At what age did you stop wasting time trying to walk through doors into Narnia?
0 voters
This might be of interest to some of you if you haven’t already heard about it: Shooting started on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Directed by Andrew Adamson, a Kiwi who was co-director on Shrek, with special effects by Peter Jackson’s Weka Workshop.
Oustanding! I have the old television series on DVD…it’s great.
Could we have a poll with this thread, like “At what age did you stop wasting time trying to walk through doors into Narnia?”
a. 8-10
b. 11-12
c. 13-14
d. When I started trying to get to Middle Earth instead
e. Never stopped 
f. Huh? What’s Narnia?
God I wish I’d brought my boxed set of the Narnia Chronicles here with me 
Then again, I also kinda wish I was back over there at the moment, 'cause they’re looking for extras for Lion… right now. How cool would that be…
Oh, and one point - Weta Workshop 
Love the Narnia books, but the BBC series was shite. Fort he part of Aslan, they used the donkey suit fromt he panto, and tried to make it look like a lion.
I’ve long hoped they’d make a new series, with dfecent effects, a nice wide open feel, great helicopter shots etc, and when I saw Lord of the Rings, I thought yep, this is hte feel I’d like for ‘Narnia’ (or maybe like the latest Harry Potter movie, which I thought had superb cinematography.
Now with Weta on board, it might just have a chance.
Brian
I still occasionally read them. Read them all with some herbal assistance when at university. The voyage of the dawntreader was amazing after a couple of funny ciggies - a talking mouse in a coracle floating on a sea of lilies to the ege of the world… what more could you want?
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]Love the Narnia books, but the BBC series was shite. Fort he part of Aslan, they used the donkey suit fromt he panto, and tried to make it look like a lion.
I’ve long hoped they’d make a new series, with dfecent effects, a nice wide open feel, great helicopter shots etc, and when I saw Lord of the Rings, I thought yep, this is hte feel I’d like for ‘Narnia’ (or maybe like the latest Harry Potter movie, which I thought had superb cinematography.
Now with Weta on board, it might just have a chance.
Brian[/quote]
I don’t remember there being any helicopters in the book I read
It looks awesome. That trailer shows just the sort of thing I was hoping for (although the seem to have deviated form the sotry on a few points).
Cant wait.
Brian
I re-read the books when The Young Ones was on TV back in the mid-eighties.
The talking beavers stole the recent movie. They seemed to be much more fun characters than Aslan, the kids and the fawn. I noticed the ‘religious’ parts in the movie but never noticed them when I read the series as a kid.
Ditto. The breaking of the stone table when Aslan is ressurected, Alsan sacrificing his life in place of someone who had sinned, etc.
This is a great movie to take kids to but, unlike the LOTR series, I don’t think it holds tremendous appeal for non-parent adults.
I wonder if there will be six sequels, a la Harry Potter?
I liked the movie, and it certainly can be enjoyed without seeing it as a Christian allegory. Themes such as self-sacrifice, repentance, good-vs-evil etc. are certainly more universal than mere Christianity.
Just saw it, thought it was very well done, but having read and loved the books since I was eight, a few quibbles.
1)Lucy is BLONDE!!
Didn’t like the Professor- his lines in the book were much better- going on about family- in the book he suggests everybody minding their own business.
Is this Hollywood taking out that British stiff-upper-lipness ?(re Fellowship of the Ring, when Sam is drowning in the Anduin River- in the movie he and Frodo do a big huggie-feelie scene; in the book Frodo calls him a confounded nuisance before conceding he’s glad that Sam’s there.)
Ice-breaking river scene was too contrived- even wolf knows it-“Boy, we’ve been here before”
Liam Neeson’s voice not deep or Liony enough
Other than that, very well done- didn’t like the Witch at first, but she grows on ya.
Problem with sequel is that “Prince Caspian” is the weakest of the series -other than the horrible “Last Battle”- the climax is in many ways simply a replay.
If they get past that to the “Dawn Treader”, though…
I also enjoyed the film but have quibbles:
The baseball through the window was a cliched way of getting the kids into the wardrobe. It’s quite straightforward in the book and much more organic (ie, feeding off the environment of the story).
Many of the line readings were poor. Too much of the dialogue was lifted directly from the book without setting up the scene properly in the movie.
The direction was nervous, unsure of itself in the way the Harry Potter and LOTR movies were not. In those movies there is never any po-mo winking at the audience. Youare places in a different world and made to believe in its existence. In Narnia I kept getting pulled out by inappropriate dialogue (the wolf “Come on kid, you don’t have it in you.”) and the beavers irony-ladden performance.
The scene in the book where everyone is on the run from the wolves is one of my favorites. It is for some reason reason completely changed in the movie. The ice scene is ridiculous. I have fallen into an icy river before, and know the kids would be in shock afterwards. No amount of sunshine would warm them. They needed a hot bath, or a roaring fire.
The Santa Claus scene just does not work in the film.
There’s no magical feeling to the film. The kids should change like the do in the books through exposure to Narnia air. Peter should get stronger and more manly looking. It just doesn’t work to have a young kid up against a muscle bound centaur and expect that the kid is going to lead.