Yeah, that movie just didn't work for me. There were some really wonderful bits, surrounded by an hour and a half of lame. I would really sum up my objections as: the movie relied on the stupidity of the main protagonists to motivate the plot; the morality of the movie was deeply disturbing; I'm sick and tired of British pastoralism/anti-industrialization/I already saw this movie, and LotR was better; and Aslan is ineffable to the point where I really wonder if he is in fact evil.
I'm going to try to lj-cut the spoilers-- I don't know if it will work in a comment.
Prince Stupid (part 2 of the Idiots of Narnia): the entire plot depends on Prince Caspian totally screwing up an attack on the enemy castle because he insists on being stupid and doing things that could totally be done later not once, but twice. It's helped along by High King Peter the Moronic being too busy being annoyed with Caspian and trying to one-up him that he's unable to adapt a plan to the fact that Caspian is crazy and stupid. Having been really stupid for a while, they then return to their base, so Caspian can advance the plot by being stupid in an entirely different way. Also, the whole plot relies on the fact that Peter the Moronic and Susan the Inconsistently Dumb decide that the logical conclusion is that Aslan has abandoned them and that Lucy is lying or delusional. This seems, shall we say, ridiculous after the first book/movie. Indeed, Edmund the Making-up-for-last-time points out explicitly, last time I didn't listen to Lucy, I ended up looking stupid, but to no avail. Yes, they're kids. But they're also the Kings and Queens of Narnia of legend, who ruled for more than a decade and still remember that all. Feh.
The morality really bugged me. They slaughter vast numbers of faceless human soldiers, apparently without remorse or qualms. (And I don't mean cause to be killed in battle-- they personally stab them, shoot them full of arrows, and lop off their heads.) I'm okay with that-- it's a war after all. But when they're confronted with the people who are directly responsible for all of this-- practically moustache twirling over the top villains, who really are directly comparable to Hitler and the head of the SS, up to and including plotting genocide-- then they are all about mercy and unwilling to kill and all of that. Apparently, having a face and a name makes you matter. Indeed, not one of the named villains whose faces we see gets killed by our heroes. As for all of the regular soldiers (and their horses, which given that this is Narnia matter)-- the Kings and Queens care more about a single feral bear than all of the human soldiers put together (literally). This really upset me, especially because our heroes, who are portrayed as being people whose morality we care about, slaughter vast numbers of soldiers whose principal mistake was to be born into the system of the enemy.
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cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com at 03:48pm on 17/05/2008![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm going to try to lj-cut the spoilers-- I don't know if it will work in a comment.
Prince Stupid (part 2 of the Idiots of Narnia): the entire plot depends on Prince Caspian totally screwing up an attack on the enemy castle because he insists on being stupid and doing things that could totally be done later not once, but twice. It's helped along by High King Peter the Moronic being too busy being annoyed with Caspian and trying to one-up him that he's unable to adapt a plan to the fact that Caspian is crazy and stupid. Having been really stupid for a while, they then return to their base, so Caspian can advance the plot by being stupid in an entirely different way. Also, the whole plot relies on the fact that Peter the Moronic and Susan the Inconsistently Dumb decide that the logical conclusion is that Aslan has abandoned them and that Lucy is lying or delusional. This seems, shall we say, ridiculous after the first book/movie. Indeed, Edmund the Making-up-for-last-time points out explicitly, last time I didn't listen to Lucy, I ended up looking stupid, but to no avail. Yes, they're kids. But they're also the Kings and Queens of Narnia of legend, who ruled for more than a decade and still remember that all. Feh.
The morality really bugged me. They slaughter vast numbers of faceless human soldiers, apparently without remorse or qualms. (And I don't mean cause to be killed in battle-- they personally stab them, shoot them full of arrows, and lop off their heads.) I'm okay with that-- it's a war after all. But when they're confronted with the people who are directly responsible for all of this-- practically moustache twirling over the top villains, who really are directly comparable to Hitler and the head of the SS, up to and including plotting genocide-- then they are all about mercy and unwilling to kill and all of that. Apparently, having a face and a name makes you matter. Indeed, not one of the named villains whose faces we see gets killed by our heroes. As for all of the regular soldiers (and their horses, which given that this is Narnia matter)-- the Kings and Queens care more about a single feral bear than all of the human soldiers put together (literally). This really upset me, especially because our heroes, who are portrayed as being people whose morality we care about, slaughter vast numbers of soldiers whose principal mistake was to be born into the system of the enemy.
To be continued...