{"id":683,"date":"2010-06-21T17:21:45","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T23:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/?p=683"},"modified":"2010-06-21T17:21:45","modified_gmt":"2010-06-21T23:21:45","slug":"narnia-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/narnia-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Narnia Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first trailer for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader<\/em> was released not too long ago, and I\u2019m actually surprised that it looks as good as it does.<\/p>\n

[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=qf9Xl84b9Wo&w=640&h=385]<\/p>\n

The story on the Narnia movies was that the second movie had a bigger budget and a smaller box office, so Disney punted the franchise over to Fox, who slashed the budget for the third film. Fortunately, the two-minute trailer doesn\u2019t look cheap, and this entry looks to be consistent with the first two films.<\/p>\n

I wish I were more excited about it than I am.<\/p>\n

The fact is that the Narnia books are a very mixed bag. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe <\/em>is the first in the series, the best of the series, and the centerpiece of the entire Christian allegory. Many of the other books feel like afterthoughts. The Magician\u2019s Nephew<\/em> is marvelous with its quirky focus on the creation, and The Last Battle<\/em> is a pretty groovy depiction of the last days.<\/p>\n

The rest of the books, including Dawn Treader,<\/em> are essentially filler.<\/p>\n

People were concerned that Caspian<\/em> made so much less than Wardrobe<\/em>, but the cold, hard fact is that Prince Caspian<\/em> is a far less interesting story.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t the filmmakers\u2019 fault, really – the movie was an improvement on the source material in many respects. In the book, the setup takes about half of the total time, the larger war is only hinted at, and the one-on-one battle between Peter and Miraz is a single-sentence throwaway.\u00a0 It\u2019s a slight, insignificant tale that would not have been able to sustain a film adaptation without the alterations that upset many Narnian purists. They made a valiant effort, but it still wasn\u2019t enough to turn Caspian<\/em> into a blockbuster.<\/p>\n

As you may have noticed, I\u2019m of the opinion that of all the Narnia books, Prince Caspian<\/em> is the worst of the lot.<\/p>\n

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader<\/em> is a much better book, but it\u2019s essentially a collection of short stories with very little in the way of a central narrative.\u00a0 You follow a bunch of folks going from island to island and having goofy adventures. The tone of the book is whimsical and light, with the exception of the terrifying story of Eustace\u2019s transformation and redemption. My guess is it will prove to be a much more difficult adaptation than Caspian<\/em> and probably a bigger box office failure.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll go see it, though. I\u2019m hoping they can get past the filler books and get into the good stuff. The next book, The Silver Chair<\/em>, would make a much better movie than Dawn Treader<\/em> or Caspian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But if Dawn Treader<\/em> flops, we\u2019ll never get to see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thefirst trailer for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader<\/em> was released not too long ago, and I\u2019m actually surprised that it looks as good as it does.[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=qf9Xl84b9Wo&w=640&h=385]The story on the Narnia movies was that the second movie had a bigger budget and a smaller box office, so Disney punted the franchise over to Fox, who ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}