In anticipation of seeing Voyage of the Dawn Treader this week, I’ve decided to watch the first two Narnia movies back to back tonight. I’m leaving for Toronto tomorrow morning and a movie marathon is actually a decent break from the frantic knitting I’ve been engaged in all month. I’m down to my last scarf–a red one for my Dad, actually very much like the one Tumnus is wearing in the current scene.
I’ve waxed theoretical on the relative merits and failures of these movies before, and obviously the books are far superior, but it’s only just occurred to me how much the virtues of the film match up with the overall strengths of the medium itself. One of the things I liked most about the first film was the colors, especially on the battlefield at Beruna. And the book can’t tell me all of that. It can (and does, I think) say that Peter and Edmund wear red banners with golden lions, but it can’t show you how the colors are saturated or how it matches the green battlefield, and anyway, I wouldn’t listen in print, because it’s really no fun to read about scenery.
I missed the philosophy in the movies; it’s the best thing about the books, and it’s where Lewis is most at home. I found it especially lacking in the second film, which was why I liked it much better on my second viewing (when I wasn’t distracted anymore waiting for scenes that would never show up). However, and I may be going out on a limb here, the movies excel at character development, and I believe on some levels, they know the individual characters better than Lewis does. That may be a stretch, but the fact is that in the books, we only get to see the Pevensies when they’re either speaking or when Lewis goes inside their heads. And we get to know them very well, because Lewis does a lot with a little, but we don’t get to see, for example, what they like to do while lounging around Digory Kirk’s house, or the expressions on their faces while the others are talking.
Edmund is my favourite character, an opinion I feel may be shared by whoever wrote the movies (Lewis, if I had to guess, seems to favor Lucy). It took me a while to realize how much I liked Ed, because he’s basically a prick for most of the first book. And it’s the same for the movie, except…his behavior is qualified by that very first scene which isn’t even in the book, where he has to look out the window during the London Blitz and then afterwards rescue the picture of his father. And Peter yells, and you get to feel what it must be like to be a second son when your father’s gone and your brother is basically perfect, though frankly, not so smart. In the book, Edmund feels like a traitor; in the movie, he feels like a stupid kid that grows up definitively by his second-act redemption. Peter, on the other hand, though mostly together, still has some learning to do; and the movies know that, especially Prince Caspian, in a way that the book doesn’t.
I read a terrible review of Voyage of the Dawn Treader; I’m not terribly surprised, since it’s the most unfilmable of all the books. But I hope that at least the characters are still true; Edmund and Lucy are far more important to the Narnia oeuvre (as well as generally superior and more developed characters) than Peter and Susan, so it can be pleasant just to spend time with them, especially without the extraneous elements of the elder Pevensies. Frankly, I just hope it makes a boatload of money, because The Silver Chair is potentially the most filmmable of the books, and after that, I’d be very interested to see what Hollywood would do with The Last Battle, which has some potentially troubling elements, especially when you attempt to sieve all the excess Christianity out of it.
Another reason to hope for the later books, starting with The Silver Chair is the female characters that come out of them. While I can’t say that Lewis ever reaches a stage of complete egalitarianism, his later books display a far easier and more progressive mindset. I can’t help think that battles would be ugly affairs were Lucy or Susan to be involved. Susan, though handy with the bow, Lucy never stops being a child, and together they (d)evolve into the virgin-whore divide that seems to show up wherever there’s inherent (though I should say, not deliberate) misogyny.
Jill Pole, as a character, is an achievement for Lewis. His most nuanced girl (perhaps save Polly from The Magician’s Nephew), she’s virtuous but flawed; and not only that, but she’s Lewis’ only female that comes close to anything like kick ass. This last fact is especially apparent because of her pairing with Scrubb, who can’t help but remain a pudgy little twerp long after he deserves the title. I may be wrong about this, but I believe she gets to wear armor and carry a sword with the boys with barely a second thought. Aravis from The Horse and his Boy gets a similar treatment, but her book is the least interesting, so I can’t help but ignore it a little bit. Polly, as I mentioned, also carries a lot of nuance, but obvious gender roles don’t actually play a large role in her relationship with Digory, if my recollection is correct.
Honestly, what Hollywood needs to do is take a lesson from Twilight and crank the movies out fast and furiously, so no one has time to forget about them. At that rate, they might actually get around to making The Magician’s Nephew, which also has great film potential. Plus, they would actually be justified in bringing Tilda Swinton back, which they seem to be doing every time anyway, long after her character has become irrelevant to the Narnia saga. I’d bet my firstborn that if they ever do make The Silver Chair, she shows up again as the Green Lady. And that would actually make more sense than whatever they’ve done to work her into VotDT.
