Pince Caspian? Views?

[nkf]

I liked it a lot. A pleasamt surprise.

[WendyWeber]

Charles Darwin [shock}

[nkf]

I think Aslan is the only character who doesn't work. They've done their best but there is still the suggestion of a giant cuddly toy. On the other hand, the centaurs were very impressive.

[Marina]

The mind boggles to be honest nkf. I just took it all at face value as Tales of the 1001 Nights type stuff as a child, but the whole Tash thing is ripe for causing grave offence
I think they will bottle out

[WendyWeber]

(I can't find the bit with more detail in now but I think JM may be in there too, bear with me...)

[nkf]

I might take myself off to bed with a Narnia book. The question is which one?

[Marina]

Gosh, interesting background indeed WW. I hope Skandar is not tempted to grow mutton-chop whiskers in later life

[WendyWeber]

[WendyWeber]

(That was Wiki btw)

I still have fond memories of the BBC productions c 1988 - terribly wooden in many ways, but excellent at the time - but I may actually make an effort to see Prince Caspian, as long as nobody kicks the back of my seat and/or crunches behind me

[OrmIrian]

Edmund looks like my cousin when he was a boy. And yes he was very lovely too

I will confess to having a crush on Caspian as a child, but in the Dawn Treader when I thought of him as being really grown up not in this book.

I agree that the whole Telmarine thing could be difficult

[PuppyMonkey]

Bloody loved it - and I didn't expect to cos I was a bit about the first one.

[EffiePerine]

Haven;t seen it, but have just re-read the books. Voyage of the Dawn Treader def my favourite - is that due next?

[Marina]

Yes Effie
I just know they will not really grasp the jaw-dropping essence of home life at the Scrubbs' before the children fall into the painting

[motherinferior]

Oooh good.

The Inferiorettes rather loved the witch in the first one ('she has a different outfit for every scene, mummy!'), I have to admit.

[KayHarker]

the Calormene thing will be odd - I don't think they will bottle Tash, they'll just make him into the same sort of cobblers that they had in Temple of Doom

I still can't read the ending of The Magician's Nephew and not cry my eyes out when Digory gives that apple to his mum. Oh, I wish there really were healing apple trees

[KayHarker]

oh yes, forgot to say, loved the fillum, could have done without the smooching, thought they made Peter into a bit of a tosser, and a couple of the edits were a bit jarring, but Edmund is just wonderful ("Yeah Peter, I know, you had it covered") and Miraz was brilliantly done, and I love that they kept in quite a bit of the book's dialogue between Lucy and Aslan.

[Marina]

Kay, I could not agree more with your view that final scene in the book. Can C S Lewis have had in mind Joy's own illness, do you think
Who among us would not be so badly tempted by that apple tree?

[procrastinatingparent]

Took 6 ten-year-olds to see it on Friday and they did enjoy it but the more ahem advanced among them were more riveted by the snogging teenagers in the back row. (I am so turning into my mother because I had to clench everything very hard not to tap them on the shoulder and ask them not to suck face so noisily.)

But the film ... I thought it was excellent, apart obviously from annoying Peter and Susan, although I didn't get the sense that Aslan was orchestrating everything behind the scenes in the way he seems to in the book.

I have always assumed that the Calormenes will have to be played as medieval-era Arabs, offense-causing or not, or else how will The Horse and His Boy work?

Can't wait for Dawn Treader, and Eustace turning into a dragon, and Prince Caspian being manly on a boat

[KayHarker]

Marina, I'm fairly certain that Jack was also recalling memories of his own mother's illness. Oh, it's so not fair.

PP, hows you?

[PortAndLemon]

I suspect they may not do The Horse And His Boy at all, or if they do then only as an afterthought to the other films. I also suspect they may not do The Last Battle (widely seen as "challenging"/"difficult", and there's the continuity issue).

[procrastinatingparent]

Not do The Horse and His Boy?!! The Last Battle would be a bit of a theological nightmare, I can see that...

[KayHarker]

I think they may well do Horse and His boy, because storywise, it's one of the best, and gives them a great opportunity to do something very different setting-wise to Voyage and Silver Chair. And Aravis is a fab character.

But I do think we'll be very, very fortunate to get all seven, and particularly The Last Battle, which is absolutely fraught with theological difficulty and controversy and would be about as CGI heavy as it could possibly get. And poor Susan!

I'd love to see it, but I think I would probably be disappointed by it and maybe even a bit ticked off by inevitable changes. Although the existence of the noble Calormene soldier inside the stable/in heaven could work very well with modern sensibilities.

My favourite line in all the books comes from the Last Battle, and I doubt it would ever make the screen - When Lucy says, in response to the realization that the stable is bigger on the inside, "In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world."

I know some people hate the Christian underpinnings of the books, but stuff like that line makes me appreciate the other-worldly thrill of the Christian ideas about incarnation and so on, and even if I didn't believe it anymore, I still love that mystery. /random tangent.

[nkf]

I love the fact that Susan has gone off and become flighty and is no longer fit for Narnia.

I like the book's religious theme. It's so many religions and myths mixed up together and yet it works and seems coherent.

[KayHarker]

Anybody ever read the short story 'The Problem of Susan'? Can't recall who wrote it, but it's one bloody disturbing tale.

[nkf]

No. What happens. Does it give her side of the story?

[KayHarker]

Yes, it's all very cleverly written, because obviously it's not written with the approval of the Lewis estate, but it's her POV from when she has grown up. She's is remembering various things - identifying her family after the train crash and so on. She also has these really bizarre dreams in which a lion does something a bit with the White Witch.

Them's issues, I tell you..