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bedlamsbardWarning: apparently I was a lot more tied to the book than I originally thought.
Pretty. Very pretty. Not quite as pretty as I was actually hoping, but very pretty.
Will Poulter was great -- I was actually pretty surprised, and happily so, by just how good Will Poulter was, because I wasn't sure what they were going to do with Eustace. Eustace's entrance was brilliant, and I think he and Reepicheep had a very good rapport.
However, one of the movie's major flaws (aside from the Green Mist of Stupidity) was its treatment of Eustace. I got the sense that the writers weren't really exactly sure what to do with him (HINT HINT THERE'S A BOOK YOU CAN LOOK AT IT), and so they sidelined him off into being a dragon as quickly as possible and kept him that way for the majority of the movie, which gets rid of a lot of his character development. Not all of it: I mean, he did make a pretty heroic dragon. But it gets rid of Eustace, the human; I love that scene in the book where he breaks Caspian's second-best sword hacking at the sea serpent, and we don't have that in the movie. Plus, the arm-ring! That's a major part of the book, a major part of why he becomes a dragon, and Lucy just takes it off his forearm like it's nothing! I mean, why even have it there, you know? If you're just going to get rid of it like that. And Eustace's fears of the Dark Island, and just -- you know, I was completely thrown by what they did to Goldwater Island and Dragon Island by combining the two of them and then making it volcanic. I mean, on a reasonable level, aren't most volcanic islands, um, very fruitful? (Like Hawaii?) And, uh, the book describes them both as very attractive islands; I suck at mental images on a level that's hard to explain, and those two I saw very clearly, so that threw me for a loop. The scene in the book, with Eustace shedding his dragon's skin! They just -- they referenced it in the movie, but not in any sort of useful way at all, so that it hardly makes sense, argh. I did not expect to love Eustace so much, when he was there, but I hate what they did to him.
*eyes cross* Holy shit, Narrowhaven was the least logical thing I have ever seen in my life. Actually, this whole movie was up there among the least logical things I have ever seen, but Narrowhaven was made of a special kind of stupidity. Hi, let's send the three most important people straight into a strange, mysterious, probably dangerous sort of situation. Whereupon the native Lone Islanders have decided that hiding in the rafters of the bell tower is the smartest thing they can do, because obviously the crazy strangers are going to come in there, and then you can rappel down and attack them! BECAUSE IT'S THE LOGICAL THING TO DO OH MY GOD MY HEAD IS EXPLODING. Also, what the fuck, I loved Bern and Caspian's deception and the leisurely stroll across Felimath, it was awesome. Clearly less fighty and illogical than what they decided to put in the movie, though. However, Lucy kicking ass all over the place will never not be awesome: I could have done with more of it.
I don't think I have to go into the Green Mist of Stupidity because I think that's pretty self-explanatory.
Actually, there's one thing I do have to get into concerning the Green Mist of Stupidity. By putting that in as a plot, by giving them a reason to go sailing out into the utter east (sure, "let's go look for the lost lords" is a reason, but it doesn't quite have the same impetus as "SAVE THE SWORDS SAVE THE WORLD" does), it gets rid of this beautiful, glorious sense of the unknown that I always got from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The idea of going out and exploring the unknown, for nothing more than the sheer joy of it, and just what can happen when you go off the edge of the map, anyway? Here be dragons, and worse things, and things you have never seen before and will never see again and things you will never, ever understand. And the movie got rid of that. Rather than making the islands at the end of the world these beautiful, strange, untouched gems of places, alien and not inimical to the world, but not friendly either, they made them stepping stones to a goal, and it destroys the beautiful wonder that exists in the book. Even the Dark Island wasn't evil, it just...was. (Especially in the version of the book where Aslan doesn't destroy it.) Something beyond the realm of human knowledge. And I'm very sad that the movie got rid of that.
BWAHAHAHAHA Coriakin and Google Earth Narnia, tell me you weren't thinking the same thing. BUT BUT BUT did you see at the beginning of the map? Did you recognize that scene? IT IS THE BATTLE AT THE END OF LWW BETWEEN THE NARNIANS AND THE WHITE WITCH YOU CAN EVEN SEE PETER ON HIS UNICORN. <333333
Aww, I miss having Ramandu. Lilliandil is...interesting.
Drinian: so much win, hearts. I like competence, apparently. (Dude, and I'm reasonably certain that if Tavros the Minotaur was human, fandom would be slashing the shit out of them.)
The Dawn Treader is gorgeous; I would kill for a panoramic view of the inside of Caspian's cabin, because I could pick out some of the paintings on the wall and their history, but I didn't get all of them.
Dear Caspian, thank you at the end for acknowledging you left your country on a whim which is not a particularly kingly thing to do.
However, um...okay. So. The Narnians trounced Calormen. Which is not in the book. And Narnia does not border Calormen, unless I missed that part of the map, and Archenland should still exist (unless it doesn't), so why the holy fuck did they put that in?
Gods, I got jossed on the weirdest little things, not counting the entire freaking movie. Like Lucy and Gael -- my Lucy is really, really bad with children, although hey, Gael's old enough to practically be a real human being! So there's that. And Narnia having the printing press already, I think we just got maybe half a frame of the book Lucy was reading on Coriakin's island, but that was definitely printed script and not handwritten, yeah? And Lucy really loving caves and always being the first into them. (Hi, let me tell you about three teetiny things in Dust 21 that just got jossed. It's not like they're leaving, but wtf.)
Okay. I am okay with the Lucy wanting to be beautiful subplot, it's in the book, I am just not too keen with the way they went about it. And -- I really, really wanted the bit where she spies on her friends from England, because it shows very clearly her tie to England. And we see Edmund saying, later, that he loves that world too, but this is where Lucy shows it. Maybe in the pettiest of ways, but -- it's still there. And it would have been glorious to, instead of having Lucy=Susan in England with Edmund and Peter, have the scene that's in the book, where Lucy is beautiful and feted and pursued in Narnia, during the Golden Age. Because that's missing in this movie, and it was there in PC: how much their first experience in Narnia, the time when they were kings and queens in Narnia, really meant to Edmund and Lucy. It was their life for fifteen years, and now it's gone. And the movie kind of falters, a little, at showing that Narnia was at least just as important as England to them. (Also, what the fuck, Lucy didn't wish herself out of the world, she just wished she was beautiful.)
Actually, at the beginning, I was totally ready to buy Lucy looking at the soldier and his girlfriend as less, "I would really like to be pretty!" and more, "HOLY SHIT I WISH I COULD GET LAID IN THIS WORLD." Huh, on second thought, I can probably still buy that.
It's not that I think Edmund doesn't believe in sea serpents, it's that I think he had a really bad experience with them back in the day and he was kind of hoping that they were extinct now. Caspian doesn't believe in sea serpants, and Drinian is a little on edge because he has to deal with this landlubber.
Dude, since when do the pre-Caspian X Telmarines believe in Aslan, and why do they have ancient Narnian blades? (See: Green Mist of Stupidity.)
We could have Lucy in the leadership a little more, I think, instead of having Drinian, Caspian, and Edmund decide the fate of everyone. Hi, Lucy is a QUEEN.
I didn't get jossed on Peter being in pilot training! (One of the main things I was terrified of getting jossed on.) We just have "Peter is off having an ADVENTURE!"
Thing that completely blew my mind: ...there should be no mention of Jill Pole at the end. I can just barely fanwank it into them living nearby enough that the parents force them together in order to, like, interact with other human beings, but only by throwing out my own Jill backstory. It's a major point of The Silver Chair, guys!
Gods, for a horrible moment there I thought they were going to get rid of the most recognizable scene in the book: Reepicheep and his coracle. And yet, coracle, randomly there! And Reepicheep really did throw away his sword after all! That makes me so happy, for whatever reason.
Er, um, why do Edmund and Lucy have to stay with the Scrubbs until the end of the war again? Don't they have, uh, school?
Things that make me happy: the picture of Peter and Susan in Lucy's room at the Scrubbs is this one. This made me so happy, you have no idea. On the other hand, uh, they could have put non-movie related pictures of the Pevensies in? *sighs*
I can buy Caspian's daddy issues. I throw my hands up entirely on him hauling the Gifts along, though, aside from the cordial, since that's canon. However, him having Susan's bow contradicts the book and makes no logical sense, oh my god, where did the logic go when they were making this movie?
Edmund's issues, um, these are...LWW issues. Which he should not have. Because he got over those SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO. *flaps hands* ADAMSON COME BACK I MISS YOU.
The Baynes illustrations!
Love Reepicheep's and Eustace's fighting "lesson." I wish -- hmm, I wish they'd kept Eustace stealing the water while they were becalmed and running low, though, rather than a random orange just at the very beginning.
There is a pretty good chance that I will only say this once, but: there was not enough Aslan. Which is a little mindblowing.
Actually, I mostly just feel emotionally stunted on worldbuilding. My worldbuilding, where is it, what did you do with it, Apted? I trusted you! (Okay, I lied, I totally didn't.)
Lucy, however, can kick ass all over the place anytime she likes. PLEASE TO BE DOING MORE ASS-KICKING LUCY.
I wish...we had the world of the merpeople we had in the book, but hey, I can buy the mermaids being water-like, because we had the dryads being tree-like in LWW and PC! They can take more substantial form whenever they want. However, they do, uh, directly contradict the LWW mermaids, which are substantial. Whatever, maybe they were oceanids and nereids instead of mermaids, and whoever did the marketing for the movie didn't know what they were talking about.
One of the other things that bothered me is that we didn't get this feeling of time passing. It all seemed to happen very, very quickly, and it was clearly not meant to -- I think we got one mention somewhere of two weeks passing since they left Coriakin's island? But it never felt like that. You know what was missing? A BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL SAILING MONTAGE. Nothing gets the passage of time across like a montage.
I didn't hate it, I didn't love it, there were parts I quite liked and parts I hated with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns, and quite a few parts I was just puzzled about. (Dear Michael Apted, I think we read different books, love, Bedlam.)
BRING ON THE SILVER CHAIR. That one already has an action plot, surely you can't add in another one? Please don't try.
ETA: No, seriously, was one of the messages of this movie, "Wishing you were prettier is just like wishing you didn't exist"? Because if so, what the fucking motherfucking fuck, women aren't fucked around with enough in real life that you have to add to it in fantasy? I don't think I have words. Sometimes wishing you were prettier is just wishing you were prettier! It doesn't mean you have deep-seated issues about your importance or lack thereof in the grand scheme of things!
I do not have enough love for Eustace sitting down in the longboat and waiting for it to row itself. (Boy read a bit of fantasy when he was younger, I think, and then grew out of it -- or told himself he had, anyway.)
Lucy...never used her cordial at all. We get Rhindon being used, Susan's bow and arrows being used, Lucy pulls her dagger, but she never uses her cordial? I mean, it's not like they gave her opportunity to, but -- they certainly could have. (Me saying this is getting old at this point, but she did in the book.)
Pretty. Very pretty. Not quite as pretty as I was actually hoping, but very pretty.
Will Poulter was great -- I was actually pretty surprised, and happily so, by just how good Will Poulter was, because I wasn't sure what they were going to do with Eustace. Eustace's entrance was brilliant, and I think he and Reepicheep had a very good rapport.
However, one of the movie's major flaws (aside from the Green Mist of Stupidity) was its treatment of Eustace. I got the sense that the writers weren't really exactly sure what to do with him (HINT HINT THERE'S A BOOK YOU CAN LOOK AT IT), and so they sidelined him off into being a dragon as quickly as possible and kept him that way for the majority of the movie, which gets rid of a lot of his character development. Not all of it: I mean, he did make a pretty heroic dragon. But it gets rid of Eustace, the human; I love that scene in the book where he breaks Caspian's second-best sword hacking at the sea serpent, and we don't have that in the movie. Plus, the arm-ring! That's a major part of the book, a major part of why he becomes a dragon, and Lucy just takes it off his forearm like it's nothing! I mean, why even have it there, you know? If you're just going to get rid of it like that. And Eustace's fears of the Dark Island, and just -- you know, I was completely thrown by what they did to Goldwater Island and Dragon Island by combining the two of them and then making it volcanic. I mean, on a reasonable level, aren't most volcanic islands, um, very fruitful? (Like Hawaii?) And, uh, the book describes them both as very attractive islands; I suck at mental images on a level that's hard to explain, and those two I saw very clearly, so that threw me for a loop. The scene in the book, with Eustace shedding his dragon's skin! They just -- they referenced it in the movie, but not in any sort of useful way at all, so that it hardly makes sense, argh. I did not expect to love Eustace so much, when he was there, but I hate what they did to him.
*eyes cross* Holy shit, Narrowhaven was the least logical thing I have ever seen in my life. Actually, this whole movie was up there among the least logical things I have ever seen, but Narrowhaven was made of a special kind of stupidity. Hi, let's send the three most important people straight into a strange, mysterious, probably dangerous sort of situation. Whereupon the native Lone Islanders have decided that hiding in the rafters of the bell tower is the smartest thing they can do, because obviously the crazy strangers are going to come in there, and then you can rappel down and attack them! BECAUSE IT'S THE LOGICAL THING TO DO OH MY GOD MY HEAD IS EXPLODING. Also, what the fuck, I loved Bern and Caspian's deception and the leisurely stroll across Felimath, it was awesome. Clearly less fighty and illogical than what they decided to put in the movie, though. However, Lucy kicking ass all over the place will never not be awesome: I could have done with more of it.
I don't think I have to go into the Green Mist of Stupidity because I think that's pretty self-explanatory.
Actually, there's one thing I do have to get into concerning the Green Mist of Stupidity. By putting that in as a plot, by giving them a reason to go sailing out into the utter east (sure, "let's go look for the lost lords" is a reason, but it doesn't quite have the same impetus as "SAVE THE SWORDS SAVE THE WORLD" does), it gets rid of this beautiful, glorious sense of the unknown that I always got from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The idea of going out and exploring the unknown, for nothing more than the sheer joy of it, and just what can happen when you go off the edge of the map, anyway? Here be dragons, and worse things, and things you have never seen before and will never see again and things you will never, ever understand. And the movie got rid of that. Rather than making the islands at the end of the world these beautiful, strange, untouched gems of places, alien and not inimical to the world, but not friendly either, they made them stepping stones to a goal, and it destroys the beautiful wonder that exists in the book. Even the Dark Island wasn't evil, it just...was. (Especially in the version of the book where Aslan doesn't destroy it.) Something beyond the realm of human knowledge. And I'm very sad that the movie got rid of that.
BWAHAHAHAHA Coriakin and Google Earth Narnia, tell me you weren't thinking the same thing. BUT BUT BUT did you see at the beginning of the map? Did you recognize that scene? IT IS THE BATTLE AT THE END OF LWW BETWEEN THE NARNIANS AND THE WHITE WITCH YOU CAN EVEN SEE PETER ON HIS UNICORN. <333333
Aww, I miss having Ramandu. Lilliandil is...interesting.
Drinian: so much win, hearts. I like competence, apparently. (Dude, and I'm reasonably certain that if Tavros the Minotaur was human, fandom would be slashing the shit out of them.)
The Dawn Treader is gorgeous; I would kill for a panoramic view of the inside of Caspian's cabin, because I could pick out some of the paintings on the wall and their history, but I didn't get all of them.
Dear Caspian, thank you at the end for acknowledging you left your country on a whim which is not a particularly kingly thing to do.
However, um...okay. So. The Narnians trounced Calormen. Which is not in the book. And Narnia does not border Calormen, unless I missed that part of the map, and Archenland should still exist (unless it doesn't), so why the holy fuck did they put that in?
Gods, I got jossed on the weirdest little things, not counting the entire freaking movie. Like Lucy and Gael -- my Lucy is really, really bad with children, although hey, Gael's old enough to practically be a real human being! So there's that. And Narnia having the printing press already, I think we just got maybe half a frame of the book Lucy was reading on Coriakin's island, but that was definitely printed script and not handwritten, yeah? And Lucy really loving caves and always being the first into them. (Hi, let me tell you about three teetiny things in Dust 21 that just got jossed. It's not like they're leaving, but wtf.)
Okay. I am okay with the Lucy wanting to be beautiful subplot, it's in the book, I am just not too keen with the way they went about it. And -- I really, really wanted the bit where she spies on her friends from England, because it shows very clearly her tie to England. And we see Edmund saying, later, that he loves that world too, but this is where Lucy shows it. Maybe in the pettiest of ways, but -- it's still there. And it would have been glorious to, instead of having Lucy=Susan in England with Edmund and Peter, have the scene that's in the book, where Lucy is beautiful and feted and pursued in Narnia, during the Golden Age. Because that's missing in this movie, and it was there in PC: how much their first experience in Narnia, the time when they were kings and queens in Narnia, really meant to Edmund and Lucy. It was their life for fifteen years, and now it's gone. And the movie kind of falters, a little, at showing that Narnia was at least just as important as England to them. (Also, what the fuck, Lucy didn't wish herself out of the world, she just wished she was beautiful.)
Actually, at the beginning, I was totally ready to buy Lucy looking at the soldier and his girlfriend as less, "I would really like to be pretty!" and more, "HOLY SHIT I WISH I COULD GET LAID IN THIS WORLD." Huh, on second thought, I can probably still buy that.
It's not that I think Edmund doesn't believe in sea serpents, it's that I think he had a really bad experience with them back in the day and he was kind of hoping that they were extinct now. Caspian doesn't believe in sea serpants, and Drinian is a little on edge because he has to deal with this landlubber.
Dude, since when do the pre-Caspian X Telmarines believe in Aslan, and why do they have ancient Narnian blades? (See: Green Mist of Stupidity.)
We could have Lucy in the leadership a little more, I think, instead of having Drinian, Caspian, and Edmund decide the fate of everyone. Hi, Lucy is a QUEEN.
I didn't get jossed on Peter being in pilot training! (One of the main things I was terrified of getting jossed on.) We just have "Peter is off having an ADVENTURE!"
Thing that completely blew my mind: ...there should be no mention of Jill Pole at the end. I can just barely fanwank it into them living nearby enough that the parents force them together in order to, like, interact with other human beings, but only by throwing out my own Jill backstory. It's a major point of The Silver Chair, guys!
Gods, for a horrible moment there I thought they were going to get rid of the most recognizable scene in the book: Reepicheep and his coracle. And yet, coracle, randomly there! And Reepicheep really did throw away his sword after all! That makes me so happy, for whatever reason.
Er, um, why do Edmund and Lucy have to stay with the Scrubbs until the end of the war again? Don't they have, uh, school?
Things that make me happy: the picture of Peter and Susan in Lucy's room at the Scrubbs is this one. This made me so happy, you have no idea. On the other hand, uh, they could have put non-movie related pictures of the Pevensies in? *sighs*
I can buy Caspian's daddy issues. I throw my hands up entirely on him hauling the Gifts along, though, aside from the cordial, since that's canon. However, him having Susan's bow contradicts the book and makes no logical sense, oh my god, where did the logic go when they were making this movie?
Edmund's issues, um, these are...LWW issues. Which he should not have. Because he got over those SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO. *flaps hands* ADAMSON COME BACK I MISS YOU.
The Baynes illustrations!
Love Reepicheep's and Eustace's fighting "lesson." I wish -- hmm, I wish they'd kept Eustace stealing the water while they were becalmed and running low, though, rather than a random orange just at the very beginning.
There is a pretty good chance that I will only say this once, but: there was not enough Aslan. Which is a little mindblowing.
Actually, I mostly just feel emotionally stunted on worldbuilding. My worldbuilding, where is it, what did you do with it, Apted? I trusted you! (Okay, I lied, I totally didn't.)
Lucy, however, can kick ass all over the place anytime she likes. PLEASE TO BE DOING MORE ASS-KICKING LUCY.
I wish...we had the world of the merpeople we had in the book, but hey, I can buy the mermaids being water-like, because we had the dryads being tree-like in LWW and PC! They can take more substantial form whenever they want. However, they do, uh, directly contradict the LWW mermaids, which are substantial. Whatever, maybe they were oceanids and nereids instead of mermaids, and whoever did the marketing for the movie didn't know what they were talking about.
One of the other things that bothered me is that we didn't get this feeling of time passing. It all seemed to happen very, very quickly, and it was clearly not meant to -- I think we got one mention somewhere of two weeks passing since they left Coriakin's island? But it never felt like that. You know what was missing? A BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL SAILING MONTAGE. Nothing gets the passage of time across like a montage.
I didn't hate it, I didn't love it, there were parts I quite liked and parts I hated with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns, and quite a few parts I was just puzzled about. (Dear Michael Apted, I think we read different books, love, Bedlam.)
BRING ON THE SILVER CHAIR. That one already has an action plot, surely you can't add in another one? Please don't try.
ETA: No, seriously, was one of the messages of this movie, "Wishing you were prettier is just like wishing you didn't exist"? Because if so, what the fucking motherfucking fuck, women aren't fucked around with enough in real life that you have to add to it in fantasy? I don't think I have words. Sometimes wishing you were prettier is just wishing you were prettier! It doesn't mean you have deep-seated issues about your importance or lack thereof in the grand scheme of things!
I do not have enough love for Eustace sitting down in the longboat and waiting for it to row itself. (Boy read a bit of fantasy when he was younger, I think, and then grew out of it -- or told himself he had, anyway.)
Lucy...never used her cordial at all. We get Rhindon being used, Susan's bow and arrows being used, Lucy pulls her dagger, but she never uses her cordial? I mean, it's not like they gave her opportunity to, but -- they certainly could have. (Me saying this is getting old at this point, but she did in the book.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-20 05:45 am (UTC)I think we agree on many major points, but I am exhausted and it's my bedtime and I'm too sleepy to write out all the things, so consider this a placeholder comment for when I'm awake.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-20 07:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-20 03:00 pm (UTC)And yes, the ending mention of Jill Pole... completely screws up the opening of The Silver Chairnow.
I think the general consensus is this movie was a mixed bag. Some people loved it, some hated it. Like you said, it was a pretty movie but it's nothing compared to the book. Even though VDT is a bit of a slow book, there were still things they could have mined from it that would've made the movie so much better.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-20 07:56 pm (UTC)(Oh my gods, the thing with the end credits is that it was basically all these scenes they changed in the movie. *cackles*)
I can maybe, sort of buy Jill Pole coming by for a visit, but it requires a lot of fanwanking in order to make it fit with the beginning of SC. Acquaintances, not friends, the kind that the parents always want to put together because they're the only two children of an age in the neighborhood, so clearly they must be friends!
Very mixed, yes. I mean, clearly some parts that were just spot-on, but...
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-20 03:32 pm (UTC)I really agree with what you said about sailing off to the end of the world just to see what's there, and how they didn't so much convey that here. But yeah, it was still a pretty good movie, and the actors all did excellently.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-20 08:01 pm (UTC)PotC: AWE did a better job at showing what it was like to sail to the world's end than this did! *twitches* I really miss that sense of awe and wonder and -- the idea of the far islands being, I don't know, less -- developed, as part of the world. Untouched by civilization. But -- a solid enough movie, taken on its own merits, I suppose. Just pretend that the other two didn't happen, and that makes it better.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-20 06:11 pm (UTC)However, the message about Lucy and the magic was based on the concept that Lucy saw Susan as beautiful and wanted to be her. The spell was a sort of a 'be careful what you wish for' type thing. She wished for Susan's beauty and in so doing wished NOT to be herself. The spell showed her what it would have been like if she, Lucy, wasn't there at all. It's a warning about jealosy and being careful about what you're wishing for.
I don't think I explaind that well.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-20 08:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-21 04:19 am (UTC)Still, there was some pretty. And while it makes no sense to have Jill Pole show up, I was happy about it anyway because POLE!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-21 05:40 am (UTC)I think the thing that weirds me out about this movie is that it was referencing the books far more than it was referencing the first two movies. Which...okay, at least they've read the books? (AND YET CLEARLY NOT CLOSELY ENOUGH.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-21 05:44 am (UTC)Yes, that! Like, did they EVEN WATCH PC? Because if they had, they would not have taken Peter's issues and slapped them onto Edmund like an ill-fitting suit. IJS.
In the abstract, giving Edmund & Lucy capital-I Issues for VDT made sense (I guess), but those particular issues were either completely WRONG (for Edmund) or ill-handled in the extreme (for Lucy). And at least some of that would have been rectified if they'd actually delved into the first two movies, and thought a bit more about the characters as established in the books.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-21 05:56 am (UTC)Also, I don't think we got as much Pevensie snark, which just makes me sad. And I really wish we'd gotten more time with Eustace.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-21 06:05 am (UTC)YES exactly. That was what I said: Edmund doesn't NEED external validation. That's not his issue! He handled that and put it aside when GOD DIED FOR HIS SINS the first time. That sort of thing generally gives one a sense of perspective on such self-image issues.
(Pardon the capslock abuse.)
More Eustace, more snark, all would have been better. I enjoyed it well enough while I was watching, but yeah, between the nonsensical plot and the deeeeeply fucked characterizations, it was intensely frustrating to think about afterwards.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-21 06:12 am (UTC)Pretty, and enjoyable enough, and -- internally consistent with itself, I suppose, if you ignore every other piece of canon, book or movie, that exists, which I suppose is at least helpful. Reepicheep was spot-on, at least, and Caspian was good and Eustace was awesome while he was there. I think Drinian may have my heart for this movie: I like competence.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-01 03:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-01 11:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-01 11:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-01 11:42 pm (UTC)