by glumPuddle » February 6th, 2009, 2:16 am
rusmeister,
If you really think it through though, many of those changes were almost unavoidable (see for more on this). Trumpkin, for example. Because of the necessary re-structuring of the story, they needed another way to explain what happened to Narnia, and Trumpkin was the only way to do it. They needed him to believe in more of the old things so he could explain what happened to the Pevensies. You can tell by watching the movie that the writers struggled with this. Trumpkin's position in the movie seems to be that Aslan did exist, but has since abandoned Narnia. When Lucy says she saw Aslan at the gorge, Trumpkin says "I'm not about to jump off a cliff for someone who doesn't exist."
The issue of sending Lucy out was another unavoidable problem (I talk about that in more depth ). We've been complaining about it for months over at NarniaWeb, but haven't really come up with a better solution to it. Again, I think you can tell from watching the movie that the writers were caught between knowing it didn't really make sense and knowing there was no other way to solve this adaptation problem. I think this was the reason they decided to have Lucy being pursued by a Telmarine when Aslan appears. It takes the emphasis off Lucy "looking" for Aslan. In that moment, Lucy was simply running for her life, not looking for Aslan. Aslan appeared of his own will to rescue her. I think that was done to make Aslan seem less "tame."
So, I think we essentially agree on what's wrong with the PC film. The difference is that I'm more accepting of the film because I think most of the problems couldn't be helped because of the book that was being adapted. Now, I'm just relieved they managed to get past PC so we can get onto the books are are much more suited for film. (If VDT is as far from the book as PC, I'll be just as upset as you. PC was a big exception)
I agree that the PC film does not quite reflect Lewis' intentions. But I also believe this was largely unavoidable, and under the circumstances, they did a pretty good job. The book is just so uncinematic, there were many changes that simply had to be made. That's why I say the PC film was about as good as it could have been.
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