*ahem*
shit shit shitty shit shit!
Okay, I understand artistic license. I understand rewriting, adding and deleting things that make the movie move fast enough to fit enough of the story into the time alotted. I understand cutting out and/or rewriting most of Trumpkin's flashback and the back story with Caspian. I understand that visual effects can be tweaked at the microscopic level until the director is perfectly satisfied, whereas dialogue relies on the ability of the actors to deliver it and (more importantly) the director to direct it. But COME ON!!1!
This is how I imagine the discussions went when they were putting this movie together:
"Okay, so we have this book that's pretty popular, and we already did the first one as a movie and it did pretty well, so we're going to do this one now too, I guess. The setting is okay, we'll keep that. And there are some really good moments in the plot. We'll keep those, and pad them out with a bunch of good CG and stuff, yeah. The characters are okay, but they're not angsty enough. Emo is all the rage now, so lets emo them up, but maybe with a touch of rage and teenage angst. Yeah, angst! That's what this book needs! Ooh, and angst goes really well with fighting, so we'll throw in a bunch of that. Oh, I guess there's already a bunch of that. Oh well, that fighting is crap. We'll and add a bunch more, so that we can make the characters more angsty!"
Note that the following points contain spoilers for those of you who have read the book but not seen the movie and still care.
GRRRRRRR.
Forgivable edits:
- The kids discovering Caire Paravel (sp?) - Compressed
- The scene with the white witch, the hag and the werewolf - Altered
- The 'harrowing of the shire' - as it were at the end of the book. (You know, with the schoolkids turning into pigs, &c.) - Cut
Key scenes/dialogue points that they should have just left intact:
- Susan: "I didn't really want to come to Narnia anyway! Waah!"
- The Narnian council on the dancing lawn - Mangled
- Lucy not saying "I told you so," or more appropriately, Peter congratulating Lucy on not saying "I told you so": CUT
- Lucy's vision of Aslan and the trees: Destroyed
- Lucy telling the others that she had to go with Aslan whether they followed or not: CUT
- Trumpkin's first encounter with Aslan: Mashed
- Peter acting like a high-king, and not some angry, testosterone high pissant, anxious to get into a pissing contest at every opportunity: TOTALLY DESTROYED
- The end of the duel between Peter and Miraz - Mangled = "His life is not mine to take. But it is Caspian's! Here ya go buddy! Derm-dee-derm-derm."
Stupid additions:
- Xena - I mean "Susan" - The Warrior Princess - WTF!!!?
- Um, yeah, the whole middle third of the movie with them attacking Miraz' castle - WTF x 2!
- No, seriously, I couldn't stop wanting to slam my forehead into a brick wall throughout the entirity of that 'act'. I mean, C'MON!! - WTF again.
- And REALLY? Miraz' wife SHOOTS Caspian? REALLY!?!>!
- "I know, let's give the Narnians FIGHTER JETS! Yeah! We can have DWARVES, hanging from GRYPHONS, shooting their BOWS and ARROWS! It'll be KICK-ASS! And then- and THEN, we can give the Telmarines ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS! YEAH! DOUBLE KICK-ASS!!!"
- "OOH! OOH! And we'll have the fawns doing PARKOUR!!@!" - {writer wets himself}
- "And let's have the NARNIANS destroy Aslan's How, as part of this grand strategy, even though all of the angstiness of this miserably rewritten plot revolves around how they have NO STRATEGY! YEAH!!"
- "WE HAVE TO GO FIND ASLAN!!!" - WTFingF!
- Susan and Caspian - The star crossed lovers. I guess it's forgivable, but still...
- "Yeah, that little door they walk through in the book is SOOO CG-poor. Let's make it a TREE!!" - Boooo
- And WTF was up with that MUSIC? Singing? SINGING!? What is this, a DISNEY MOV- Oooooh, riiiight.
Scenes/lines I really wanted to see done well and was left with blue (eye) balls:
- Remember in Fellowship of the Ring, when they made it to Lothlorien, and everything is supposed to be golden and bright, and instead Peter Jackson did the whole thing like it was in moonlight? Think of that, and you have the exact opposite of what happened with the scene with Lusy and the trees.I really REALLY wish they had had the balls to just do the scene, with Lucy, and the dancing trees, and Aslan, and the moonlight, and everything not quite solid enough to be sure, but so so close.
- The River King or whatever he is asking Aslan to loose his bonds, at which point the bridge is destoyed. I was waiting for that line. What ev.
- No Bacchus? Forgiveable, I suppose, but disappointing that they left out the whole 'fun' part. And besides, as an uncle I feel bad for JP's namesake being left out.
- The TREES! The trees are supposed to sweep across the landscape like a sea, not like a scraggly little mob!
- Oh Reepicheep. Oh poor, poor Reepicheep. You were such a cool character. And then this movie happened. And Lucy summed it up all to well: You were very cute. With your little, big, manly voice that sounded nothing like the way it was described in the book. *sigh*
It's like they spent the whole time rewriting the script to build up to this great scene, but the scene never came.
And finally, let's take out any insinuation at all that Aslan knows what he's doing and is in control of things. You know, we have to prove ourselves to him, and it's up to us, even though we're not enough. Let's take out any touch of good theology that that crazy old Christian guy who wrote the book migh have put into it, and instead let's make it about self esteem and feeling good!
Okay, I'll stop now. But let me just say this one last thing: If you haven't already seen the movie, just....just don't. Wait until Dawn Treader comes out. Maybe - apparently Disney isn't going to be involved in this one - just maybe it won't suck. Which would be nice, because it isn't my least favorite of the Narnia books like PC is.
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