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."

Comments

Anyone seen it yet?

[kadathseeker]

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.

Re:Anyone seen it yet?

[squiggleslash]

There have actually been a lot of (and largely) faithful conversions lately, HHTTG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (hey, I included "largely", yes, I know the ending and moral is different, but the rest of the film is pure Roald Dahl) to name but two.

Yes, while it's a long time since I read it, I have to confirm Wardrobe is very, from memory, faithful to the novel.

I'm (no longer) a particularly great fan of fantasy (I thought the Lord of the Rings trilogy sucked, quite honestly, but that's because it's just not my cup of tea. Mind you, while I loved The Hobbit I never got into the novel either. The Narnia series, however, I lapped up as a child), but so far as I could see it was a good, honest, and well done conversion of the novel. The first half was a little off with the timing, I don't think the novel translated to film terribly well (which is not to say that some of the best scenes weren't in the first half), but the second half worked pretty well. My fiance, who was the last person I expected to enjoy the film, said there were scenes that gave her chills. The battle scene was certainly excellent. There was stuff they managed to pull off that shouldn't have worked but just did.

So yeah, you don't have to worry about a book you fell in love with being ripped to shreds under Disney's knife this time.

I wonder if we can chalk this down, to a certain extent, to the religious nature. I'm not a great fan of the whole "We need to appeal to the Christian Right for this movie" thing (not least because Mel Gibson's underhanded "bash the left" campaign to publicise The Passion was, well, underhanded and divisive), but if you're converting a novel with a Christian sub-text, you can't very well get away with butchering it or changing the moral without knowing people are going to call for boycotts. In that respect, the conversion probably benefitted from the religious angle in a way I'd never expect. This atheist but childhood fan of CS Lewis, at least, is glad that happened.

Re:Anyone seen it yet?

[Chris Mattern]

No, it's very definitely Christian allegory. Lewis was quite devout and wrote an amazing lot of Christian literature (I highly recommend The Screwtape Letters even to someone who is not Christian--I myself am not, in fact), and he meant Narnia to be seen from a Christian viewpoint. If you have doubts, reread The Last Battle, in which we get the Narnian version of Judgment Day, complete with Antichrist figure.

Chris Mattern

Re:Anyone seen it yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense.
It is obvious the Chronicles of Narnia is written as an allegory and in some ways even an apologetic of the more bizaare bits of Christianity (God leaving God to die for God to convince God to let us off the hook for God's rules).

Heck, the Amazon.com entry for Mere Christianity, where he makes clear his belief, states it was based on a radio series from the 1940s.
The Chronicles of Narnia was written in the 1950s.

A quote from C.S. Lewis.
"I don't say. 'Let us represent Christ as Aslan.' I say, 'Supposing there was a
world like Narnia, and supposing, like ours, it needed redemption, let us
imagine what sort of Incarnation and Passion and Resurrection Christ would have
there.'" -- C.S. Lewis

My badly paraphrased quote from last night

Re:Pathetic

[operagost]

The only problem I had was with the fake-looking "rag doll" physics they used when Peter was unseated from his horse. They really should have used a stunt man. I'm curious: what did you see wrong?

Imagination is more important than knowledge

[SethEaston]

I just saw the movie yesterday - LOVED it. Yeah yeah, the special effects were great, but unlike other movies lately that were driven by special effects that totall bedazzled the viewer but had absolutley no character depth (ehem...SW EP III), this movie had it ALL - interesting, WELL-ACTED characters with depth and believability, beautiful cinematography, and a generallty womderful 'feel'. It goes without saying that the plot and story are classics and have true meaning.

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!

Re:actually, christian messaging is subjective thi

[MonkWB]

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.

Re:Movie was amazing, but I was a tad disappointed

[stoolpigeon]

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.

I thought it was pretty terrible.

[sumday]

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.

Re:Pathetic

[stoolpigeon]

I've been thinking about this since I saw it, and as I've been reading this thread. I liked the film and wouldn't say poorly done, but I think that you have pegged the biggest weakness. By staying so true to the events of the book it loses a little something. The book can narrate a lot of fealing, thoughts and emotions. A film needs to show events to explain that kind of thing.
 
Interestingly enough the film begins with a scene not in the book at all that does a lot to set up some of how things will work out. But from then on, as you say, you get the books events but not all the book's depth. Now I still liked the film as I've said, and I don't think the books are so deep, that you are missing that much. I think some of the film's weaknesses are the book's weaknesses too. (I've always thought Clive's fiction was his weakest work~ Screwtape Letters excepted)
 
I think you hit the nail on the head. To have been a better film would have required more deviation from the text. This makes me rethink some of my frustration with the LoTR films. I loved them too, and now maybe I wont be so hard on some of the revisions.

Re:actually, christian messaging is subjective thi

[Council]

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.

Re:actually, christian messaging is subjective thi

[pizzaman100]

The original order (in the order Lewis wrote them)
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 remember trying to read a C.S. Lewis book

[nido]

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.

Re:I remember trying to read a C.S. Lewis book

[pHatidic]

I kind of disagree with your conclusion that the answer is turning the books into film, but that being said I think Gatto's book has influenced me more than anything else I've ever read. If you liked Underground History, you should definitely check out these video clips of him talking about the book. He has really expanded his views on what a good primary education should encompass since the book was published, and these video clips are the only place that reflects these ideas as far as I know.

Re:I remember trying to read a C.S. Lewis book

[nido]

I'm still trying to find the part in your post where you take some bit of responsibility for your inability to read anything longer than a blurb.

I realized that something wasn't right about 7 years ago, a quarter of the way through my last year of High School.

I see you pointing the finger at your teachers, the government, and a medical problem.

I don't blame the teachers - they all meant well by me. But the government is the institution that enforces a system that "doesn't teach the way children learn best" (to paraphrase Mr. Gatto).

But nowhere in there do you actually take it on yourself to learn to do something that might be a bit difficult.

This is what I've spent the last seven years on - six years bumbling around in a cloud of confusion (learning to define the problem I had), and another year after I realized my problem was biomechanical in origen.

And as for the medical problem: Imagine you're trying to learn how to shoot a basketball. You spend years trying to learn, but never advance to the level of others. "Just the way I am". Then one day you realize that, "the reason I can't shoot a basketball very well is because my left arm just flops around with no muscle control. Other people can shoot a basketball well because they can use both hands." Then the question becomes, why doesn't my arm work? You bump from M.D. to M.D.: "your arm is fine", "just need to exercise more", "go to this chiropractor", "need to stop doing _____ so much", "gonna need surgery", etc. Finally you say "phooey on them", and start the "alternative" medical rounds.

Then one day you finally happen across an Osteopathic Physician in Andrew Taylor Still's tradition ("structure and function are interrelated"). He says, "well, your left arm doesn't work very well because the nerve that controls it is pinched at the spine, and that vertebrae is being pulled out of place by this, this and that muscles, which are locked in spasm." Which is a gross simplification of what Dr. D's done for me, but hopefully it gets the point across.

Or maybe a better analogy is trying to sprint with ankle braces. No matter how much you train, you won't be as fast as you could be without the braces.

See also another of my replies in this thread, on how my mother learned to read.

My capsule review

[richardtallent]

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.

Re:Pathetic

[OwnedByTwoCats]

I just started reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe with my 7 3/4 (the 3/4 are important to her) year-old daughter. We saw the film Saturday night. The opening bombings were mentioned in passing on page 1 in the book, but not described. The children were sent away because of the bombing. Going back for the picture? The invention of the script writer.

My daughter loved the movie. I thought it had the frequent problem of stuffing too many pages of a novel into too few minutes on screen. "Bullet Points" is a fitting judgement.

I noticed the shot of the kids up on the peak and the background screaming "green-screen" to my eyes. I thought the beavers looked fake, but the movement of the wolves was well done. For talking animals, the overall effect was quite a breakthrough.

I'm thinking that after we finish as many of the Narnia books as we care to, I'll read Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy for balance. She loved the Hobbit, but I don't think she's ready for The Lord of the Rings. We've read Harry Potter 1 and 2, and seen the first three movies together. The opening of Harry Potter 3 is too scary for her even though she's seen the film and understands who the big dog is. So those will have to wait.

I am surprised at how much I like reading to her. Although the Narnia books are the first that I will be reading to her that I haven't read myself.

And what is slashcode for an underline? I can see my English teacher's red circles around the book titles that ought to be underlined...

If the Christian Allegory bugged you...

[killbill]

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.

Re:Pathetic

[b4k3d b34nz]

I think the problem with the movie was that they left out a narrator. One of the things about the books was that you always knew that they were being narrated, but narration was never in the way. In the movie, there is no narrator, and maybe it would have been beneficial for the character development (especially for Aslan) that seems to be missing.

Re:Pathetic

[wrf3]

God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat. He's a monarch.

Re:Movie was amazing, but I was a tad disappointed

[Drachemorder]

"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."

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 ;)

Re:Pathetic

[Rob Carr]

What is it about the scene with the kids where there's the moutains in the background? It did stick out as badly done, but darned if I know what it is that's wrong. My best guess is the gamma on the kids is dramatically different from that on the scenery -- but then wouldn't that happen sometimes in real life (clouds, etc.)? I still loved the movie, but of course I loved the books.