The rest of my post: Pastoralism/Anti-industrialism: The movie tells us that the villains are evil and genocidal. But it really shows us more or less two instances of their profound evil: they plot against themselves nastily and they build a bridge. (Okay, they also try to drown a dwarf who killed one or two of their soldiers.) But yes: the big thing that shows that they are evil is that they have simple machines, and drive some piles into the riverbed. Also, they (gasp!) build bridges out of wood, which means that they evily and savagely cut down trees. Look, I care about the environment and nature as much as the next guy, but this whole technology is bad garbage wears thin. Also, this then sets up a rehash of Lord of the Rings, complete with the battle being won by ents marching in from the forest and Elrond/Lucy using the Ring of Water to flood out the ford and drown some of the villains. Been there, seen that, it was better in Middle Earth.
Aslan's bizarreness: Apparently, the moral of this movie is: people can't do anything but delay, what you really need is for Aslan/God to act as a deus ex machina to win the day. Which then raises the question of why, as everyone wonders repeatedly, Aslan just hangs out and watches while all of this bad stuff happens without doing anything before the climax of the movie. Yeah, he's ineffable and all that, but at some point you have to wonder whether he just plain doesn't really care, or perhaps is malicious. If the humans saved the day, you could imagine that it was because he cared about free will or something. But they don't. In fact, we are shown that all of their plans besides "let's beg Aslan to help us and try to buy time for him to save the day" fail miserably. So, don't plant a field in the hopes of getting a harvest. Just wait till fall, and pray for Aslan to save you. Also, at the end, Susan and Caspian have this little proto-romance going on. They might want to pursue that--maybe Susan could stay in Narnia a little while. But no-- she must leave. Not because Aslan has a good reason (except maybe that sex is evil, or that Susan is going to hell anyway, so good riddance), but just because he says so. Making teen-age girls cry is fun when you're quasi-omnipotent. To the extent that Aslan is meant to represent God, he makes us question whether God is in fact good-- but there are explanations I can come up with for the problem of evil in the real world. They don't really work in the version in Narnia.
All in all, while there are many little bits that were great, I hated the movie as a whole.
Yikes. I'm sensing some hostility here. I reread the books recently (last year maybe) and admit they didn't really work for me, but this is a lot stronger than what I felt.
I was totally expecting to read your comment and chastise you for your whole "the book denied the agency of the lead characters and so I don't like it" thing. That's there, and I still think you need to get over it, but there's much else here as well.
I'm now curious about the timing of the writing of this and The Two Towers. Lewis and Tolkien regularly discussed story ideas with each other.
Yeah, I ended up getting to a bad place emotionally during the course of the movie. And I agree, part of this is a lack of agency pet peeve, but that's only part of this, and not really the major part. As I perceived it subjectively, the morality and anti-industrialism were what really upset me, although that may be shaped by annoyance about the rest.
It's hard to tell what the timing was. Prince Caspian was published in 1951, a few years before The Two Towers (1954), but of course the Lord of the Rings was developed over an extended period of time before its publication. So it is difficult, without a lot more research, to figure out how the cross-polination of ideas worked. Still, I think that my end conclusion is that the scenes in the movie version of the Lord of the Rings are cooler and work better for me than the similar scenes in the movie version of Prince Caspian. I haven't read the book of Prince Caspian in too long to comment on the written forms, and based on Orichalcum's assessment of the movie's honesty to the book, I don't much want to.
Tolkien hated Narnia. I doubt he had any direct influence. Also, tLotR was effectively done by 1949. The publication was held up by publishing shenanigans and Tolkien's taking about a year to type the ms.
(How's that for a 'the world has changed' moment? A college professor sixty years ago, couldn't type.)
PC was written in, I think, 1949–1950, so it would have been composed after the main writing of tLorR was done. I expect much of Narnia seems familiar because Lewis and Tolkien were drawing on the same sources rather than explicit contact or pilfering.
As far as the movie goes, I'm not that bothered by the similarities to tLotR. It's only natural. And Peter the Moronic got a raw deal in the movie. He's not nearly so bad in the book. For one thing, the whole castle strike is made up from whole cloth. It's not in the book at all.
In fact, IIRC, the book does better address some of your moral qualms. I don't remember if a battle ever takes place, but if it does, it's entirely through the agency of the Telmarines. Peter's duel is not a delaying tactic, but an attempt to stop the war. If Miraz loses, the Telmarines have no reason to fight, since Caspian is the rightful king. And Miraz loses because he's killed treacherously (as in the movie), but there's no mercy scene. He slips and Lord Sopespian stabs him. Then the battle is about to start but Aslan puts an end to it, with Lucy and Susan's help. So I suppose he's a little more effable in the book, though the theme of needing God's agency is still there.
Coming into this kind of late since I just saw the movie a couple days ago, but I must say I enjoyed it, despite Adam's qualms (though I acknowledge those problems). I would like to point out, in relation to The Two Towers that popular opinion has it that Treebeard is supposed to evoke C.S. Lewis personally, especially the very slow method of talking. So I think there is clearly cross pollination of some ideas, though it's hard to put a finger on the specifics.
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Pastoralism/Anti-industrialism: The movie tells us that the villains are evil and genocidal. But it really shows us more or less two instances of their profound evil: they plot against themselves nastily and they build a bridge. (Okay, they also try to drown a dwarf who killed one or two of their soldiers.) But yes: the big thing that shows that they are evil is that they have simple machines, and drive some piles into the riverbed. Also, they (gasp!) build bridges out of wood, which means that they evily and savagely cut down trees. Look, I care about the environment and nature as much as the next guy, but this whole technology is bad garbage wears thin. Also, this then sets up a rehash of Lord of the Rings, complete with the battle being won by ents marching in from the forest and Elrond/Lucy using the Ring of Water to flood out the ford and drown some of the villains. Been there, seen that, it was better in Middle Earth.
Aslan's bizarreness: Apparently, the moral of this movie is: people can't do anything but delay, what you really need is for Aslan/God to act as a deus ex machina to win the day. Which then raises the question of why, as everyone wonders repeatedly, Aslan just hangs out and watches while all of this bad stuff happens without doing anything before the climax of the movie. Yeah, he's ineffable and all that, but at some point you have to wonder whether he just plain doesn't really care, or perhaps is malicious. If the humans saved the day, you could imagine that it was because he cared about free will or something. But they don't. In fact, we are shown that all of their plans besides "let's beg Aslan to help us and try to buy time for him to save the day" fail miserably. So, don't plant a field in the hopes of getting a harvest. Just wait till fall, and pray for Aslan to save you. Also, at the end, Susan and Caspian have this little proto-romance going on. They might want to pursue that--maybe Susan could stay in Narnia a little while. But no-- she must leave. Not because Aslan has a good reason (except maybe that sex is evil, or that Susan is going to hell anyway, so good riddance), but just because he says so. Making teen-age girls cry is fun when you're quasi-omnipotent. To the extent that Aslan is meant to represent God, he makes us question whether God is in fact good-- but there are explanations I can come up with for the problem of evil in the real world. They don't really work in the version in Narnia.
All in all, while there are many little bits that were great, I hated the movie as a whole.
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I was totally expecting to read your comment and chastise you for your whole "the book denied the agency of the lead characters and so I don't like it" thing. That's there, and I still think you need to get over it, but there's much else here as well.
I'm now curious about the timing of the writing of this and The Two Towers. Lewis and Tolkien regularly discussed story ideas with each other.
(no subject)
It's hard to tell what the timing was. Prince Caspian was published in 1951, a few years before The Two Towers (1954), but of course the Lord of the Rings was developed over an extended period of time before its publication. So it is difficult, without a lot more research, to figure out how the cross-polination of ideas worked. Still, I think that my end conclusion is that the scenes in the movie version of the Lord of the Rings are cooler and work better for me than the similar scenes in the movie version of Prince Caspian. I haven't read the book of Prince Caspian in too long to comment on the written forms, and based on Orichalcum's assessment of the movie's honesty to the book, I don't much want to.
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(How's that for a 'the world has changed' moment? A college professor sixty years ago, couldn't type.)
PC was written in, I think, 1949–1950, so it would have been composed after the main writing of tLorR was done. I expect much of Narnia seems familiar because Lewis and Tolkien were drawing on the same sources rather than explicit contact or pilfering.
As far as the movie goes, I'm not that bothered by the similarities to tLotR. It's only natural. And Peter the Moronic got a raw deal in the movie. He's not nearly so bad in the book. For one thing, the whole castle strike is made up from whole cloth. It's not in the book at all.
In fact, IIRC, the book does better address some of your moral qualms. I don't remember if a battle ever takes place, but if it does, it's entirely through the agency of the Telmarines. Peter's duel is not a delaying tactic, but an attempt to stop the war. If Miraz loses, the Telmarines have no reason to fight, since Caspian is the rightful king. And Miraz loses because he's killed treacherously (as in the movie), but there's no mercy scene. He slips and Lord Sopespian stabs him. Then the battle is about to start but Aslan puts an end to it, with Lucy and Susan's help. So I suppose he's a little more effable in the book, though the theme of needing God's agency is still there.
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Faith, not Works.