Chronicles Of Narnia

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Hot on the heels of the adaptions of Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter comes the Chronicles Of Narnia. Due out next weekend....

Trailer
 
I really can't wait to see this film, Gal. Are they filming all the books do you know? The Chronicles of Narnia were easily my favourite books as a child (even above Tim & Tobias!!!) and I read them many times over. I've got a lovely boxed set of all the Chronicles in hardback. They really are fantastic books but somehow none of them quite matched up to The Lion, The Witch &The Wardrobe - but the best of the rest were Prince Caspian, The Horse & His Boy & The Last Battle, I thought.
 
Bought my eldest daughter The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe from a bookshop in London on a recent trip there. We have just started to read it together and she is hooked!

It was the weekend of the Harry Potter premiere I was down there and if The Chronicles capture half the enthusiasm of that particular series, it will be massive! Kids were queueing in the rain from early morning just to get a glimpse of the films stars... :o
 
Originally posted by PDJ@Dec 4 2005, 11:23 AM
The plan is to film all 7 books, yes.
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Am I right in saying they're not filming them in order? The Lion was the second in the series and the next one they're filming is the only other one that Susan is in as she'll be too old if they delay it too long. I think its Prince Caspian (someone correct me if I'm wrong) and its the fourth book in the series. It should still work though as the four children in The Lion aren't in all seven books.
 
Maybe they are. My memory is rather vague. :rolleyes: I've got them all in the attic somewhere so I may dust them down and have a re-read.
 
I'm going to re-read them too I reckon - I love the books so much that when I moved to Gib I broughtout my boxed set too!

Have seen a couple of clips from the film today on Richard & Judy - it looks very good. From memory though, didn't the White Witch have long black hair? The actress playing her was Sal in The Beach & her hair is portrayed in the film as being fair with red highlights interspersed.
 
Underlying message or no, the books are wonderful. It's easy enough to ignore the "message" and take them as children's fantasy books - very good ones at that.
 
There's a strong underlying message about Christianity - I'm sure it's along the lines that unless you are a God-fearing Christian the wolrd will perish, or something along those lines. I'm sure Brian would be able to enlighten us more - all I do know is it's basically saying you have to be Christian or you're bad, or something similar.
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Dec 5 2005, 10:12 PM
There's a strong underlying message about Christianity - I'm sure it's along the lines that unless you are a God-fearing Christian the wolrd will perish, or something along those lines. I'm sure Brian would be able to enlighten us more - all I do know is it's basically saying you have to be Christian or you're bad, or something similar.
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Jeebus. The Americans will lap this shite up then.
 
Originally posted by Euronymous@Dec 5 2005, 11:09 PM
Jeebus. The Americans will lap this shite up then.
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They already are and, while I agree with those who say ignore the underlying message and enjoy the adventure story, in the US they are really pushing the Christianity bit. We do have a healthier outlook here, allowing people to believe in whatever they want to believe.

Some might be interested in this from today's Guardian by Polly Toynbee - she whom our old mate Alan Morgan used to call a "communist hag":

"Down with Aslan" by Polly Toynbee
 
But what children's stories of a certain era are not essentially Christian tracts dressed up, bizarrely, in myth and legend? Hans Christian Andersen, the brothers Grimm, and so many other story-tellers until the 1950s promoted what were essentially Good vs Evil tales. Knights of the Round Table, Black Beauty, The Water Babies, on and on. My mother had a book of legends of the Rhine (translated into English!) and the stories were the same - dark towers, knights gallant, rescue of the innocent, punishment of the wicked. Various allegories, various authors, various presentations, but essentially based in a Christian ethos.

If you look religiously at 'The Babes in the Wood' it's an allegory about straying off the straight and narrow, becoming beguiled by the forbidden, and the consequences for doing so. 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' - greed, selfishness, lack of compassion for others, and its results. 'Little Red Riding Hood' - sweet innocence is threatened, but the attacker (corrupting Satan) is overcome, and goodness and right (God) ultimately triumphs.

Even all the delightful Grey Rabbit tales and Beatrix Potter's works point to the rewards of diligence, duty, obedience, humility, kindness and care. No matter how put upon the 'nice' animals are by the 'nasty' animals (usually rodents, foxes, and wolves), good always triumphs (God always triumphs) in the end.

Nowadays, you could simply discard the hidden message and say that, in a far from boring way, they represent sensible advice that any society would not suffer to take in, regardless of personal belief, or non-belief.
 
Straightforward good versus evil is one thing (I'd include James Bond, Sherlock Holmes etc in there too) but come on:-

Aslan dies so that the sins of others can be forgiven. The stone cracks and his body goes missing. Then he is reborn to lead the fight for good against evil. Sound familiar? I can't remember good old Hans Andersen exploring this particular theme, despite his middle name.

And neither can I recall any other Disney production being promoted through churches on both sides of the Atlantic (as Ms Toynbee says with probably different results) and linked to Bible studies.
 
That was a good article, Brian, if a little cynical!! I found it interesting that Tolkien can't stand Narnia & even more interesting that Phillip Pullman detests the chronicles. Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy is fantastic - but also seemingly has some kind of allegory to a religious, good vs evil, theme.

Since I can remember I have always realised that Aslan was a portrayal of Jesus, and eventually I came to realise that Edmund was Judas but it didn't stop me enjoying the books immensely. As Krizon says, most childrens tales are good vs evil - take Harry Potter for example - is JK Rowling using Dumbledore to represent Jesus & Voldemort to represent Satan? I agree though that it isn't the best that all these born-again societies & the likes are ruthlessly using the Narnia films to recruit children; as far as I'm concerned, brain-washing children is a no-go area.

When I was about 13, one of my schoolfriends was taking part ina "play" she wanted around 6 of us to come & watch; her Dad would pick us all up & drop us all off (a major thing as we all lived in out lying villages some miles apart) afterwards. It turned out that her father was spearheading the local recruitment drive for the Born Agains & had even made his 13 year old daughter not only bring her firends along to their "show" but persuaded her to break down in floods of tears during a reading whilst wailing about "how much she loved Him". They then bombarded us all with leaflets & books, took us each aside on our own & tried their best to convert us. I can't say my Dad ever let me near Joni's dad ever again!!! :lol: Kind of ironic then really that the younger daughter (such a God-fearing Christian) ended up leaving home at the age of somehting like 18 to have a baby on her own & as far as I know is still struggling, on her own, as a single mum in Reading.
 
If you read my post, Father Brian, you'll see that I do say that these stories are essentially Christian allegories. Some are more clearly allegorical than others. As I said - various presentations, same Christian ethos. You're arguing against someone who is already lined up at your side. Any more of that, and I shall thrust my Sword of Righteousness into you.
 
Offhand, aren't there more kids' stories (not in the Cronnickles) that deal with death and resurrection into spirit form? Or coming back as a Good Fairy, etc.? I'm sure there are, it's just that the leedle grey cells, the three that are left, are reminding me it's up early doors for Fontwell tomorrow, and I MUST get to bed!

Problem is, if so many Muslims hadn't disgraced their religion over the past few years, regardless of the driving factors, perhaps simplistic Christianity wouldn't be seeing such a resurgence. Clearly, Islam is viewed by the fundamentalists as some terribly misguided error, to be overcome by the power of Christian prayer, etc. and a lot of ranting from a stage, not to mention the odd bit of torture and endless detention by the government of His Holiness St. Dubya.
 
Thanks for the links.

There's Biblical allegory in everything from Star Wars to The X-Files. Lars von Trier has made a whole career out of it. The atheistic Stanley Kubrick's '2001' is full of birth, death and resurrection, whilst the killer in David Fincher's Se7en is basically the Second Coming we least expected. Allegory alone is surely not a problem; it's hardly suprising that the Bible, and the Gospels specifically, should act as a cornerstone of so much classic drama.

The problem that Polly Toynbee has with the Narnia story appears to be that:

"here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right.
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I find it hard to accept backfitting a modern sensibility onto a 50-yr old book as a valid argument - can CS Lewis seriously be described as a "neo-fascist"?

She continues:

Children are supposed to fall in love with the hypnotic Aslan, though he is not a character: he is pure, raw, awesome power. He is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is no one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can. We need no holy guide books, only a very human moral compass.
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This may or may not be true of the Narnia books (I can only vaguely remember the story itself, let alone the not-so-subtleties) but the suggestion that religious faith (and specifically Christianity) precludes any requirement for personal responsibility and redemption is just bizarre.

Furthermore, I find it hard to believe there's anything in Lewis' work as insulting to atheists as Toynbee's assertion that

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to?
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is to a Christian.

Neither do I think that there's anyone involved with The Passion of the Christ who gives a shit that it "bombed" in the UK. I have my doubts as to whether a £10m gross counts as a "bomb", but in any case $600m worldwide for an R-rated independent film smells like victory, I'm sure.

Finally, I don't think there's anything more suspicious about Disney specifically promoting the film to church-goers than I do them promoting Pearl Harbor to history buffs (no, really!) through various National Geographic and History Channel documentaries - it's just targeted marketing; there's not going to be a class action suit naming Disney as a mass brainwasher any time soon.
 
But Gareth don't you think that Bush and his "christian" freinds will use the series of films, and the message that it is thought to carry, to justify their "policies".

Which seems to me, to be, Christian good, non-Christian bad.

Probably just a little over-simplification there but y'know what I mean!?
 
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