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Behind the Scenes of Narnia's Special Effects
louismg writes "Walt Disney Pictures' Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe took in more than $100 million at the box office worldwide in its opening weekend, riding the back of special effects powering nearly all the movie's characters, from the lion Aslan to the Gryphon, Minotaur, Centaurs and more. VFXWorld has a series of diaries with the technology geeks at Rhythm & Hues behind the special effects. (Part 1, 2)
For the fantasy film's special effects, Rhythm & Hues teamed up with Industrial Light and Magic and Sony Pictures Imageworks to deliver more than 1,400 shots for the film, and used cutting-edge technology from BlueArc, NVIDIA and others to keep the effects' production running."
I liken it to cotton candy; all fluffy and sweet to taste, but melts to nothing when you eat it. The book was much better, probably because I was a kid when I read it, and my imagination was much wilder than it is now. It's definitely a movie for kids, and I recommend it to all parents. It's at least worth a matinee.
With that kind of doe, you'd like they could at least get the blue/green screening done properly. Quite honestly, I felt the effects in this film were very poorly done.
One more tidbit. It's interesting that on IMDB the first 20 pages of reviews are all very positive (and submitted before the offical release), yet 80% of the more recent ones (since Fridays US release) are all very poor.
Jesus sounds a lot like Qui-Gon Jinn.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I've heard it's made alot of money, but how does it hold up to the novels? I am sick of novels I love being destroyed by two-bit producers who can't invest the little time and energy it would take to do them right.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
... Yet another site with a "please give a dna sample to view our content".
Stupid login reuqired to RTFA, feel free to use mine...
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
I loved it. I'm a huge fan of The Chronicles of Narnia. The movie followed very closely to the book. This made me very happy. The actors did a great job, espcially the actress who played Lucy.
I only have one complaint. The Talking Beasts and Aslan weren't big enough. Especially Aslan. Aslan should have been twice the size he was portrayed in the movie.
Other than that, I didn't have a problem with the movie. Loved every minute.
Am I the only one who thinks all these SFX specials are a bit overkill? I mean, do we really need to see the actors running around on a greenscreen set with various harness attached and such for every high-budget movie that comes out?
This story is basically a retelling of Jesus Christ. I loved it as a kid but as I got older and read more of C.S. Lewis, I became less and less impressed with him. I've read his books on Christianity and how he turned to Christianity after many hardships in his life. I'm a man of science myself and have thus forgotten about these books as I could never come to terms with them.
After reading some of Orson Scott Card's infamous rantings, I have also fallen out of admiring him.
Is anyone else having these problems with these once great authors? Maybe I shouldn't care about their political viewpoints when I read their fiction?
My work here is dung.
The CG effects in this Christian allegory masterpiece are so much better than the ones in that other singing / dancing vegetable / fruit one.
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sorry to pull at this thorny issue, but people are complaining about the tie-ins to the religious themes and messages (eg lazarus rising yadda yadda) - however, the movie pays homage to the author's intended delivery - although fans will note that the story, like the books, is being told out of order (remember, there was a re-issue of the original books in the author's original desired order)...at any rate, what do you expect? this was a religous guy, and the film carefully caters to these themes without pushing them down viewers' throats...i do NOT believe that the amazing special effects are going to be tricking kids into buying some sort of christian message if that's your real concern - and hopefully kids under 10 are with older people (parents, siblings etc)- and the impressive effects serve only to wow the audience, period. what i'm eager to see is how the movie is packaged for bus tours and religous groups (again, that is not me, i'm the most secular heeb you're gonna meet, but i loved these books even as a kid - and when i heard that they were going to be edited with an eye toward theme omission, i ran out to get original copies....good lord, what would ray bradbury think?)
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DOH! :)
Perhaps people have chosen to see Christian messages in it, but they were also most certainly put there by the books' author.
And by your tone, it seems that you are condemning someone, but I'm not sure who...
...btw, if you like steven wright, here's a tip: he has a place in boston (cambridge area) and hangs out sometimes at the west side lounge on mass ave...just don't bug him. you'll probably see him with a hat on at the far end of the bar..haven't seen him there in eons, though i also haven't been there in just as long...my dream has always been to approach him quietly and then blurt out, "Wow! you're steven wright! you know, i read somewhere"
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I thought the CG was sub par in a lot of areas. I like the story, just the CG was like LOTR Fellowship bad. Some characters were better then others. The white witches reindeer were the worst of the bunch though.
Other problem areas were sometimes the CG characters didn't have black on them, they were grey while standing besides an object that was totally black and they just sort of stood out.
I also noticed the problem on some of the larger shots with the main characters. The kids had blacks in them but the background was like a hazy background and they really stood out.
Your trolling is cute, but the Narnia series has a level of popularity on par with LOTR and C.S. Lewis was not a hack writer.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's not the special effects that made the Narnia books so popular - it was the imagination of C.S. Lewis who gave the story and the characters such meaning and gripped the reader with suspense.
And yes the effects were quite awesome, but they seemed so transparent in this movie. IMHO, a much better flick about the conflic of good vs. evil than SW EP III ever was. I *REALLY REALLY REALLY* hope they do The Magician's Nephew next!
Well..it was..you know...a kids book. And books written for kids...well they can be...a bit...childish....sometimes.
The film has been directed by Andrew Adamson, who directed both of the "Shrek" movies and supervised the special effects on both of Joel Schumacher's "Batman" movies. Can it really be that bad?
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/If you dont mind me asking, what is the reissued intended order? It has been a long while since I even looked at the books, and so my memory of the order is even less unsure.
A bunch of fop british kids leading a lion's army in order to defeat an evil ice witch and make Christmas happen again. Please...
How is this storyline any different from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?
A bunch of kids fight evil lord X to make peace again (and tons of money.)
In Hollywood, if you don't have any good ideas just re-use/re-write someone else's ideas.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
All I know about religious tie ins for this movie are what I saw on TV and what was at the theater Saturday night.
CNN had an artical where (at least they found) some preachers that were explaining the alagory elements of the movie and how they were provided exclusive extended-length previews of the movie.
Disney is trying to drum up buisness ala Passion through the churches.
As far as if it was working, there were 8+ buses at the local AMC Saturday afternoon, all of them from churches.
Having read all the books, I can tell you the movie is nothing like it. Yes the books were written for kids, but so was Harry Potter, and that came out pretty good.
I think what you have here is a failure on all levels of the project. From the obviously poor quality effects and crappy sound, to the 'vignette' feeling I got from the last half of the film (like chunks of the film had been removed and the remaining pieces shoddily glued together), this film blew donkey balls.
The casting director at least had a clue, and got people who matched their characters. Young people who, given a chance to work with professionals, might have actually been able to perform quite well.
I think your comment about the story being poor and childish reflects more on the hack job by the filmmakers and not the story itself.
And if you haven't seen it, I would recommend waiting for it's release on free cable, and an exceptionally boring weekend.
Don't use the Troll mod just because you disagree with me.
If you're not already familiar with the Bible and its contents, then the allegory doesn't connect... and you should be able to enjoy the story on its own. The only Christian reference actually in the book/movie is that the humans are called "sons of Adam" and "daughters of Eve". The rest is just allegorical.
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I still dont know if the witch FREEZED or PLASTIFIED rebels troops
I think it is because you read the book when you were young. We recently read the book with our kids, so it was pretty fresh in our minds when my wife and I saw it. I was surprised by how closely the film stuck to the book. Of course the book lends itself well to film, I think, as opposed to longer and more complex works.
I think though what you may have missed is a lot of the inner dialogue that you get in the book was not in the film. It downplayed Aslan a bit I think, since we don't get to 'hear' how the children feal about him. They did a decent job I think, acting wise, but I'm not sure a film can display the complex ideas conveyed in the book in that regard. Maybe deviating further from the text would have allowed them to be more true to the ideas, if not the events, I'm not sure.
But I do really think that on the whole the film has most of the books strengths as well as its weaknesses.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
A bunch of fop british kids leading a lion's army in order to defeat an evil ice witch and make Christmas happen again
It really depends on your perspective. I saw the movie as a story about a fall caused by the seduction of an evil temptress (The White Witch), and the subsequent redemption by the willing sacrifice of an innocent life. Yes, the story may seem a bit childish, but it was an adaptation of a childrens book after all. I thought it was a far better story than many of the recent eco-disaster movies that Hollywood has been putting out.
It is interesting that the reviews of the movie seem to reflect the reviewers religious, political, philosophical background. That makes sense. Books, movies, music, are rarely pure entertainment. There's almost always a message behind it, and the extent to which one relates to the message certainly influences the extent to which one is entertained. -SHP
...but Qui-Gon does die and then return from the dead, bringing with him the promise of immortality...
Okay, I give up, I no longer have any idea who's supposed to represent Jesus in the Star Wars movies. Too many conflicting allegories...
xdugef
With that kind of doe, you'd like they could at least get the blue/green screening done properly. Quite honestly, I felt the effects in this film were very poorly done.
One more tidbit. It's interesting that on IMDB the first 20 pages of reviews are all very positive (and submitted before the offical release), yet 80% of the more recent ones (since Fridays US release) are all very poor.
I didn't see the film, didn't read the books, so I'm not here to defend. But I actually went to IMDB and looked at the user reviews, sorted by date, and they are mostly all positive.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
In the making of $MOVIE they used $COMPUTER_BRAND computers to render the images. They used $HDD_BRAND hard drives to store the data. They used a network to connect the computers together. They use some off the shelf software ($SOFTWARE1 and $SOFTWARE2) for some of it and they used some proprietary software for other parts. Simulation techniques devised by $RESEARCHER were used for $EXCITING_SCENE. And $INTERESTING_DETAILS amazing facts that you couldn't actually guess were revealed in the article where INTERESTING_DETAILS<1.
Come on people. Narnia was great! Some of the readers here are worst than facist Christians. Facist scientists? Movies are for entertainment and this was one of the more entertaining flicks this year. AND we must remember, this is based on a series of novels intended for younger readers - so you can't expect the graphic violence like LOTR had. (PG != PG-13)
My rundown:
1 - CG was good, not the greatest (LOTR, Ep.III, and KONG will hold this for half a decade). Aslan was pretty cool though - interesting fiber motions.
2 - Acting was good - much better than I expected
3 - Story remained on track for the most part.
4 - It held my 3 year old daughter's attention - the whole movie. This is a modern day miracle.
Overall - its a good movie, go see it if you like fantasy or need to take the kids out.
Keepin' it real
The Narnia team used Massive running Red Hat.
I thought at some point WETA Digital was involved in doing the SFX for Narnia?
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
First, the narrative is awkward and clunky. It doesn't flow, and this really kills the mood. What kills the mood more is the terrible dialogue all throughout the film. The cinematography is plain disasterous. Not once did i find myself thinking "wow, what a beautiful shot!" like i do in most films of this nature. The sets all look fake. At least, the ones in narnia do. The make-up is unconvincing and just adds to the "upmarket b-movie" feel emanating from the film. Some of the special effects are dire, others are great. It's a real pick 'n' mix. overall, i just think it sucked. espcially when it had such a high budget. But the film did give me hours of fun last night arguing with over zealous christians on the imdb.com message boards.
sudo killall humans
Imagine a world where kids need an imagination. Sigh. Perhaps I am getting old but with every passing day it feels like there are fewer and fewer reasons for kids to pick up a book and exercise their imagination. Perhaps I'm horribly off topic but I think I preferred films with poor special effects because it made me fill in the gaps. When I watch things now that I watched as a child I cringe at how bad the effects (and often acting) are but my memory of them is quite different.
Anyway, I hope they haven't wrecked the story. I was never really into childrens stories but I though TLTWATW was actually pretty good.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
The Passion of the Dollar Sign.
The "new" ordering of the books is:
That ordering works because the "Magicians Nephew" is the one where Narnia is created, and "The Last Battle" is the book in which it is destroyed/ascended. The original ordering has "The Lion .." coming first, and the "Magician Nephew" being a followup after the initial success.
Personally I read them in the published order, and the small paperback set I have has them numbered in the "old" order - not a big deal to be honest.
Read a this page for more details on suggested reading order.
What movie did you watch? Wasn't anything like the books? You were either asleep or went into the wrong theater. True they did cut a few parts out I wish they had left in, but overall the movie followed the book very closely. The animation was well done, and you should try turning your hearing aid back on if you thought the sound effects wer crap, or try going to a new theater.
I'm actually worried that the movie won't have a strong enough Christian/religious theme.
Now, I'm an athiest, brought up Quaker, with little interest in spreading Christianity or anything.
But I read the books before I could understand the whole Christian allegory thing. I loved them. I reread them later, understood, and felt betrayed. Then I matured enough to where I could read them a third time and not take it so hard. And I realize that the whole feel of the stories, the idea that they had weight and importance and weren't just some guys who had beef with each other, that came straight out of the religious treatment of the characters.
If Aslan isn't God, and the White Witch is just some woman who wants to rule this place, the story becomes a cheesy special-effects battle movie. Yay, Dungeons and Dragons. If they can try to instill some kind of reverence and awe, and a feeling that these people are taking part in a larger struggle, that what is happening matters, I think the story can carry itself a lot better.
If you can get over the fact that it's about Christianity, of course.
I never saw The Passion, and I don't think it's a great idea for a movie, and so forth. But think how much more pointless a film it would be if the guy who was being tortured and suffering wasn't Jesus.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
I'm not sure you went to the end. There are like 20 pages of reviews posted before the US release date.
s tart=1
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Begining: (Start here and move forward)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363771/usercomments?
End: (Start here and move back)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363771/usercomments?
as they were intended, cs lewis wanted them read and published in this order - however, the first was considered not hot enough to draw in series readership, and so the original publisher changed the order: 1) the magician's nephew 2) the lion, the witch and the wardrobe (popularized as number 1) 3) the horse and his boy 4) prince caspian 5) the voyage of the dawn treader 6) the silver chair 7) the last battle ...and for explanation, chapter 1 of the real book one, line ONE begins, "this is a story abotu something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. it is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of narnia first began" - so you can see why CS really wanted this book put out first, but the publishers skipped it for the 'battle intensive' second book and so will the producers...most of whom will skip all of book one or factor in bits and elements (the puddles, etc)
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Very quick summary
Massive amounts of motion capture before letting the 2D art guys even start (presumably to get movement/style right from the outset) LIDAR capture to build a model of the entire battlefield geometry to get the lighting right.(btw does anybody remember an Isreali researcher who found a way to use 2 photographs to do a point cloud for any position in between the two?, seems a lot better than the LIDAR technique which gives on fixed point dataset) Retargeting software to interpolate multiple captures from human performers into a consistent behaviour of the CGI anims.And most interestingly to me (I'm into games modding), non deterministic character animations, quote, "The software itself simulates performing agents by executing brains, which are bits of code that use fuzzy-logic to select from a series of pre-generated actions. A motion-tree is a set of these actions for a given character. You can imagine a motion-tree as a set of actions that start from a rest-pose. Each branch is the set of actions that can proceed from that rest-pose like a swing or a block.", an interesting step forward from ragdoll kinematics imho.
I agree.
I read it when I was kid and really enjoyed the book. I read it to my son about a year ago and he loved it. A little of the magic was gone for me since I understood the allegory this time, but its still a great story.
The movie stayed very close the book, much more than lord of the rings did.
There was one part where I thought disney was about to ruin it(something to do with the wolf) but it turned out ok.
The special effects were awesome, and don't let the PG throw you off, it was closer to a PG13.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
i'm worried too, worried that the media will feel a need to water down complex metaphors that might allow for astute viewers to imagine an allegory (whether real or imagined is not the point) - and this is certainly not the first time that this has happened in a film adaptation....1984 did the opposite, it forced the ideas down our throats instead of even leaving room for interpretation...tough line here is getting kids to enjoy a hit movie, spend money and not make parents feel like they've been duped in any way, shape or form...honestly, i think that the most recent harry potter has more profound and clear religious metaphors than this movie (well, maybe at least on par)
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I remember when calling it "movie magic" was accurate. The sci-fi blockbuster took you where you had never been. I remember watching in awe as Jupiter was eaten in "2010: The Year We Make Contact". I watched in wonder as tie fighters strafed the Millenium Falcon. I saw things that couldn't possibly be real unfold in front of my eyes, and when the magic was good, I believed. Maybe for only 120 minutes, but nevertheless, the suspension of disbelief was often total. But the magic is gone. We walk out of theatres saying things like, "Those special effects were fantastic!" rather than, "Can you believe there was a monster in that cave on the asteroid?" We all know how bluescreens work. We know when image layering is used. Most people have at least some familiarity with how computers are used to generate effects. In fact, DVD extras are working hard to make sure every last ounce of wonder is ripped from our minds and hearts. We're being forcefed the knowledge that will destroy our enjoyment. Magicians have known for centuries that once the wonder is gone, so is the audience. And so they jealously guard their secrets, surrounding themselves in a sense of wonder and mystery. The film industry should have done the same. They should have become a mysterious brotherhood, and kept the secrets, passing them down from mentor to student. Sadly, they didn't. They became so enamoured with how great they were that they began to brag about how it all worked. "Look at the great tools we make! Look at how we put those images on the screen!" We didn't really want to know. Maybe we thought we did, but in the end all that has happened is that we have lost that visceral connection to the screen. We know that there's no danger. So we care far less. The last time I saw a movie during which I really experienced true suspension of disbelief was in 1993. Jurassic Park. For 127 minutes, I believed in the resurrection of dinosaurs. When the snorting Tyrannosaur blew off Dr. Grant's hat while sniffing for him, I was afraid for him. I remember the girl trying to hide in the metal cupboard in the kitchen. When the raptor saw her and began closing in, my heart was in my throat. I wasn't the only one. When the raptor smashed into what turned out to be a reflection, several people screamed. I miss that. Can you imagine what an impact the Lord of the Rings movies would have had if we had not known in advance how it all came together? I'd suggest that the movie industry stop destroying the magic, but that genie isn't going back in the bottle. It's far too late. (A past blog entry)
I read that Tolkien took christianity and turned the religion into hidden allegories. I mean, Gandalf descending into the pits of hell, fighting with a flame demon, to be risen as "the white"? That kinda reminds me to Jesus' resurrection.
And Sauron could be interpreted as Satan. I also read that the orcs were once elves that were turned into evil, wretched beings that hated themselves, and the elves for reminding them what they once where. Couldn't this be an allegory for the fallen angels?
And taking into account the fact that Tolkien played a key role in Lewis' conversion to christianity (does anyone have details on this?), it's not a mystery that many elements of christianity were embedded in Tolkien's works. And yet, we love Tolkien's works.
I'm sure that it wasn't Lewis' intention to push down christianity down the readers' throats, perhaps he just wanted to make his writings useful for christians, or to explain parts of christianity somehow.
I think that people have become seriously disappointed of christians, because of the amount of fundamentalism and zealotry present in today's christian environment. So they reject anything that resembles or includes christianity. But we need to go back to Tolkien and Lewis' environment, and see, from their point of view, that they went to church, where priests were still respected and earned that respect.
A problem with today's view of religion is that whenever we're mentioned catholicism or christianity, our first thoughts come to either the inquisition or pedophile priests, or religious zealots who promote creationism. But Tolkien's and Lewis' christianity was a relatively quiet part of their environment and society, not the circus we see today in the news.
You try taking a novel's complex plot, numerous complex characters, and subtle message and preserve it through the complex, expensive and draining movie-making process investing "the little time and energy it would take to do them right."
For a popular book, accomplishing that will net you a couple million viewers. Movies these days need to be watched by tens of millions of viewers to make a profit. You're not Gene Wilder, and the concept behind The Producers doesn't have many real-world implementations.
Like any other form of strong compression, moving a story from one medium to another results in data loss. The best movies are the ones written from scratch for the big screen.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
1: Lion Witch Wardrobe
2: Prince Caspian
3: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4: Silver Chair
5: Horse and his Boy
6: Magician's Nephew
7: The Last Battle
New order (chronological for events in Narnia)
1: Magician's Nephew
2: Lion Witch Wardrobe
3: Horse and his Boy
4: Prince Caspian
5: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6: Silver Chair
7: The Last Battle
I was using the wrong sorting option. Thanks for pointing it out.
I would like to know what went wrong with the production of this film that they couldn't get a decent trailer out early on -- or was that deliberate per some studio executive's "great idea"?
The official trailer was not released until the movie hit the theaters. Only a teaser was available hitherto.
What's with that?
Couldn't get more than 20-30 pages into it.
Tried to read Moby Dick for my 10th grade honors English class... Had something to do with a whale, but that was just the picture on the cover.
Tried to read The Hobbit several times. Another 20-30 pages...
Tried to read The Lord of the Rings before I saw the movies. 10 pages before I gave up.
I couldn't even read Harry Potter.
I did really well on all those standardized reading tests they make you take in government schools, and I do just fine on magazine article-length pieces, or technical stuff... I never really did any reading for my B.S. degree - went to class, skim-read the texts.
Finally, a year after finishing my 16.5 years of schooling, I picked up a copy of John Taylor Gatto's A Different Kind of Teacher. In the first chapter, Mr. Gatto talks about how he found that his 7th graders ("at some of Manhattan's best schools, and at some of the worst") were unable to read, beyond for a standardized test. To prove it for his readers, he said to read the first 20 pages of All Quiet on the Western Front (available at just about any library), and then he'd have a question. Well, I read the question first, so I knew the answer. But I didn't read the second question, and even after I had, I still had NO IDEA WHAT WAS TAKING PLACE. I could pass my eyes over the words, but I was incapable of extracting the story from them.
Mr. Gatto says that the way reading is taught in schools today & for the last 60+ years actually discourages children from visualizing the story as they read it. Which is certainly my problem, and the reason why I couldn't read all those books I gave above.
While I can't blame school for my inability to visualize, I do resent how they led me to believe that I knew how to read, when that certainly wasn't the case. They wasted 13 years of my life in Elementary, Middle and High schools, and I wasted 3.5 years and a whole lotta $$$ in College. I could've learned so much more if I'd been able to read beyond the level of standardized test.
(My problem with visualization was due to a medical problem that I am only now resolving, with the assitance of a capable Osteopathic physician in the Cranial Field.)
So anyways, back to the subject at hand: It's nice that Movie Studios are putting these classic novels on film. This way, since so many of us are incapable of reading complex stories due to our miseducation by the government (ref: books by John Taylor Gatto & others), we can still enjoy the stories our ancestors got from reading the books.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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The Magician's Nephew
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
The Horse And His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle
Yes, but the allegory runs molasses-thick. Aslan, the lion king, son of a "great emperor" from a "far off land", creator of Narnia, takes on the children's sins, dies in place of a traitor, and is reincarnated. He is sometimes spoken of as a "lamb". If that doesn't sound an awful lot like someone from Sunday School classes...
I prefer the original ordering, that is, ending with the prequel, rather than this horrible new ordering that you find everywhere. I was lucky enough to have found the original ordering in the late 80's. I think if you check British or Canadian publishers, you're more likely to find it over the new ordering. In my opinion, there's something about reading the prequel last that is more satisfying. Just like with the whole LOTR/The Hobbit reading order controversy. The original ordering is: 1) The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe 2) Prince Caspian 3) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 4) The Silver Chair 5) The Horse and his Boy 6) The Last Battle 7) The Magician's Nephew. The modern ordering is: 1) The Magician's Nephew 2) The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe 3) The Horse and His Boy 4) Prince Caspian 5) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 6) The Silver Chair 7) The Last Battle
The CG characters didn't bother me, even the beavers, but numerous backdrops (IMO one of the icy river shots was the worst) were painfully obviously greenscreened. Whatever camera crew and SFX team handled them should be fired. Camera focus was sharp on both foreground actors and deep field, but fuzzy in between. Parallax movements sometimes didn't line up correctly. Halo aliasing around parts of some actors. I wouldn't be surprised if there were shadows in different directions. And a complete failure to blend background environmentals (temperature, wind, mist or spray, etc) into the foreground.
That's very good. Does it work on any pornsite?
I thought they were great - Aslan was a talking Lion...and it actually looked decent. That being said, there was one close up shot of the kids when they were on the "icy overpass" and it was sorta looking to the sky - it looked hideous. Other than that, I thought the effects were very well done and the story complete. I just hope they do the rest.
Will be boycotting Sony products and productions? Yes, perhaps I'm not fully cogent when it comes to $ony, but I thought there were people on /. that wanted to actively boycott $ony.... and yes, I *AM* aware that there are a lot of products made by $ony.
So, the part that I don't like about the movie is that $ony had something to do with it.... so naturally, I've not seen it, and won't.
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Part of what was sorely lacking in the film was the presence of a narrator. I understand that a narrator is a bit of a dated concept these days, but one of the charming "features" of the book was the fact that you, the reader, were essentially hearing this story second-hand from an unnamed but affable narrator with insight into the thought processes of the characters. The witty little asides that Lewis managed to slip in at places gave the whole thing a very British flavo[u]r, which I felt the movie essentially lacked.
YMMV, of course.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
I never understood them--does being religious mean you're a vegetable? Well, maybe I do understand them after all.
If you want to see some really nice beaver, go see Narnia. It had the best looking beaver special effects. You even get to see deep inside a beaver lodge. The beaver chase scene is pretty amazing.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
102 is only 4 degrees above normal. Imagine if your toaster only cooked bread 4 degrees above room temperature. Nothing happens.
So, wait until you get around 120 or so, then call a doctor. Afterall, at 121 that's when water boils.
Yes, but the allegory runs molasses-thick. Aslan, the lion king, son of a "great emperor" from a "far off land", creator of Narnia, takes on the children's sins, dies in place of a traitor, and is reincarnated. He is sometimes spoken of as a "lamb". If that doesn't sound an awful lot like someone from Sunday School classes...
Agreed. I'm hoping this movie does well enough that they continue to make the rest of the series, which is much less painful.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Actually, I don't see how the "new" ordering could have been the orginal intended ordering. If you read the books in the "original" order, it makes sense. In the Magicians Nephew, for example, he refers to other books he had already written. If that is supposed to be the first book in the series, it wouldn't make sense when he makes references to other books.
WHAT is so wrong about it, anyway? I mean, if a muslim puts references to Islam in his book, why so many people get so angry? It seems that one is *forbidden* to put references to his own religion in his own book. It's the teenagers' "don't point a gun at me and make me watch your movie" approach.
The Christian-bashing talk is overwhelmingly stupid. I know, I know, it makes you look intelligent. Christian-bashing talk is like a "genius certificate" for teenagers. For me, it's stupid.
0: Geared for a young Harry Potter or Princess Bride audience, nowhere near as dark as LoTR.
+1: They followed the book closely.
+1: They didn't butcher the allegory for the sake of over-sensitive non-Christians.
+1: They didn't play up the allegory for the sake of over-sensitive Christians.
+1: Effects were near flawless, even though the film had much more daylight than others in the genre (underexposure is SO forgiving).
-1: The animals in a few scenes near the end seemed to lose a little fur realism. The airplanes at the very beginning seemed too cartoonish as well. Cheetas don't run like that either, IIRC.
-1: Too much of the beavers.
-1: Didn't do nearly as good a job as LoTR in giving a sense of "place." Narnia is smaller than Middle Earth, but it felt a little cramped. So did the Professor's house.
0: Soundtrack was ok.
+1: Great live and voice casting, other than Titmus, who seemed way too young than I imagined him.
0: One thing I never liked about the book was the appearance of Father Christmas. An allegory should not be tainted by its own archetype.
...or your ignorance of the context of the original book. When the book was written (1953, I think) for an audience of English children, explicitly retelling effects and experience of the Blitz on children in London (both motivating the move and providing "real" context for the children's experience in Narnia) would have been unnecessary and patronizing. Likewise for those reasonably well read in the history of the time. Similarly, the grab bag of creatures, myths, etc. (including the resurrection of Aslan, recalling Jesus, Mithras, Osiris, or the Corn King of your choice) was all part of the common intellectual baggage of children when the schools' curriculum included heavy doses of Latin, Greek and Medieval European language, literature, religion and history. As well as Lewis' (he was a professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature).
Given the common intellectual baggage of children (and adults) today, I suppose the movie needs some 'splainin' to do.
Don't be ridiculous. The Passion is a great idea for a film. It's freaking hilarious.:P
My other body is also not wearing any.
There's nothing wrong with it, that's part of being a writer. Just accept the work for being the work it is.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
...then haul your butt to a library or bookstore, and read it. It's a classic.
Yeah, nothing screams quality like those Joel Schumacher Batman films...
You can please some of slashdot all of the time and all of slashdot some of the time, but you can't please all of slashdot all of the time.
I saw the movie and I seriously doubt many little kids would get the symbolism. What I found interesting was that most of the people I saw seeing it were not little kids, but rather late teens and up.
:-p ). I remember arguing when I was young that once you were frozen (not chryogenically frozen) you could not be revived - yet so many other kids were like "I saw it on batman, it must be true". So yes, little kids are generally stupid, but thats what parents are there for, to encourage them to understand and actually think. My personall philosophy is to simply expose people to many different arguments about the origin of life, even the really dumb ones. Then walk through the reasoning. When I was a kid, this is what my parents did with me, and Im glad. As a result I can reason my way out of many problems and figure out the probability of a theory being true versus another. I say let little kids see Narnia and Jurassic park and then encourage them to think about it and lead them to the true meaning behind those movies. If we simply make all the decisions for children without letting them go through the reason, we are simply training morons who will simply be told what their opinion is.
Now this is where im going to burn some karma... Getting into the argument that special effects = kids believing in it, look at all the other crap that is physically impossible being potrayed in movies (not just animals talking
Now I'm going to open up another can of worms, but this is rather related: Intelligent Design. For the record, I don't believe the world is 6k years old. I think it should be taught in the classrooms along side with evolution and have the kids actually debate it. However, there is a prerequisite to this, that the kids be taught logic and reasoning. But I have to wonder sometimes about how passionately people argue that ID and Narnia should never come to existance. I wonder what are they so afraid of? Are they afraid of little debate? But then again, I look at this as a learning tool for people to excercise their brains on....
PS The movie was fairly good, Special effects were one of the best.
"secular heeb"
I was raised a pretty secular muslim -- not fundamentalist or anything, just a normal muslim, and I'm an atheist now -- and my father and mother both wanted me to read these books. It never bothered them that they had christian undertones; they just liked that the books were well written, exciting, and had good morals. Of course, I was pretty dense about christianity as a child, and I didn't pick up on that aspect at all. I haven't read the books since I was 7 or 8, and I'm 28 now, so all I recall is how the one kid betrayed his friends for the turkish candy.
Anyway, just sayin. I bet lots of non-christians read the books and didn't end up fundies or flat-earthers or anything else byzantine and stupid.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
The movie is true to the book and is just amazingly put to film. It was exactly what was in my mind when I read the book. This is a movie you will love to watch today and over and over for years to come. Spectacular!
You are correct, The original text for the book this movie was based on was composed 4 years before the Lord of the rings, and 23 years before star wars. I guess it is not just Hollywood the re-use or re-writes someone else's ideas
"Is Sausage bad for printers?"
i give this movie a 9.9. great effects, great story, great acting, etc... my only beef is with the blue/green screens at some scenes. they can create an UNREAL looking lion in CG, but they can't properly superimpose 4 kids against a backdrop...
awesome story and even more meaningful if you catch the Christian-based references. i got a bit teary eyed at times. *sniff*
Several of the reviews here say they loved the stories as a child, but have a harder time enjoying them now that they understand the Christian allegories.
To them I would say that perhaps the Narnia stories are the clearest picture of Christianity they have yet seen. I started with the Narnia books, and proceeded to digest and understand a HUGE amount of Christian literature, both highbrow and lowbrow. I now go back to the Narnian books (and the Screwtape letters, The Great Divorce, and some books by John Eldridge) and find them to be probably the most accurate pictures of Christianity written since the Gospels.
That you find other pictures of Christianity repellent could be a combinations of three factors.
1) The "other stories" you are being told are being told badly, or are just plain wrong. God does not approve all articles before publication.
2) The "other stories" you are being told reveal things in yourself that you are not prepared to deal with yet.
3) You understand the greater story, and simply wish to align yourself with evil instead of good.
That's been my life's story anyway. It always seems to come down to one of those three things.
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
I fail to see how this is in any way "Christian-bashing" I was just stating what I saw as fact. I am a Christian and evidently i have a different interpretation of the nature of religion than what you do, but it seems harsh to call me stupid. I neither said that I agreed or disagreed with their tactic, nor did I say that having children believe in God is a bad thing, I want my children to, I just think that they should do so because they understand why Jesus and God (if you can separate the two) did what they did, and not because a talking lion told them to.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Not to offend, but it's spelled atheist, for G**'s sake.
What if, instead of the industry did not merely "become enamoured with how great they were" and "began to brag about how it all worked", the consumer was so interested in how it all worked that they created a "market" for that type of information - and now the industry can hardly get by selling a DVD without it - because the consumer demands it. Perhaps if they lowered their prices, they could get away with providing only movie content, but that is a different story.
I am a glutten for behind-the-scenes demystification featurettes. I also have no trouble suspending my disbelief to enjoy a movie. It also pissed me off as a curious "take-things-apart"-minded kid that magicians guarded their secrets so jealously.
So I see the demystification of movie magic as a value-add. I am still able to enjoy the movies, and yes, I still jump in tense scenes.
Funny how this thread turned from discussion of visual effects to everyone's personal take on the movie. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it proves the movie has something more than usual to it.
Spoilers follow...I saw the movie Saturday morning and had mixed feelings about the effects. As some people have pointed out, I never really felt excited at the scenery or any of the landscape. There was a lamppost with lots of snow and some mountains with a huge ice castle that we only see two rooms of. Maybe you can't expect to do that much with ice, but overall it never gave a really powerful expression. The same with the spring settings, green grass and some rocks - yay.
Now the characters looked like they had some more love put into them. All though our fawn friend never has a close up shot from the waist down, the shots done from a distance farther back show great detail and overall great walking motion. The King Lion on the other hand was, well a lion that could speak. The detail of the fur and body motion was top notch, but that was what was expected. The choice of voice was also sub par, no offense to Mr. Neeson, but something deeper and more powerful would have breathed more life into Aslan. From an effects standpoint I would also liked to have Aslan's size increased to showcase more of his stature. The minotaurs were most excellent and almost had me thinking I was watching a live interpretation of WoW.
Now a quick review - How four youths managed to lead an army against an experienced evil queen is beyond me. Yes, there are kids in Harry Potter who defeat the ultimate evil Voldamort but the circumstances are always in their favor. E.g. Harry getting help to complete the tournament from the imposter Moody and surviving the final battle due to his wand being identical, etc. etc. The overall story of Narnia seemed good and grand, but the two girls are underused in the battle and the final confirmation is all too quick with no real struggle or push of emotions. Overall, it's an average movie that I apprieciated more as a book.
Read my sig! That's right, keep reading...
I've been told that this is the same group that created the Lord of the Rings along with Peter Jackson. They seem to have a refreshing habit of respecting the author's work and recognizing that what makes some of these stories great is...well, the original story. They're producing the whole series, right? If so, I'm glad they seem to going in the written order, instead of by the Narnia timeline. Somehow they came out better for me when I read them that way than for my friends who read them from the chronologically-arranged box set.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it downplayed Aslan a little bit, because of the obvious allegory involved and the fact that Disney bankrolled the film.
I can't wait to go see it.
It's flamebait becuase he said the equivalent of "People have chosen to see the Republican party as pro George Bush." or "People have chosen to see Marx's "Das Kapital" as anti-capitalism". People aren't reading anything into the Narnia movie that was just put there by some ad campaign, after the fact, they are just seeing what's really there all along in the books.
Also, it's the evangelical branch of Christianity that tends to have some problems with fantasy, as witness the silly fuss about the Harry Potter movies. Narnia is for Episcopalians (Lewis was Anglican, which is essentially what they call Episcopalians on the east side of the Atlantic ocean). Unless you want to lump all those Methodists, Lutherans, and even Roman Catholics in there as evangelicals...
If anything, the studio is openly taking a risk of a backlash from some fantasy sensitive fundamentalists types that consider Lewis's work non-Christian and even Satanic in disguise. The creators could have soft pedaled the Christian aspects and made Narnia into just another Disney-oid film and probably made just as much money, or more, while avoiding this risk. So he, and you, are accusing people of selling out when the sole evidence available suggests they have deliberately avoided selling out.
Who is John Cabal?
When I use the term "man of science" I mean that almost everything I do is done scientifically. I guess that's what I thought the term meant. You apply the scientific method to all things possible. I'm very skeptical and I'm very hypercritical of most things (the arts included). I don't want to sound aloof but this is how I run my life. I guess the term "man of science" means many different things to us.
I would rather identify myself with Liebnitz than Lewis.
My work here is dung.
The studio has been unapologetically pushing this movie to evangelical Christians for weeks.
Apparently Disney spent about the same amount marketing to evangelical Christians as it has many of its other family-oriented movies (which is a comparatively small amount).
After thinking about it a bit, I believe they downplayed Aslan more for dramatic effect than to steer away from the Jesus angle. I mean, if you know all along that the lion is pretty much God Almighty, there's not a lot of conflict. God always wins, after all. The movie focuses on the kids, and that makes for more dramatic tension --- how are a bunch of kids going to save the world?
Oh, and I don't really think "allegory" is the best word to use. In an allegory, characters and events are symbolic of something. It's easy to see Narnia that way, but the crucial difference is that Aslan is not merely a symbol of Jesus --- he actually is Jesus.
Or so C.S. Lewis said. Of course, C.S. Lewis might have just been trying to explain away the allegory because his good buddy Professor Tolkien hated it ;)
I really don't get it. Is the fear that the Union of Concerned Scientists Youth Group is going to send the kids to the movies, they're all gonna see this and come home babbling in tongues out of toothless mouths, waving a jar of moonshine in one hand and a rattlesnake in the other? Should there be a new ratings code - C for Christian Allegorical Content? Hell, we'd better start running through the museums and libraries now sticking on stickers on most of the Western art produced in the last 2,000 years - and then work on the other stuff, B for Buddhist, I for Islamic, etc. Want to give folks the option of self-segregating for fear of confronting an idea they don't already think all on their own, yes? What, might make them uncomfortable? Naughty, naughty - then let's get rid of all the stuff that'd make anybody uncomfortable. That probably means your stuff, too.
I first read the Narnia series when I was 21/22. I borrowed my college roommates copy (he's Jewish, it's his favorite series). I've been raised Catholic. I didn't really notice much symbolism at all in the series. About the most symbolism I saw when reading it was when I read the last book in the series, "The Last Battle". So I'd say that there are two types of people who are going to see all (or at least a lot of) symbolism in the series. Those that are looking for it and those that know a lot about Christianity (yeah, sometimes the same people).
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Does anyone remember the old cartoon movie version?
Dear Mr. Coward,
:)
When my mother was growing up, Kindergarten cost extra. Hers was a poor family, and both parents needed to work. They did the math and found that a caretaker was cheaper than the government's Kindergarten, so that's where my mother spent her 5th year.
When she got to 1st grade, her parents were surprised to learn from the 1st grade teacher that their daughter already knew how to read. Surprised, because they certainly hadn't taught her.
What happened? Well - while spending all that time at the caretaker's house, my mother was very bored. So, with a little help from her slightly older sister and the caretaker's kids, she taught herself how to read.
Some 47 or 48 years later, mom says that she doesn't remember getting much help from her sister or others. Which is what John T. Gatto says: when a child is ready to learn, when the motivation is present, learning to read is extremely easy.
My mother could read so well, that after she moved to a new school 1/2 way through first grade, she was getting in trouble for reading ahead. Her family moved every year or two when she was growing up, finally finishing with the last three years of highschool in one place.
Normally, nomadic children don't do so well in school. My mother graduated Valedictorian. She didn't just teach herself how to read while imprisioned at the caretakers - she learned the lesson that if there was anything she wanted to learn, it was her responsibility to teach herself.
Mom didn't know any better, and sent me to Kindergarten, where I learned the alphabet and short words. First grade brought short sentances, 2nd grade was contractions, etc. Education is for learning how to learn, as you put it. But government schools do not "educate". The school system as it exists today is nothing but a "spoon-feeding" process, designed to strip children of responsibility for learning. If johnny ain't learning, school rhetoric says it's because the teachers aren't good, the buildings suck, the technology is outdated, etc. No one knows to inspire children to learn how to teach themselves what they want to know. It is this way by design, otherwise, who would staff the factories and the fast food businesses, if not for an entire population of dumbed-down worker drones?
Yes, I can place the blame entirely on the "education" system. I've been through it, and after reading Mr. Gatto's books, I agree that there is little worth salvaging. Check out Underground History of American Education (available for Free on the website given in the GP post), and it's hard to feel any other way.
Good day.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
"But think how much more pointless a film it would be if the guy who was being tortured and suffering wasn't Jesus."
I think that says something rather sad about the state of
community empathy and jadedness of today's world. Does everything have to be epic and earth shaking to avoid being "pointless?" Ordinary people facing their world can
also be very powerful
Moviefone has a pretty robust Narnia section up in their site:
l es_of_narnia
http://movies.aol.com/movie_exclusive_the_chronic
They have both video and photo galleries with trailers and behind the scenes segments. Sort of like DVD extras style stuff.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
I wasn't trying to flame, I was just referring to this article:t ractions_x.htm (2nd posting, scroll down to the lion)
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2005-10-20-coming-at
Liam Neeson plays Aslan the Lion in TLWW. Aslan was seen as a parallel to Jesus in the story.
Liam says:
"I feel kind of ashamed," says the actor. "They are such beautiful books. Here I am, a Belfast man. I was born 30 miles from C.S. Lewis." Neeson had to tame his Irish accent for his performance, though. "We Europeanized it, so hopefully it will play all over the world."
You gotta love Liam, one of the greatest actors of our time IMHO.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Disney did not "bankroll it". The movie was coproduced by Disney and Walden Media, with Walden providing most of the funding. Walden is owned and headed by Philip Anschutz, an oil magnate fundy who is one of the nation's biggest donors to all sorts of anti-gay and pro-censorship groups, plus over 700,000$ to the Republican party and its candidates and runs half a dozen conservative newspapers (he's currently trying to take over Knight-Ridder). The BBC has referred to him as a "corporate vulture" and in 2000 was branded the "Greediest Man in America" by Fortune magazine for his Enron-style ripoff act at Quest (wherein he took steps to try and get employees to buy stock while he sold 6.1 million shares, based on insider info, right before the company collapsed, making himself 200m$ and leaving employees and investors with stock that went from $64 per share to $1.95; he and Quest eventually got out of trouble by a 4.4m$ settlement).
That alone is enough to make me not want to see the movie. Of course, the fact that there are two soundtracks for the movie (one Christian Rock, currently the only one that's out) certainly doesn't help. I'm not going to fund scum just because I want to see pretty CG.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
There were several shots where it was obvious they fucked up the color process. (For example, when they were standing on the ridge, there was a close-up of the childrens' faces with mountains behind them. They obviously looked out of place.) The color of the river scene kept shifting as well (they couldn't decide if we were dealing with blue, or cyan water it seems).
Overall, remarkable special effects, but the worst color processing I have ever seen in a modern movie.
Join Tor today!
...as did "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Could this be the start of the MPAA *finally* realizing that maybe, just *maybe*, film revenue could be at least partially based on making good movies (or at least what many people perceive to be good movies)? Might there be some realization that piracy isn't the only (or even greatest) factor in declining movie revenues?
Ah well, maybe there will be world peace too, someday...
I'm sorry, my response was harsh, I didn't really intend to call you stupid. What I really meant that the "I hate to see anything that even mentions Christianity because I'm cool and I like to bash Christians" attitude is stupid. Some people portrait me as a "xtreme-right-wing-Christian" because of that, but they don't understand that I never make anyone agree with me, and I certainly don't think I'm better than anyone else just because I'm a Christian. Yes, sometimes I'm a bit harsh, but I target opinions, not people. It's just that some people have a childish attitude towards religion.
No. The Lion... was written in 1950. The Magician's Nephew was not written until 1955.
Prequels are fine, but series should read in the order of creation. A pox on authors who would engage in revisionist histories. (That means you too, Lucas!)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Original desired order? I assume you mean with The Magician's Nephew first. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the first book written, though, and by necessity written as an introduction to the world. It's in many ways a first contact story, while The Magician's Nephew is an origin story.
I personally refer the publication order, at least as far as starting with LWW, over chronological order, but I know other people disagree. I don't think it's as critical as some series, which really do work much better in publication order rather than chronological order. I do think it's better to start with "Here's Narnia," and then move on to "Here's where Narnia came from."
+5 Insightful? Please...
I can understand your lament for the disapppearance of movie magic. It's called growing up and becoming jaded. I'm sure there are many young kids out there who Narnia this weekend and were amazed by what they saw because, in part, they know nothing about blue screen, CG workstations, 3D modeling, or any of that stuff. But there's also more to a movie than it's special effects. There's the characters, the story, and for this movie, the adventure into a new world. Part of the magic is conveying things in film that couldn't been seen in real life. But there's another part; It's the creation of a world full of characters, events, and drama that makes you step out of your boring day-to-day life and into this world for 2 hours. That's movie magic.
It might of been easier when you were young; When you don't have much knowledge about the world, even seeing the most generic of special effects and contrived stories will make you feel like you're on adventure that makes you forget all that you know. But just because you're older, wiser, and more knowledged doesn't mean that movie magic is gone. You just have to find things that are new and different to you. Try to expand your movie horizons. And after trying, if you still can't recapture that magic after even with all the various movies that are out there right now, then I suggest you take a fancy to another art form.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
I think they call this magical literary device the Third Person Omniscient Perspective. It is a wonderful way for the author to relate information that would otherwise be unavailable if the story were to be told in any other perspective...in other words, rather than being limited to a first person view (single character perspective, can only internalize ones own thoughts and relies on five senses to understand everything else that is going on) or third person objective (unseen/uninvolved narrator, but limited to the five senses), you get to know everything. Though it may be a dated concept (as are the other devices), it is historically a very reliable device for fantasy/sci-fi stories.*
* - trying to be helpful here, not a jerk.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
I'd like to give shout outs to all the PSTs at SPI and also,Happy birthday to Frozone. Skynet gravy!!
Except Lewis himself said that the Narnia books were Christian parables, just not in the literal one-to-one mapping you seem to be insisting upon:
You're missing an important point. Sure the re-order makes more sense chronologically, but the order in which the characters are introduced is very important.
If you read it in the original order (The Lion... etc. first). Then throughout the whole book there's this sense of wonder when they talk about Aslan. In fact, during the whole beginning of the book there's a built up anticipation for this character.
If you read it in the "new" order, then you already know everything about Aslan.
It really makes sense from a story-telling perspective to read it as it was originally published. As there are a lot of assumptions made in this order to further the story.
My 2 cents.
-c
Its too bad C.S. Lewis himself wrote a paper on the fact the movie has nothing to do with jesus. I think the movie has some good lessons for kids though.
>I never saw The Passion, and I don't think it's a great idea for a movie, and so forth. But think how much more pointless a film it would be if the guy who was being tortured and suffering wasn't Jesus.
For me -- and I also didn't see the movie -- one of the ideas the furor over the movie brought up, was that Jesus was just another guy, and the Romans were doing this to thousands of people a year for hundreds of years. What he went through wasn't special, it wasn't unusual, it was the way that maybe a million people died. It's a pretty horrible thought, and in my mind changes the underlying message. They focussed, from what I can tell, entirely on the pain and sadism, but that wasn't unique. The part that mattered, the only thing that's relevant, if you're a Christian, is that he chose to undergo something truly horrible, for an ideal. All the rest of it was routine behavior for that point in time.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Lots of replies here suggest that I've simply outgrown the wonder. In 1993 I was 23, and working in a tech centre. I bought my first personal computer ten years before that.
And perhaps I wasn't clear, but the wonder still exists in other ways in movies. My complaint is specifically to do with the special effects. I get suspension of disbelief all the time - but only through acting. I can believe a credible actor is experiencing the situation.
I'm only saying the wonder is gone from the realization of the worlds around the actors. I don't feel any wonder when I see a place or a creature that simply doesn't exist on earth. It's par for the course, and I know how they did it.
I felt a glimpse of it with the war elephants in Return of the King. Of course Legolas sliding down the trunk pulled me right back out...
Everyone here just hit the torrents. I personally, don't really plan to see the movie.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Actually, there is an article on CNN that clearly states that Andrew Adamson attempted to downplay the spiritual aspects of the movie. I think for the people that are discussin the religious or Christian undertones of the book or the movie is sort of pointless. I think people have to understand for this movie, or even LoTR, that the original authors, CS Lewis and Tolkien are deeply religious men. They were both Christians and they were also friends. I would think it an insult to the both of them to be ripping apart the intention of their works. Personally, I do believe that there are Christian undertones to both of their works. However, I do not believe that they placed them in their stories as some sort of plan to "convert the world." I believe that it is their because their lives as a Christian and their belief in Jesus Christ has effected them so deeply, that it would be impossible for them to write anything that did not mention or have a tone of what Christianity has done for them. I mean, CS Lewis is known as one of the most brilliant Christian writers of the century. Would you expect anything from him that did not have to do with Christianity?
You mean, other than the fact that Lewis actually said that Nephew coming first is the order they're supposed to be read?
How much does it cost to get a story like this in Slashdot? Enquiring minds want to know.
Narnia's special FX are not unique in any way; even from the previews you can see they're cheesy and unrealistic.
Just make him really angry.
I saw the movie on Saturday. It was better than I expected because the movie version did succeed in conveying some level of conflict and feeling that I found a bit lacking in the books for exactly the reason you mention.
Curiously, the director and actors downplay the Christian connection a bit. See Narnia Christian link played down. But it is obviously there because the movie is very faithful to the book.
So, I guess I was pleasantly surprised and not disappointed because I did not have the same kind of expectation that I did for similar works like the The Lord of the Rings. If LOTR was a ten, then this was a nine. Still very good.
The books don't really have a Christian message at all, any more than they have an English-speaking message. They weren't written to convert or influence non-Christians, who were a largely-ignored minority (as readers of books in English) at the time. They were meant to teach morality to Christians. The audience is supposed to recognize the references to Christian stories from their upbringing, and take this as support of the actual message, which is that religion isn't nearly so important as morality. It'll be interesting to see if the movies actually get as far as the end of the series, which is an explicit tract against fundamentalism.
There are Christian or at least judeo-christian messages in it. The author would confirm it for you, he was made fun of for it.
Unless they made the movie into a sunday evangelists day in the woods, it's just supposed to be a pleasant fairy tale about a far away land with a very wise (omnipotent) lion and some well intentioned but often foolish children (and later: foolish natives). Otherwise it's talking animals and swords/sorcery with some adventure thrown in. It's entertaining for kids, I'm not sure it'd hold an adults attention.
Except for the hints of relgious morality thrown in there, how is making money on this wrong?
Alternatively, they could read the book and then decide whether or not to see it based on how the story plays out.
You may be too blinded by hate to see that you are every bit as bad as what you claim this guy to be.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I kind of disagree with your conclusion that the answer is turning the books into film,
:)
... produce a substantial chunk of our national leadership. I don't think there are many people aware of the fact that in the 2000 presidential election, 4 of the 6 finalists for the presidency went to one or another of these schools... These schools only graduate about a thousand kids a year."
It was said in jest.
Thank you for the link to Mr. Gatto's interview - I look forward to watching them. Hopefully someone will throw some mod-points your way, to get some much needed attention on this vital issue!
Quote from the first video: "... 300 such [elite-private] schools
Effective schools for children of the elite, government schools for the masses. To arms!
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
You may be too blinded by hate to see that you are every bit as bad as what you claim this guy to be.
True, true. Back when *I* swindled my hard working employees out of millions of dollars, I also taunted them afterwards.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
You don't vote for kings!
My bad.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Best rebuttel I've read in awhile. He probably has not clue what your talking about either.
Don't know if you folks remembers, when the LOTR books and movies came out, some people complained that it encouraged believes in magic and pagan religions. So are these people complaining about Narnia now? Or are they pushing it in their churches?
The double standard betrays a notable lack of imagination.
Tolkien was a religious man too...
Sure, you could conceivably make a moving movie about some accountant from Denver being whipped to death for three bloody hours. But I find it hard to imagine it working. My point is that people found meaning in The Passion because it was about Jesus dying for them and for his and their belief. If you take that away it becomes a bondage flick. Which, of course, can be good and meaningful, but not in the same way.
Similarly, Narnia becomes yet another fantasy battle movie. Could be good, but it wouldn't be for the same reason as the original.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
One point regarding all the positive reviews. A lot of big evangelical churches are treating this movie much like The Passion of the Christ was treated -- i.e. go see the movie a lot and promote it as much as you can as part of an evangelistic campaign. For this reason, I suspect that there have been many positive reviews put up by people who otherwise would never post -- all with a positive bias.
I would not reject the movie for these reasons -- I saw it and liked it a lot. But skepticism regarding many of the glowing reviews is warranted.
Heck, by the accounts I've studied, Christ certainly wasn't that dumb. The whole, 'dying on the cross' thing was most likely a fabrication created by the Powers That Were at the time to con the masses into being more easily enslaved and abused. "Turn that other cheek, Christian Dog! There's a beautiful afterlife waiting for you, but only if you shovel my shit with grace. --Oh, and if you fail to love those who hate you, God will dump you in a lake of fire for all eternity."
Con job, all the way. A rancid, albeit clever, twist on a good man's work.
And C.S. Lewis fell for it. He was a weak and frightened man; Watch 'Shadowlands' to get an idea of just how lost he was. It took an American woman to crack his shell and teach him a little about love and intimacy. Too bad it happened after the Narnia books were written. . .
-FL
First of all, good movies are Show, not tell. Easy to say. Often hard to realize onto the screen. This is why everybody isn't a screenwriter or director.
Secondly, movies are single-threaded, books often aren't. A movie finds the main story and presents it from beginning to end. It can't be telling five different tales in parallel that will eventually intertwine into a Gorgon's knot at the end. You'll lose the audience, and don't have enough time to fully present more than one tale well anyway.
Lastly, people who loved the book will always find at least one of their favorite scenes or characters left out of the movie. Count on it. There's just not enough time. The screenwriter may have written it in, and the director shot it, but the editor left it on the cutting room floor when the movie ran 15 minutes over budget and they had to make some hard choices.
Don't believe me? Go try making your own movie sometime from a book you loved.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Oh yes, it's ever so plain by then. And my daughter, a few years back, detested that last book, for reasons that had to do with that unsubtle religious allegory. She didn't recognize the connection -- I'm not much of a backer of the 19th-century ideas about revelations that we accept as the standard take among literalists nowadays, and would never have pushed that self-aggrandizing dreck on my young kids. She just thought the whole method of ending the Narnian world felt like the cheapest and least satisfying of all possible Deus Ex Machina devices...
Which does, to my mind, say something about the essentially puerile and vindictive world view of those who do thrill to the supposedly "literal" interpretation of Revelations. A nine-year-old thought it was cheap and senseless. She thought Lewis had just gotten tired and wanted to kill the series off, actually, and that he'd done a hack job of it. ;-)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
In this case sticking so closely to the book wasn't such a good thing. Far too much christianity for a non-christian to swallow, especially with respect to Aslan's actions. I'd rather they had dumped the obvious parallels and put it entirely in the realm of fantasy, with no connection to religion in this world whatsoever. Instead I was treated to unusually poor special effects, wooden acting by most of the kids, and two hours of religious propaganda cloaked as a children's tale. The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
...try watching movies that don't spend 90-120 minutes tricking you into thinking you are getting substance over form. Hell, there are plenty of actual films out there that can easily whisk you away. Unfortunately, there are far more movies that are ready to hand you a bunch of CG and expect you to be entertained.
Want substance? Find substantial films. Want to feel cheated by expensive CG? Watch a Hollywood movie.
#SickNotWeak
Actually, Lewis wrote that The Chronicles of Narnia were not allegorical, in the sense that there was not a one-for-one representation of biblical characters with characters in the books. This is the same sense that Tolkien used when he said that Lord of the Rings was not allegorical to the events of the early to mid 20th century.
The stories are fables or parables. They have parallels with the situations that many people want to associate them with, and intentionally so. But they are not simply a retelling of those situations - they are variations on a theme and, as such, can be connected with many other variations on the theme of good versus evil.
Sure, you can see Aslan as Jesus and Edmund as the humanity Jesus redeemed. You can see the White Witch as the Serpent. Maybe that's not what Lewis was attempting to do, but the beauty of a morality story is that the reader or viewer can make whatever interpretation of that story they wish. So, if Aslan represents Jesus' death and resurrection to some, that's OK, regardless of what Lewis intended. But there's more of a story there than just that, particularly as the rest of the novels unfold.
-h-
I will say that I enjoy reading Ayn Rand's books for instance, but I do not agree with all of her philosophical rantings and beliefs. I read books as stories.
I guess I feel sad reading that. I dislike Ayn Rand's storytelling. I particularly dislike her awkward way of writing love stories (which all come out sounding like rape fantasies). Her philosophy, on the other hand, is something that I really admire.
And hither cometh the hate posts...
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
"loved them. I reread them later, understood, and felt betrayed."
How can you be betrayed by a static text? The book didn't change...only your interpretation. Why did you give your trust to a piece of paper in the first place?
"If Aslan isn't God, and the White Witch is just some woman who wants to rule this place, the story becomes a cheesy special-effects battle movie"
Says you. You might be stunned to note that Christianity does not have a global monopoly on moral behavior.
You're projecting your beliefs onto the movie. That's fine, but don't try to tell me that I have to do the same thing in order to enjoy the story.
For the record, I am a practicing Christian. You say you're not, so I'm confused as to why you're espousing these beliefs.
"I never saw The Passion, and I don't think it's a great idea for a movie, and so forth. But think how much more pointless a film it would be if the guy who was being tortured and suffering wasn't Jesus."
Mel Gibson did that one too. It was called Braveheart. Maybe it's your assertion that anybody who has bad stuff happen to them in a movie must be a stand-in for Christ.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Don't be silly. Shortly after Star Wars came out there were 1 and 2 hour TV specials on how the movies were made and how the special effects were done. Heck, there were news reels on how Disney was able to make color animation and how the voices were done. The movie industry has ALWAYS documented and shown the public how the magic is done.
I suggest you don't know how to suspend disbelief anymore. Or refuse to do so. Or are jaded by the current lousy movies that try to make up for their failings with great special effects.
If the movie is well written, well acted and has great effects, knowing how it was made just increases my respect and wonder at the process.
Well said. However, I'm not a christian but just going through a few posts on Slashdot.com (even some of those in the tech section), I realise how much hatred there is amongst people against any thing that 'remotely' has a religeous theme to it. If we're soo afraid of 'media' imagery and 'hidden' messages in telivision programming, where do you think we get these ideas from anyways?. I bet most people who had seen The chronicles of Narnia and read the books liked the movie to some level without thinking 'damn thts another one of those religeous ones' (like the Passion). However if you just do a simple internet search on The Chronicles of Narnia review and read 'Christian allegory in the Chronicles of Narnia', you'd be like 'hey that is right, maybe I should hate this movie'. Thats silly A Good movie is a good movie regardless of the theme. Passion of the christ was well choreographed, well directed, the camera the music the dialogues everything was well thought of. The Kingdom of Heaven, was a major leap 'off' true history, that 'some wierd guy' who saved 'jerusalem' didn't even have any faith at a time when the world was divided into major religeons in battle - clearly shows how modern movie-goers hate to see a 'religeous' saviour. For that very purpose to appeal to critics like the ones who said 'Narnia is bad because of Religeous themes', the movie makers of Kingdom of Heaven changed history (or for those who don't like the words 'changed'.. they re-told a severely skewed version of it)?. How awsome is that?
>>Yes, sometimes I'm a bit harsh, but I target opinions, not people. It's just that some people have a childish attitude towards religion.
Not only do people have a childish attitudes towards faith, but many today identify themselves with their ideas, (in other words, if you dislike my ideas, you dislike me), and marginalize themselves in doing so..... but of course because we're Christians we wind up being accused of excluding them.
And, much like the Passion of the Christ, it shows glaring the massive double standard being applied. Violence, blood, and gore are bad and will scar and ruin our children... except for when it's an accurate reproduction of a Bible story. Magic, magical creatures, and fantasy worlds are evil and the devil trying to corrupt the children, unless it an accurate reproduction of a beloved Christian author's work.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Except for the hints of relgious morality thrown in there, how is making money on this wrong?
Um, the original poster cannot make money from this movie? Oh, was that question retorical?
I don't agree about the narrative but I agree the effects were uneven. No offense to Sony (or ILM or WETA) but they should have let Rhythm and Hues do the entire show. They are the masters of talking animals going back to Babe and their work on Aslan- especially the FUR- was unbelievable.
I would recommend watching the BBC version complete with animatronic Aslan, actors in wolf and beaver costumes and cartoon animated griffins, unicorns and monsters before going to see this movie. It will make you much less critical of the special fx.
As for the poor reviews. Well, the only comment I can make was that at the end of the film the audience I was with cheered and gave thunderous applause. Something I rarely see happen in a movie. I think the last time was with Lord of the Rings.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Huh. I thought "it's the girl from Orbital's video for 'The Box', the one with the funny hat and the live-action stop-motion animation".
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Why do so few movie previews anymore tell you anything about the story? Just eye candy and a humorus scene. Based on tv commercials for this and for Aeon Flux, I had no intention of watching either of them, but after reading the slashdot reviews, I'm at least interested and, at the very least, rent the DVD when it comes out. If I get the opportunity, I probably will go see this in the theater.
Free MacMini
I'm not sure why people would feel "betrayed" by the Narnia series due to discovering the Christian allegory. I can understand no longer getting any enjoyment out of it, when they consider that the philosophy of the book may counter their own developed ideas, but betrayal seems to indicate that the books portray themselves as something they are not.
The question is: what were they tricked into? Christianity or admitting that Christian influence isn't going to turn every story into a laughable, droning pseudo-sermon.
There are thousands and thousands of stories that have that have some religious significance or are religious allegory in some way, shape, or form. People have mentioned this series as well as Orson Card's Mormon related stories and you could probably find books indexing of poems, novels, songs and other things that fit the bill as well. How do those betray anyone? Reading Ender's Game or even Homecoming didn't turn me into a Mormon, even though I found some enjoyment reading them. There are tons of other stories that contain Hindu, Buddhist, or pagan allegories in them, which I equally disbelieve, but consider great fun to read. Did you have to believe in the Greek gods to enjoy reading Greek myths? If you regard Christianity as a myth, can't you enjoy the characters and storylines as entertaining myth? Even though the Greek gods were some of the most hypocritical of characters (which mirror's some peoples' impressions of Christianity's workings), the stories can be great roaring fun. The Bible itself, as long as you read a version not written in Jacobean English, is full of interesting characters doing interesting things. So why would Lewis' work be any different? Is it the story's fault or your preference? And if it is your preference, then how can there be betrayal?
Sometimes, a story is just a story, and there's nothing wrong with something different than your own views from making you happy. Nothing I can say will change these negative feelings of people perhaps, but basically, it's the Santa Claus syndrome. You believe in Santa and have fun as a kid. And then when you discover the truth, you have the choice of remembering the fun, or deciding to feel that you were lied to and resent it. I've never known any good to come from resentment, particularly for something that gave me joy, so I don't see why resenting these stories makes any sense.
Of course, Anschutz owns a lot of stuff; avoiding films that he's behind might turn out to be a little silly if you end up unwittingly going to one of his theatres anyway, as he owns most of Regal.
I'm interested, though, in the moral question of how much my feelings about a business owner should determine my choices. Living in Texas as I do, I'm surrounded by Republicans beyond the little enclave of liberalism I call home. So when I go to a restaurant, it's likely owned by someone who has political views that I abhor. Then again, the food is likely cooked by an immigrant who needs the money to provide for their family.
I mostly feel like the country is better served by less emphasis on polarization. In the realm of politics, I'll certainly denounce (and vote against) people with views like those of Anschutz. In real life, though, I assume that everyone is inherently good (if misguided) and I judge them by their actions. So if the food is good, the service polite, the price reasonable, I'll eat at the establishment of a Neo-Nazi -- provided that they don't turn their views into an abhorrent action like refusing service to someone, or shooting up Arabs for fun. As you mentioned, though, Anschutz has stolen quite a lot of money, so I'll admit that you have a point.
As for Narnia itself: if it's CG you're after, just watch LOTR again. The lion is not nearly as impressive as Gollum.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
With that, the director's cut will have Edmund standing in front of the White Witch for five minutes as thought bubbles pop up on the screen.
And yet the story didn't come across as evangelical to me...at least not as compared to a lot of other movies, like the fetid pile of dogma known as Bruce Almighty. (Heck, the movie equates God to narrative expectancy, which is a few dozens of stories higher on the intellectual ladder than most evangelical drivel.)
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
I've never read the books but they were written be exactly that: a Christian story, about Christ. Lewis was no "fundamentalist" by any means however.
You mention Tolkien and Lewis being contemporaries of each other, but what I find more interesting is the relationship and debate that Lewis and Freud had:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/
http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9801/nicholi.html
It was weird to see their two viewpoints because I honestly sided with both at different times. I'm not a Christian, but a follower of Judaism, so it was easy to side with Lewis at times and even easier to side with Freud. Combined, their insights actually make a nice, complete worldview. You've just got to take what you believe and leave the rest.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Do yourself a favor: watch the previews (the previews ARE awesome) but skip the movie
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
And let me tell you, the guy being tortured for three hours wasn't Christ...
(it was me... and I don't mean that in any hidden, allegorical sense either)
Get your Unix fortune now!
Quite true - it's easy to end up financially supporting those that you strongly disagree with. Just because that's the case, however, should one deliberately choose to spend money in a place where they know it's going to people and causes that they disagree with?
I try to avoid Wal-Mart, for example, because I don't like their business practices. At the same time, however, it's not like I don't spend money; I still do. It just usually goes elsewhere. Not all businesses are bad, and even if there is an industry wherein there are no "good" options, there usually are "less bad" options. Sure, if you don't buy from a Wal-Mart, it will reduce the number of minimum wage poorly/not insured sexually discriminated against workers that they can employ. But if you instead spend money at, say, a CostCo, you're funding a company who does just the opposite.
Basically, there's nobody holding a gun to your head and saying that you have to support support someone who rips off their employees and investors to make hundreds of millions which they use to support causes that you strongly disagree with. And so I choose not to. Sure, I probably accidentally support such people many times per day, and sometimes don't have a choice. But when I know, and when I have a choice, I try to make the "moral" choice with where to spend my money.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
I don't think they were going for 100% realism.
... you just saw the good stuff.
They seemed to want a big contrast between the winter and spring. I thought it held up to what I imagined reading the book.
I did think they spent too little time on some of the bigger scenes, like the kids running over the snow colored land bridge. That sort of thing was seemed a lot better on Lord of the Rings like when the signal fires were lit on the mountains.
Do yourself a favor: watch the previews (the previews ARE awesome) but skip the movie
I actually didn't think the previews did the movie justice.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
the money you pay for the movie goes to fund the lobbying that is about to make opensource illegal in france. So please do get excited about the special effects
...a good boycott.
But as others mentioned: You need to boycott Sony/BMG, not Sony at large. It would be hard to boycott everything that puts money in Sony's pockets because they have their hands in everything.
Own any CD's? CD-R's, RW's? CD players?
DVD anything?
Get real. It would be like boycotting Magnavox, you support them when you buy the XBox.
Get your Unix fortune now!
The bottom line, the internet wouldn't exist had it not been for Christ's humble teachings 2,000 years ago.
In your face, Al Gore!
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
The special effects process seems to have become so automated since 1997, there hasn't been much enlightenment to be gleamed from these behind the scenes stories. The process for every movie is now virtually the same: motion capture the actors and the green screen sets, make models in Maya, match move the models, and composite. The only differences are now in the number of modellers they hire, the number of polygons they can model, and the number of computers but the work is the same.
There's now more fascination to be found in the lives the 3D modellers have during the production than the actual production.
I agree with EVERY criticism you mention, and I'm glad that I'm not the only one who didn't like it.
:(
I havn't read the books, but my fiancee has. We both hated it. Had either of us known that the other thought it sucked, we'd have walked out some time around the middle. The dialogue was awful (she says that it was much better in the book, and that they changed a bunch of lines for no apparent reason, unless they were TRYING to make it crappy), the characters were all either:
a) unlikeable (I.E. *all* of the kids. Again, she says that they changed them a bunch, and that Peter wasn't a total wuss in the book, and that the older of the two girls wasn't a complete bitch), or
b) boring, uninteresting, and woefully underdeveloped (Aslan, pretty much everyone else)
and, to top it off, the CG was just OK. Not horrible, I guess, but just bad enough and oft-used enough to be distracting. Oh, and there was the obviously-plastic armor they had the kids in near the end. I had a hard time not laughing every time I saw the younger boy in those oversized, halloween-surplus plastic pauldrons. Heh. For that matter, their fighting ability was so good as to shatter suspension of disbelief, as there was no explanation like "their weapons are magic" (other than the bow, of course), or "Peter is the school fencing champion". Maybe there was in the book, but there certainly wasn't in the movie. They can block blows from mace-weilding creatures 4 times their mass? Without getting a broken arm in the process? Riiiight.
Like you said, though, the actors playing the kids all seemed like they could be good, and the ones for the White Witch and Thomas seemed like they were trying *really* hard to overcome the poor dialogue and (apparently) crappy direction. I also liked the opening sequence in London; it gave a modern audience a better idea of what the kids were escaping, but didn't dwell on it too long. In fact, thought I was in for one hell of a good movie for the first 15 minutes or so. Too bad it just went downhill from there
Your flamebait mod, incidentally, is completely undeserved. This movie really did suck the devil's ass.
This is something that really bothered me in hindsight. Lucy follows Tumnus because he's the first Narnian she meets. Edmund follows the White Witch because she's the first Narnian he meets. Lewis stacks the deck by making Lucy plucky and truthful, and Edmund kind of a dick, so that we don't really notice him poking about behind the scenes, ensuring that Edmund ends up on the bad guys' side, and Lucy on the good guys'.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Do not tell us that once you have seen the rabbit pulled out of a hat 20 times you continue believing all is for real?
Or when they cut by half the wholesome blonde with a saw?
Or when they appear out of thin air a tiger in a cage?
We know they are all fakes, for many we have at least a good working theory of how they work.
Or what about theatre? The special effects there are orders or magnitude simpler but that does not stop our enjoyment of theater.
I think you simply are besoted with your youthful experiences.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Between SW Episode 1, Batman Begins and now Aslan, looks like he's going to be playing mentor roles for the rest of his career.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I think you're reading too much into a certain response letter he wrote to a child. The child had obviously written to ask Lewis to affirm a position about reading the books in a chronological order. Lewis was a kind enough person to write back a letter agreeing with the child. I find the letter to be much more of an exchange of personal opinions between already-existing Narnia fans than some kind of a general advocation of a particular reading order for new readers. See if you agree (I've highlighted what I consider the most telling part of the response):
I personally like the reading order of starting with tLtWatW because it allows the reader to encounter Narnia fully formed in more of a sense of discovery and wonder, and then to later on go back and see the early days of Narnia (in tMN) through the eyes of someone who is already familiar with it (e.g. "Oh, so that's where that lamp post came from!"). But I also certainly understand how others might feel differently. Perhaps if Lewis had been writing a reply to an adult he would have talked about the various benefits of one reading order compared to another.
..wayne..
Actually, I completely agree. The Narnia books have been favorites of mine since early childhood. You might even say they were my gateway into fantasy and sci-fi. And it was years after I had moved on from them that I even knew they were supposed to have a Christian corrolation. I still have a hard time seeing the direct correlation that C.S. Lewis said is there. Yet, in both the books and movies, the obvious 'fantastic' elements and magic are blatant. Once I was in High School, the deacons at our church were blathering about anti-D&D and how it was the Devil's work because of all the talk of magic and fantasy creatures, I walked into the church library and pulled The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe out of the Church library and started reading quotes out of it about Tumnus the faun, and talking beavers, and magic Turkish Delight. There were at least two special meetings of the Church elders discussing if they should/could ban C.S. Lewis works from the Church library. Somehow the arguement got swept under the covers, but the books stayed, and the deacons stopped argueing against pop culture, and shifted to a more pro-Christian message instead.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
god creates imperfect creatures (the reason remains unknown), then drowns them, punishes them and in general makes life miserable for them when they misbehave (well, Doh!).
Then he (because many conservative Christians get all touchy if you amputate that pennis) sends his son (which his him also, but you have enough sects to dispute this sole idiocy) to tell us to repent and he was sacrificed for the favour.
That some how is meant to redeem us, no matter that human behaviour has changed little since then.
I can't understand how people lead their lives based on this fluff (and most importantly how people ignore the basic tenants of it, how many Christians have no problem with the death penalty or killing thousands in a war. Would Jesus have approbed of that?).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The CNN piece had both sides (even reporting of the news???)
The fact that Disney is shopping it around to churches is proveable and shown. The fact that they had a talking head say it's not a religious film is entirely predictable and expected. They are trying to sell as many tickets as possible by whatever means are best and least damaging.
Great mythology. Shows us how humans made up things when we did not know any better.
To ingore this mythology does not align us with any devil, one can be a moral positive person in one's community without bowing to the nonsense that religion is.
Religion is not equitable with morality.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
BoxOfficeMojo called LtW&tW 'Christian/Mormon.' I'm hoping that this means Christian or Mormon, not 'Type Christian, subtype Mormon.' 'Cause C.S. Lewis definitely wasn't writing anything for Mormons...
Pagans, Hindus and Buddhists haven't been in the (US) news very much lately with attempts to, for example, push literal interpretations of their cult's genesis myth using a pseudoscience vector. I'm sure that they've done similar things in other fora, it's just that I haven't been exposed to that.
For that, and for much else going on lately with Christianists here in the US, my tolerance level re: their fables is wearing thin. Since mumbling/shouting "Bullshit!" in a theater is usually considered impolite, I've decided to keep that particular $9.something to myself instead.
I also find it strange that no one comments on the observation that, while Christian in message, the characters and themes in Narnia are unmistakably pagan in nature. But I guess you could say that about Christianity in general.
... Satyr ... well, whatever. I mean really, if roman catholic christianity meant sailing on ships with spirited piratical bipedal rats, well, you could count me in in a heartbeat!
Indeed.
Narnia is CS Lewis' ideal fantasy of what Christianity should or could be, not what it is.
That is not likely to be something he would have openly admitted to anyone else, let alone perhaps even himself, but to write a 'christian allegory' in which a primary protagonist is a
The Chronicles of Narnia is a wonderful story, way beyond any sodden spirituality or intellectuality he or others have tried to impose on it. Let them gabber on. The very hand of the author who penned the story knew exactly what it was doing, even if the mind of the author wasn't quite so clear. Enjoy and celebrate!
A Merry Christmas to all, in this time of renewal and rebirth...
**>>BELCH
I rather think the evangelical Christians have been pushing it to evangelical Christians, judging by the obscene number of church buses I've been seeing at the theaters.
"As we pass around the offering plate this morning, please consider giving of your earnings to support the work of the Church and of our Lord. ('The work of our Lord' may include the Disney corporation, gasoline companies, auto repair centers, and your local Malco Theater)"
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
To shut everyone up they could have just found a way to work the Flying Spaghetti Monster in somewhere.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
Two ways to end the war: (1) Kill all terrorists. (2) Convert to Islam. Unfortunately, diplomacy is not a part of either
You post a long defense of Christianity and Christian love (entitled "Mindblowing stupidity"), and then end it with this scary sig? How about what Christ said here:
"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you." Luke 6:27-31
Linux/Perl hackers needed at Rhythm & Hues? Cool.
"He must be a king. He hasn't got shit all over 'em"
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
And yet, millions will burn in hell so you can go to Heaven. Obviously, one must exist for the other to exist, or surely God would just get rid of Hell, right?
Yeah, nothingness is such an awful option when the alternative is eternal happiness at the expense of millions of other people.
I don't care why they're there. It's sick, and it's not right. Glad it's all exactly as likely to be real as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, otherwise I'd have some very stern words for such a sick (or incompetant?) creator.
Oh, and thanks for sacrificing Yourself to Yourself to change Your own damn rules. How generous. Heh.
Some USians never stop to amaze the rest of the world. Many of you parade your monumental ignorance about the rest of the world as a badge of honour, not as what it is, a shameful defect.
There is a reason that the Moslems and Buddhists and Shintoists and Hindus have never built the kind of society that we are enjoying now today.
The Muslims saved Western culture buddy. While Western Europe was happily descending in the dark ages, Muslim scholars were copying and studying the Roman and Greek classics, the monks in the late middle ages that made copies of ancient texts very often made it from Arabic or from texts copied by Arab scholars. The muslims cities from Cordoba in Spain to the Moghul Empire in India were the most enlightened places for at least 500 years.
As for Shintoists and Buddhists not being able to build the society we enjoy today, I will let Sony, Toyota, Acer, Samsung, Honda, etc. know. They will have a good laugh. The Japanese people will also be amuzed. Being the 2nd economy of the world for the last 40 years after being completely oblitearated surely is because their massive, hidden, unknow conversion to Christianity.
And as for China (Buddhists, Muslims, etc., you know), it has been the most powerful country in the world for the biggest part of the last 1000 years. They had 200 lousy years, but they are comming back and the European and American dominance will be seen as a blip in history in the future.
We've been working on the idea of how to run a country the way Christ would ever since Rome became the Holy Roman Empire
Er, no Mr Fundie, the Roman Empire was that, a Teistic Empire. Modern Saudi Arabia would be the closest we have nowadays, the only difference being that the Arabian Kingdom does not have the militaristic will or capabilities to fall in the military adventurism of the succesive Holy Romam Empires (that ended in chaos and destroyed), perhaps because they hold their holly places and that makes them less prone to such attitude.
We now a days aspire to live in liberal democracies. Democracy is inspired in ancient Greek practices that predate the alleged existence of Jesus. The liberal ideals come from the French Revolution, many of whose idealists were either agnostic or openly atheistic.
That's why we can't abuse prisoners with Abu Ghraib and shrug it off easily
No Mr Fundie, you can't do that because there is a body of international agreements signed by countries of all religions or none, that dictate the minimum standards expected when dealing with prisioners in a situation of war, or with human beens in general.
These conventions were signed by Atheists, Buddhists, Muslisms, Hindus, and of course Christians. Even US Christians, that nowadays so happily forget about those commitments, but as the guy of the parable, pray ostensibly in public to let us know how god fearing people they are.
Economics is fundamentally a Christian philosophy that teaches us to not meddle in each other's affairs
Complete and absolute nonsense. Islam always had Economics theory completely independent from Western and Christian thinking, heck Economics is fundmantal to the way Muslims understand the world. But if you haven't read the holly Koran you would not know that of course.
Adam Smith, John Keneth Galbraith and Milton Freedman, just to name a few of the most noted economists, never involved religion as a factor in how economics work. That you can come with this idea is amuzing to the extreme and shows how good communicators your sect's preachers are or how an inventive troll you aspire to be.
Enough, it is always pleasent to debunk so much nonsense but is a time consuming enterprise that others can complete if they so wish.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The Passion was based on a form of theater that indulged in the spectacle of the death of Christ, was banned in Europe for hundreds of years, was resurrected in American churches but whose name still has connotations of overzealous emotional abuse: the passion play. Passion plays add no context, no meaning, no further understanding to our sense of the divine. In fact, they do the opposite, warping the story to place blame on the politically unpopular persons and browbeat those wavering in their faith.
So yeah, I agree - not a great idea for a movie.
The Narnia Cops are out force -- clean your fangs boys cause you gotta troll everyone who steps out of the party line.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Honestly, you are a bloody all powerful entity, have nothing better to do and create these punny planet, with these even punnier beings, that are so idiotic that can't understand your designs.
You make them imperfect, with desires that you readily condemn as sinful. It is like the Engineers that made the Aibo condmen it for barking.
And then you order them to love you and respect you above anything else.
If anything all these reminds me of the Dear Leader of North Korea.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=christianist& btnG=Google+Search
Ok, while I had no information contrary to what REI said, I wasn't entirely convinced. If it's true, as you say, that this guy owns Regal Cinemas, then I'll have to concede that he is evil. Why should I pay the highest price in town to get the same seats/screen/sound system yet continue watching commercials for 20 minutes after the scheduled start time?
I read the whole series through 3 times in my childhood. It was nice to at least once go back and read in chronological order. I'm thinking of doing so again now that 18 years has passed since I last read all of the books.
Think Deeply.
I went in really hoping they'd pull this off. And for the most part, the film was an entertaining kids film. HOWEVER Awful child acting and the occasional grown-up incident of overacting combined with perhaps some of the worst blue screening I'd seen in awhile and a few noticable "frame rate" drops (waterfall falling apart) the film kept throwing stuff at me that pulled me out of the film and destroyed my suspension of disbelief. Aslan was done very well, but as a whole, my very first reaction was "well, that was a bit rubbish wasn't it". After letting it digest it was a very good kids film, but most grown people will see right through the more wooden transparent parts (wow, oxymoron).
2001 is not a book->movie adaptation. The "novel" is a novelization. Clarke's short story The Sentinel, which inspired the film, is only the second act of the movie (the bit on the moon) - the rest is implied.
He's called Puddlegum the Marsh-wiggle. I think it's the 6th book, depending on how you count.
I'm sorry, but whoever actually believes in "even reporting of the news" needs to take a look again. We all know that certain news groups tend towards one side or another regardless of how much they would like to think that they are impartial to the issue.
As for the comment about Disney increasing its sales by targeting churches, I think its hard for any of us to say whether that is true or not. For the exclusive previews, I think that that is not an uncommon event. There are previews all the time. For a church to get an exclusive preview isn't all that hard. The only way that somebody would have the opportunity to get an exclusive preview is if the production company/movie company was guaranteed that they would be paid for an entire theater. THerefore, all you would really need to do is to pay for all the tickets (aka the entire theater) for the night. THe company could then care less whether people saw it or not, becuase they were paid for those seats.
I highly doubt that Disney provided exclusive previews to church groups free of charge or at discounted rates or anything like that. Churches would have had to pay for exclusive rights to the preview. Furthermore, the reason that you heard about it for this movie, or even other movies such as The Passion or maybe even LoTR, is because these movies were so popular with huge followings. It just so happens that these movies are movies with some serious Christian undertones.
I believe Lewis responded to a letter once full of the same type vitriol with something along the lines of:
You are a god-hater not an atheist. There is a difference. As a former atheist, I take offense to your representation of one
Not much mention of it has been made here, but Lewis was quite the atheist prior to his conversion. He did an incredible job answering the demythologization argument of the great Rudolf Bultmann. I did some of my graduate work on Bultmann.
In essence, Bultmann argued that the gospels were myth, as any other myth of ancient times, and was totally unbelievable. Bultmann was a renowned theologian having spent his long career in the gospels.
Lewis responded with respect saying, "I have not labored as you in the New Testament, Mr. Bultmann, but I do know something about myth, and the New Testament is not myth." Claiming the NT as myth brought the argument clearly into the territory of the scholarly work of Lewis.
In all his writings Lewis is a very frustrating figure for critics to tackle. His logic is sound, his arguments high-minded and scholarly and his writings readable to everyone and all. His "art of translation" stated that if you cannot state your point clearly for all to understand then you do not much understand it yourself.
Such was the approach he brought to the LW2.
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
You cannot love your enemy with a gun or bomb. You are sending him on a one-way ticket to hell. Pulling a trigger requires no faith whatsoever. Re-read the scriptures before presenting non-biblical pseudo-christian worldviews as the "Christian" viewpoint.
"Those who live by the sword, shall die by the sword". There are many many muslims converting to true christianity every day in the middle east. Imagine how many of those killed by the bloody thirsty US Govt of Greed around the world might still be alive today to hear and heed the Good News of Jesus Christ?
Yes, people like C.S. Lewis.
It's not allegory, but he certainly had Jesus in mind when writing Aslan and if you read about Aslan being a lamb as well and having another name in our world, yet still claim he's not intended to be seen as a Christ-like figure, then I don't know what will convince you, sort of Lewis rising from the grave to settle the debate himself.
Actually the original publication order is: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe* (1950) Prince Caspian (1951) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952) The Silver Chair (1953) The Horse and His Boy (1954) The Magician's Nephew (1955) The Last Battle (1956)
My 7 3/4 year-old daughter loved Narnia too. Interestingly (to me), the opening Blitz scene made her very nervous, just because it wasn't in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (which we've recently finished reading), so she didn't know what would happen. We talked about why the scene was there afterwards, and she enjoyed understanding how it showed us the children's relationships with their parents and with each other.
Similarly, my 5-year-old son loved Revenge of the Sith, except that he was frightened when Obi-Wan went up against General Grievous without a Clone Trooper helping him, because that wasn't the way it had worked in his LEGO Star Wars video game (where every level has two players). Fear of the unknown -- it's a powerful thing!
Reading to your kids is a wonderful exercise. If your daughter enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies, you could try the book on her -- it works very well for reading aloud. (We finished the whole thing in a year, inc. The Hobbit, in between the second and third films' release dates).
(Oh, and forget underlines: use italics!)
Try asking Christ the question yourself.
Also, the channeled source, the 'Cassiopeans', offers a different story.
Dying on a cross certainly seems reasonable, but the supporting evidence is pretty weak. --A small number of corruptible men, (as most men are), writing about an 'event' years after the fact doesn't compel me very much.
Heck, most people today believe that there were cheering crowds of Iraqis watching as an American task force toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein when really that singular event at the outset of hostilities in Iraq was scripted and deliberately set up and shot by CNN to look like something much more than it really was. Heck, most people believe that the U.S. government actually has Saddam Hussein in custody today when this is also not true. Governments generate all kinds of fabricated nonsense to create certain impressions in the public in order to manipulate their collective energies. --Consider just how incredibly easy it would have been for similar agencies to add nonsense to the pile of writings we call the Bible? Some of the gospels were written many decades after the event. It seems entirely plausible to me that writers were hired to produce false accounts with specific 'facts' and spin. Nobody checks up on the credibility of those people with the question of deliberate disinfo in mind, but such things happen in the news and media today all the time, with much the same popular effect. Despite how people feel and react and all of the silly walls they throw up around their sacred beliefs, the possibility of the bible being deliberate disinformation is a very obvious one, but one which everybody remains utterly blind to. --And this in itself is instructive.
Rising from the dead is the thing people get upset or evangelical about. --When the manner of his so-called death and his approach to it in the first place have far more impact in the long run on people's behavior. "Oh, well, Christ allowed himself to die in disgrace on the cross at the hands of his abusers rather than fight for himself. I must do the same, allowing bosses and enemies and detractors and even the basic runs of luck in my life to harm and torment me. The meek inherit the earth and all that!" I've seen this kind of self-destructive behavior time and time again in Christians, who take an unhealthy kind of pride in this kind of self-flagellation. I can't stand watching it because it's pointless and icky. People trashing their lives and pretending that they're not doing it deliberately, all the while thinking that this will somehow make them more eligable for a nice after-life. Ugh. It makes me ill whenever I see it.
--Whereas at the governmental level, Christians can be whipped up into a war frenzy with very little effort. "Those who don't believe that Christ died on a cross are less than human and it's okay to napalm them from orbit!" --Talk about a flexible social program! Very, very effective stuff. And the social engineers who introduced the story of Christ's death knew it.
-FL
I didn't think it was too bad in straying from the novel. Personally I felt a bit put off by the religious theme, but I don't think it's fair to criticise it for that, because it's taken directly from the books. My specific issue, however, is that I read the books before I recognised that theme, and so now the films come across quite differently.
Anyway, apart from holding up to the novel, I did think it was a little tacky in places. My main gripe was with the special effects, and the way they were directed. For a movie that clearly had such a high budget and such capable people for effects, I noticed more than a few times that the camera moved away from a scene where we would have seen and effect that could have added a lot to the story. A good example of this was when the witch was about to zap someone and turn them into stone, for instance.
I have little doubt that this is a lot to do with Disney's influence on the film-making process, which just irritates me. The movie shows a lot of battle and violence scenes, but hardly a drop of blood, if any. I don't want to seem morbid by saying this -- I just think it's deceptive and irresponsible to glorify war without showing the consequences, and in hindsight I found it quite irritating and offensive that it was handled this way.
Anyway, those were my thoughts. I enjoyed the movie for the most part, especially the opening sequences when the children were in London, and particularly when I tried to ignore the religious overtones. I think it could have benefited from some different decisions in its portrayal of violence, though. I thought got the point for representing WW2, but completely missed it in Narnia.
Has anyone actually read Pinocchio? It is told in a very similar manner, i.e. Third Person Omniscient Perspective thingy.
I think I might have tried reading it when I was much younger, but found it to be disturbingly violent (I think was maybe 11 or 12 at the time). I can't find any decent reference sites off-hand that go over perspective, but I know that it certainly wasn't seen through the eyes of any goddamn crickets. It's too bad Disney mangled that stories legacy in they he did, because now, if anyone tried to make a true adaptation of the work, it wouldn't be well accepted and likely wouldn't come in at anything lower than PG-13.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
The woman writing for cassiopaea.org is clueless and in way over her head. She understands virtually nothing about the subject at hand. For instance, Hebrew practice when relating genealogies does not require giving every single person or every single generation. It is perfectly valid to say that x is the father of y, when he is in fact is grandfather.
I'm not sure what point of reference you are contesting here. --In any case, I was not talking about Laura Knight's views on the subject; I was talking about the channeled info itself, which she admittedly uses only as one source for her own investigations into bible history. I am not familiar enough with her studies into that area to know how much credence to give them. I will say that I do find her work fascinating. The sheer amount of research and writing she has done on the subject is absolutely enormous. Where her personal exploration leads her is not really my concern.
In fact, a few moments on Google shows her organisation to be a cult. I'd much rather make decisions about the historicity of something using actual historical evidence, rather than the musings of people who say 'I wish that one day the project will bring us closer to an understanding of our hidden powers that can make rocks float in mid-air.'
The web reference you provided links to a person who can't even use grammar correctly, (ahem), let alone think rationally. She comes off sounding quite rabid. Moreover she has no direct knowledge of Laura Knight's group, except via contact with members who were deliberate saboteurs and who proffered up a good deal of false dirt. --I was following and reading accounts on all sides as the various dramas this woman comments on unfolded, and I must say that her take is waaay off, as is the validity of her accusations. Irrational angry writers of poor grammar are not what I'd call good sources. But that's what you get for doing, "a few moments on Google."
--Among many areas of interest in the world, I have followed closely the evolution of Laura's efforts over the years, and while I have had my own reservations about Laura's approach and ego, as well as certain conclusions she has toyed with, overall, I have concluded that she is just human with human strengths and weaknesses, but overall, she has some very good thinking on her side and access to a fascinating source of information via the Casseopean channel. I would classify her group as being far less 'cultic' in nature than any number of other organizations, including most businesses, research groups, and nearly all diety-based religious groups. Microsoft, the U.S. military, and Christianity are far more cultic in nature if you use the dictionary definitions.
Let's think logically about this for a moment. He was crucified by people who had extensive experience of executing people by this method. People don't survive crucifixion. And they certainly don't survive being crucified than duped in a tomb for several days. And they most certinaly wouldn't be able to roll away a massive boulder covering the entrance. Historical sources verify this. No-one at the time disputed it. The gospel writers record it and died for it.
See, now this calls to my main problem with your thinking; You talk about all of this stuff as though the basic facts were non-contestable and then you go ahead to use those 'facts' to form the basis of your argument. Look, I'm saying that that Christ was not even crucified. Telling me that gospel writers died writing that 'fact' down doesn't mean it really happened.
Seriously. EVERY time I've asked a biblical scholar about the information upon which they are basing their claims, what their 'historical sources' were, the answers are really very flakey. Try it sometime. I've asked divinity college profs. I've asked serious students of this stuff, and it all comes out the same. Flakey evidence. It seems to me that unless you are using the bible as your primary reference, and unless you are working outward from
I don't remember the part where they nail a lion to a crucifix (but it would be pretty cool if they had - The Passion of the Lion style).
You are correct that the Moslems and other religions have built pretty good societies. Yes, we owe the Rennaisance to the preserving efforts of Moslem scholars. However, look at the successful societies today. If you walk around Japan, you will notice that while they have still preserved some of their traditions and religion, it is mostly gone today. It is replaced with the Western culture, which is largely influenced by Christian philosophy. The same holds true for every other good society today, from South Africe to Australia to Asia and South America. And look at the European societies. How did such a small bit of land dominate the world so powerfully for such a long time? Why did Spain, France, England, and even the Netherlanders carve up empires so much greater than anything the Romans could hope for? How could they turn around so quickly from being impoverished serfs to an international power?
The secret was that these societies were reborn, in a large way, by their rediscover of classical Christianity. I think the results were most marked in England, were the Bible was freely published and distributed. Even the poorest could cite key scriptures and the middle class owned their own copy of it and referred to it frequently.
Let's talk about WHY the countries signed on to the concept of the Geneva convention in the first place. If you read a little history, you'll note that the European powers didn't mind the frequent wars. It was the people who clamored to stop them. They would rather live in peace that see so much bloodshed. It was a religious person who founded the Red Cross, and religious people who began a drive towards world peace by abolishing or limiting warfare. I think if you look at the founding of the League of Nations, you will find the people behind it were very religious Christians who wanted nothing more than to usher in the millenium through peaceful negotiations rather than pointless warfare. It was the relentless efforts of these peace-mongers that convinced the nations as a whole to accept the concepts and to actually agree to it. As it was at the time, none of the heads of state would've liked to see and end to war or at least the worst parts of it.
I think it is a mistake to include Adam Smith in your discussion of non-religious economists. His "Invisible Hand" was an obvious parallel to Nature or God. Regardless, where did this philosophy of "leave others alone so they'll leave you alone" come from? Why didn't Rome have libertarians back in the day? Why, it comes from Christ's teaching of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". What about the separation of church and state? That came from Jesus' saying, "Render that which is Ceasars to ceasar". He showed that you can be religious and live in a state that was irreligious quite capably. In fact, he proved that it is not the state's job to make people religious or ensure morals are being met. In fact, he probably did more to teach about chastity by forgiving the adultress caught in the act than her execution would've taught.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Are Christians allowed to fight in a war?
There are a few Christian denominations that say "no". However, most permit it under specific circumstances.
It is clear that Christians are expected to be subordinate to their government. If that means they are drafted to war, they are expected to fight that war.
It is clear that God himself ordered genocide in Old Testament times. So, if God is just, then in certain circumstances, warfare, and even genocide are just. If you believe God somehow changed between BC and AD, then you have to explain how the definition and meaning of justice can change from one period of time or another, or explain how God can be both just and unjust.
"Thou shalt not kill". But a better translation is "Though shalt not shed innocent blood." In fact, God commanded men to kill people in certain circumstances as mentioned above.
Should Christians defend themselves? "Turn the other cheek" and "give him your cloak also" implies a limit to the number of cheeks to turn and cloaks to give. Jesus commanded his followers to walk an extra mile, not two or three, and certainly not until you work yourself to death. Jesus' commandment to forgive 70x7 could be interpreted to mean forgive those who truly repent 70x7.
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" "By your fruits ye shall know them". I look at our military objectively. I see a group of men who live sacrificing themselves for their friends. From the day they show up to the recruiters office until the day the stop, every moment is spent living as a servant by choice not force. If you want to know how a Christian can reconcile their conscience with bloody hands, ask one of them and listen closely. When you put on that uniform, you might as well paint a great big red circle. According to the Geneva convention, people who wear our country's uniform are valid targets to be slaughtered mercilessly until they surrender. They are literally laying their life down so that we can live in peace and without threat. I think our military is truly the organization that has the best people in our country.
Jesus drove the merchants out of the temple with force. Does that imply Christians are allowed to use force betimes? Jesus once declared that he didn't come to the earth to bring peace, but the sword. Does that mean that Christians are to bring peace to the earth, or the sword? Jesus prophesied of wars and rumors of wars. he prophesied of calamities. Are Christians spectators or will they have to participate?
I would dearly like to have peace with the terrorist world. I intend them no harm, why do they threaten me? Why are they demanding I convert to their perverted version of Islam and abandon my country's ideals? It is suicide to sacrifice one's self, one's family, and one's neighbor on the altar of pointless exercises in futility. It is apparent that by sacrificing ourselves we will not change the minds of the terrorists and convince them to change their ways. In fact, they see forgiveness as a weakness, and their hearts are unmoved. Note that I am talking about the hardened terrorists---not the muslim world. The muslim world we can live peacably with, and largely have, for quite some time.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.