I mentioned I was going to do a C.S. Lewis post at some point...

So here it is. I abducted a four-year-old and went to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe yesterday because I always feel a bit creepy seeing kids' movies without having a kid in tow. I had serious reservations about seeing it, not because it's blatant conservative Christian propaganda, but because I didn't like the thought of Disney watering it down or veering too far away from the source material. Propaganda or not, I adored the Narnia books as a kid, and re-read them every few years years or so until I moved out of my mum's house.

The past few years have seen movie adaptations of a few other books that I was fanatical about when I was a kid: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. My main hope for the LWW movie was that it would be more like the latter (which did change elements of the books but never left me feeling that I wasn't in Tolkien's Middle Earth) than the former, which, while it was a good movie, failed at some level to capture the sense of wonder that I felt when I first read Adams' books. Fortunately (and pending reassessment based on more viewings), I did think that they did a good job with LWW overall.

Let's get the primary political stuff out of the way first: One cannot watch this movie in the hopes that it will present a progressive worldview. It doesn't, and it shouldn't, because the book doesn't. But it doesn't need to be reactionary either. Slacktivist is worried that by going he is contributing to the wrong side of the Culture Wars. Someone pointed out in the comments to that post that if he avoids seeing it because religious fundies have decided it's Their Movie, then the Culture Warriors win. This is true. Lewis, though very much a religious and political conservative, was a radically different creature from today's fundies. I suspect he would see in them the same sort of joyless literalism that he liked to mock when he wrote about atheists and heathens.

Also, let's talk about my biases when it comes to the books: LWW isn't my favourite of the Narnia books (that's changed over the course of my life and many re-reads; right now, I think Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader are about tied), and I'm a diehard "publicationist" (I'm so glad that there's a word for it!) because I think Chronicles should be read as stories first and allegories second. I'm also of the opinion (and I don't know enough about Lewis-as-author to know if this is true, but I think I did hear it somewhere), that the Narnia books began with a single (and non-religious) image -- Lucy discovering the lamp post in the snow -- and the rest followed from there. This is my favourite moment in the book and my favourite moment in the movie.

Spoilers follow. ZOMG the lion dies and comes back to life because he's Jesus!!eleventy-one!!!

( Specificities and such )

So...anyone else seen it yet? Also, open season on discussing Lewis, Narnia, and Pullman vs. Lewis because no one can ever get enough of that.

I mentioned I was going to do a C.S. Lewis post at some point...

So here it is. I abducted a four-year-old and went to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe yesterday because I always feel a bit creepy seeing kids' movies without having a kid in tow. I had serious reservations about seeing it, not because it's blatant conservative Christian propaganda, but because I didn't like the thought of Disney watering it down or veering too far away from the source material. Propaganda or not, I adored the Narnia books as a kid, and re-read them every few years years or so until I moved out of my mum's house.

The past few years have seen movie adaptations of a few other books that I was fanatical about when I was a kid: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. My main hope for the LWW movie was that it would be more like the latter (which did change elements of the books but never left me feeling that I wasn't in Tolkien's Middle Earth) than the former, which, while it was a good movie, failed at some level to capture the sense of wonder that I felt when I first read Adams' books. Fortunately (and pending reassessment based on more viewings), I did think that they did a good job with LWW overall.

Let's get the primary political stuff out of the way first: One cannot watch this movie in the hopes that it will present a progressive worldview. It doesn't, and it shouldn't, because the book doesn't. But it doesn't need to be reactionary either. Slacktivist is worried that by going he is contributing to the wrong side of the Culture Wars. Someone pointed out in the comments to that post that if he avoids seeing it because religious fundies have decided it's Their Movie, then the Culture Warriors win. This is true. Lewis, though very much a religious and political conservative, was a radically different creature from today's fundies. I suspect he would see in them the same sort of joyless literalism that he liked to mock when he wrote about atheists and heathens.

Also, let's talk about my biases when it comes to the books: LWW isn't my favourite of the Narnia books (that's changed over the course of my life and many re-reads; right now, I think Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader are about tied), and I'm a diehard "publicationist" (I'm so glad that there's a word for it!) because I think Chronicles should be read as stories first and allegories second. I'm also of the opinion (and I don't know enough about Lewis-as-author to know if this is true, but I think I did hear it somewhere), that the Narnia books began with a single (and non-religious) image -- Lucy discovering the lamp post in the snow -- and the rest followed from there. This is my favourite moment in the book and my favourite moment in the movie.

Spoilers follow. ZOMG the lion dies and comes back to life because he's Jesus!!eleventy-one!!!

( Specificities and such )

So...anyone else seen it yet? Also, open season on discussing Lewis, Narnia, and Pullman vs. Lewis because no one can ever get enough of that.