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Narnia to be Created in New Zealand
SCS writes "It has been confirmed
that the The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will be made in New Zealand as
part of a five film line-up of C.S. Lewis's Narnia fantasy book
series, with New Zealander Andrew Adamson of Shrek fame as its
director. Filming begins next year, and Weta Digital has already started
the graphics work. Also reported at the BBC
and HeraldTribune.com."
It is expected to be the first of five films based on CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia books, and has the potential to top The Lord of The Rings in economic spinoffs for New Zealand.
Strange, there are seven books.
Anyone have any insight into what is being combined or left out?
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I think that would be a great book to make into a mini-series. If SciFi channel would do as good a job as they did with Dune it could be classic.
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The Chronicles of Prydain (by Llyod Alexander), while not as well known as the Chronicles of Narnia, is a beautiful series which has captured my heart and my fantasies during my younger days. It seems dissapointing that it has not even gotten a small fraction of the recognition that the Chronicles of Narnia has, with only a long forgotten Disney movie "The Black Cauldron" (also made into a Sierra adventure game) to show. It's the perfect fantasy series suitable even for young children, and I found it a way more fulfilling read even than the Harry Potter series. Try to find the series of 5 books... if you can. It would be well worthwhile.
Cool! This is good news. As a fan of C. S. Lewis' work generally and also the Narnia chronicles specifically, I think this will give these books the same rich setting enjoyed by LOTR. Tolkien and Lewis did weave much of the same setting into their books. As I was watching LOTR:ROTK last night (what an **awesome** movie) I did think to myself several times, "Wow, if they can make LOTR look this beautiful, the Narnia chronicles could be made just as beautiful."
This is also good news because it means the movies are finally taking shape. They were announced almost two years ago, but there hasn't been much word on them since.
This will, of course, lend to one major disclaimer for all Tolkien and LOTR fans who haven't read the Narnia chronicles: the movies will seem similar in setting, goal, and underlying theme. That having been said, they're drastically different stories. While there will be numerous similarities (which ignorant reviewers will peck at Narnia for, unfortunately) Tolkien was setting out to tell a story, create a world, and totally immerse the reader in Middle Earth. Lewis had more apologetic aims with his books, and this is by no means a secret fact. Hopefully they don't temper this angle too much with the movies. Certainly not everybody is thrilled by an underlying Christian theme, but removing it would make the story anemic.
Even so, Lewis' books are strong strong works on their own, and they deserve as rich a treatment as LOTR received. The two books/series are widely regarded as some of the best fantasy work written in the 20th century. That Lewis and Tolkien were friends sweetens the deal.
I'm looking forward to it!
I suspect (perhaps incorrectly) that the adaptation of the stories of a WWI veteran to movies in New Zealand was given the greenlight because of the success of another WWI vet (JRR Tolkien), but this brings up a question that I've had in my mind for a while "Do good allegorical stories make for good movies?"
An allegory (at least as I use the term) is a subject that is described by using another subject in it's place (sort of like an extended metaphor).
Tolkien and Lewis are on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to allegory. Tolkein despising it and Lewis making heavy use of it. On the written page, I think that the use or avoidence of allegory is fine, but I'm not sure that it works on film.
Film is just such an overwhelmingly visual medium and allegory is such an abstract tool. It may be possible to depict the Lion Aslan as an allegory of Jesus on the written page, but on film you will see such an overwhelming embodiment of "big cat" that unless there's a narrator or someone hitting you over the head with "Lion = Jesus" the allegory will just be overwhelmed.
The only example of strict allegory that I recall in a modern film was Battlefield Earth but that may be an unfair example (as there were many other reasons why that movie was so poorly received).
Of course, many people already know the allegory that Lewis used in his tales and no doubt it will be brought up again and again by movie critics and sunday school teachers before the movie debuts, but if people didn't go in already having been told what to expect, would the allegory have been obvious?
Just idle wondering I suppose...
the heavy-handed smearing of christian admonishments throughout the series largely puts me off
Don't worry, rumor has it all that stuff is being removed. It also looks like HarperCollins is spinning this as a way of exploiting the Harry Potter popularity and is planning 'revised' Cristianity-free versions of the books as well. The are also rumored to be working on followup books written in the 'Narnia' universe.
Of course this has the author spinning in his grave, and lots of protest from people who knew CS Lewis.
One person remarked that they are turning Narnia into the British 'Mickey Mouse'.
Sickening IMHO.
Granted, I haven't seen any of these in years... I was a little kid at the time... but those films were great, production values notwithstanding.
I really hope the new films do as well with the text as those did. And, as a side note, I don't remember a whole lot of heavy-handed Christian doctrine in the films... although even at that age, I could see it plainly in the books.
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I would much rather see Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet adapted to film. Weda could do marvelous work imagining the space voyage and the inhabitants of Lewis's Mars. The hero, Dr. Ransom, who was modelled after Tolkien himself, is much more interesting than anyone in the Narnia books, including Aslan. It would be another great role for Ian McKellan; or if you think McKellan is too old, perhaps Alan Rickman. Just my $0.02 worth.
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