one fantasy saga should follow on from the other, despite the immense difference between the writings and magic worlds of these two old Oxford dons. It was JRR Tolkien who converted CS Lewis to Christianity during one long all-night walk that ended in dawn and revelation. Narnia is a strange blend of magic, myth and Christianity, some of it brilliantly fantastical and richly imaginative, some (the clunking allegory) toe-curlingly, cringingly awful.

This new Disney film is a remarkably faithful rendition of the book - faithful in both senses. It is beautiful to look at and wonderfully acted. The four English children and their world are all authentically CS Lewis olde England. But from its opening scenes of the bombing of their Finchley home in the blitz and the tear-jerking evacuation from their mother in a (spotlessly clean) steam train, there is an emotional undertow to this film that tugs on the heart-strings from the first frames. By the end, it feels profoundly manipulative, as Disney usually does. But then, that is also deeply faithful to the book's own arm-twisting emotional call to believers.

Disney is deliberately promoting this film to the religious - it has appointed Outreach, an evangelical publisher, to promote the Christian message behind the movie in British churches. The Christian radio station Premier is urging churches to hold services on the theme of The Gospel According to Narnia. Even the Methodists have written a special Narnia-themed service. And a Kent parish is giving away £10,000 worth of film tickets to single-parent families. (Are the children of single mothers in special need of the word?)

US born-agains are using the movie. The Mission America Coalition is "inviting church leaders around the country to consider the fantastic ministry opportunity presented by the release of this film". The president's brother, Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, is organising a scheme for every child in his state to read the book. Walden Media, co-producer of the movie, offers a "17-week Narnia Bible study for children". The owner of Walden Media is both a big Republican donor and a donor to the Florida governor's book promotion - a neat synergy of politics, religion and product placement. It has aroused protests from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which complains that "a governmental endorsement of the book's religious message is in violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution".

Disney may come to regret this alliance with Christians, at least on this side of the Atlantic. For all the enthusiasm of the churches, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ bombed in Britain and warehouses are stuffed with unsold DVDs of that stomach-churner. There are too few practising Christians in the empty pews of this most secular nation to pack cinemas. So there has been a queasy ambivalence about how to sell the Narnia film here. Its director, Andrew Adamson (of Shrek fame), says the movie's Christian themes are "open to the audience to interpret". One soundtrack album of the film has been released with religious music, the other with secular pop.

Most British children will be utterly clueless about any message beyond the age-old mythic battle between good and evil. Most of the fairy story works as well as any Norse saga, pagan legend or modern fantasy, so only the minority who are familiar with Christian iconography will see Jesus in the lion. After all, 43% of people in Britain in a recent poll couldn't say what Easter celebrated. Among the young - apart from those in faith schools - that number must be considerably higher. Ask art galleries: they now have to write the story of every religious painting on the label as people no longer know what "agony in the garden", "deposition", "transfiguration" or "ascension" mean. This may be regrettable cultural ignorance, but it means Aslan will stay just a lion to most movie-goers.

All the same, children may puzzle over the lion and ask embarrassing questions. For non-CS Lewis aficionados, here is a recap. The four children enter Narnia through a wardrobe and find themselves in a land frozen into "always winter, never Christmas" by the white witch, (played with elemental force by Tilda Swinton). Unhappy middle child Edmund, resentful of being bossed about by his older brother, broods with meanness and misery. The devil, in the shape of the witch, tempts him: for the price of several chunks of turkish delight, rather than 30 pieces of silver, Edmund betrays his siblings and their Narnian friends.

The sins of this "son of Adam" can only be redeemed by the supreme sacrifice of Aslan. This Christ-lion willingly lays down his life, submitting himself to be bound, thrashed and humiliated by the white witch, allowing his golden mane to be cut and himself to be slaughtered on the sacrificial stone table: it cracks in sympathetic agony and his body goes missing. The two girls lay down their heads and weep, Magdalene and Mary-like. Be warned, the film lingers long and lovingly over all this.

But so far, so good. The story makes sense. The lion exchanging his life for Edmund's is the sort of thing Arthurian legends are made of. Parfait knights and heroes in prisoner-of-war camps do it all the time. But what's this? After a long, dark night of the soul and women's weeping, the lion is suddenly alive again. Why? How?, my children used to ask. Well, it is hard to say why. It does not make any more sense in CS Lewis's tale than in the gospels. Ah, Aslan explains, it is the "deep magic", where pure sacrifice alone vanquishes death.

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus's holy head every day that you don't eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged.

Tolkien hated Narnia: the two dons may have shared the same love of unquestioning feudal power, with worlds of obedient plebs and inferior folk eager to bend at the knee to any passing superior white persons - even children; both their fantasy worlds and their Christianity assumes that rigid hierarchy of power - lord of lords, king of kings, prince of peace to be worshipped and adored. But Tolkien disliked Lewis's bully-pulpit.

Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.

Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw gives the film five stars and says, "There is no need for anyone to get into a PC huff about its Christian allegory." Well, here's my huff.

Lewis said he hoped the book would soften-up religious reflexes and "make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life". Holiness drenches the Chronicles. When, in the book, the children first hear someone say, mysteriously, "Aslan is on the move", he writes: "Now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had enormous meaning ..." So Lewis weaves his dreams to invade children's minds with Christian iconography that is part fairytale wonder and joy - but heavily laden with guilt, blame, sacrifice and a suffering that is dark with emotional sadism.

Children are supposed to fall in love with the hypnotic Aslan, though he is not a character: he is pure, raw, awesome power. He is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is no one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can. We need no holy guide books, only a very human moral compass. Everyone needs ghosts, spirits, marvels and poetic imaginings, but we can do well without an Aslan.

· The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is released on Thursday

[peloquin]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

as were the books i thought

[CrazyMadFlyGirl]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

haha woops, she was definitely talking to you. either way...

Yah- I sure was Big Meanie (i.e. moron) lol...

[peloquin]

Re: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

were the special effects good? i heard they were not, but they looked good on the preview