It may sound crazy to say that the Disney Channel produced a better miniseries adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations than the BBC ever did but that’s what happened in 1989!
Just eight years prior to the 1989 miniseries, the BBC had done its own version and it’s astonishing to see how much more visually appealing the later series was. Credit to that goes to director Kevin Connor, cinematographer Doug Milsome and production designer Keith Wilson. True, the sets don’t look as “lived in” as much as might be wished and the costumes even less so but for a TV serial of this time, they’re quite impressive and the locations are lovely.
The casting for the 1989 miniseries is also superior to that of the 1981 version and the scripts by John Goldsmith[1]Who also wrote adaptations of The Old Curiosity Shop and David Copperfield in 1995 and 2000 respectively. are far more engaging. Basically, this adaptation makes the 1981 miniseries look dull and clunky in every way. Well, truth be told, I think that one comes across as dull and clunky by itself, so that’s small praise. But I’d also stake the 1989 Great Expectations against any of the other miniseries based on the book and there have been several. In fact, I’d stake it against any adaptation yet made. That’s not to say it’s only one that’s any good, just that it’s the most consistently great in my opinion.
Of course, nothing is perfect, so I’ll start with a flaw. Young Martin Harvey who plays the character of Pip in his childhood[2]This is going to be one of those blog posts where I don’t explain the story. If you haven’t the read the book, you should either do so or read my previous post. is something of a weak link in the cast. His facial expressions are pretty great, but his line deliveries tend to sound fake compared to those of everybody else. And his crying sounds even more so.
Anthony Calf as the older Pip though is perfect. He looks and sounds more like how I imagine the character than any other portrayal I’ve seen, and he’s helped by the writing which excels at finding ways for Pip to express his thoughts aloud to the other characters that he only tells readers in the book. If I had blogged about this miniseries before I did my “awards ceremony” post, Calf’s Pip would have been a shoe in for best antihero.[3]Jeremy Irvine’s Pip from the 2012 movie would have gotten an honorable mention.
Another problem with this production is the choice to have Pip’s two possible love interests, Biddy and Estella, each be played by a single actress throughout the whole series rather than using child actresses in the characters’ youths and older ones afterwards. I know, I know. It’s unfair of me to first say that the child actor for Pip was inferior to the adult actor and then criticize the decision to not use child actors for other characters.[4]The only other character here to be portrayed by two different actors is Herbert Pocket who is played by Henry Power as a boy and Adam Blackwood, who was Dick Swiveller in The Old Curiosity Shop from … Continue reading This probably does make for more consistently great acting but if you’re not familiar with the story, it’s very confusing. Biddy’s early maturity isn’t as impressive when she looks like an adult from the beginning and there’s a scene where we see Estella as a teenager for the first time that was clearly written to be the first look viewers would get of her played by a new actress, but she looks just like she did the last time we saw her except that she’s wearing more age-appropriate clothing.[5]Viewers familiar with the historical culture in which this story takes place can theoretically tell that the characters are supposed to be younger based on how they wear their hair. But if said … Continue reading
Fortunately, the actual quality of the actresses’ performances is exemplary. As I wrote previously, anyone playing Estella has to delicately balance many contradictory characteristics to bring this unforgettable character to life. Kim Thomson does so without breaking a sweat, giving us an Estella who is sometimes icily indifferent, sometimes casually friendly and sometimes intensely bitter. Returning to the scenario in which I’d blogged about this miniseries before my awards ceremony, she’d have won best antiheroine.
Susan Franklyn is also great as Biddy. Like Thomson, she’s helped by how well this adaptation develops her character. You could even argue she has a bigger presence here than in the book. (Remember what I wrote about this miniseries finding ways to have Pip confide things in other characters that he only tells us through narration in the book?) Estella may be the story’s leading lady, but this adaptation understands that Biddy is its heroine in the moral sense.
You’ve probably picked up by now that this miniseries has a stellar cast. As awkward and ignorant as the loveable Joe Gargery can be, John Rhys-Davies plays him without a hint of condescension or winking at the camera. Some of the most emotional moments in the series belong to him.
As Pip’s shrewish older sister, Rosemary McHale makes her character’s abuse of her brother and her husband genuinely disturbing while simultaneously bringing great comedic timing to the role.
Other great performances include those of Anthony Hopkins as Abel Magwitch, the escaped convict who terrorizes young Pip[6]Though I must admit I prefer Ralph Fiennes from the 2012 movie, partly because, for once, the character is better developed there. Hopkins is still great though.,
Ray McAnally as Jaggers the fearsome lawyer[7]Don’t read this footnote if you haven’t read the book or experienced any adaptations. His most memorable scene is in the last episode where, after being chilly and inhumane throughout the … Continue reading,
and Charles Lewsen as his clerk, Wemmick who is cold and businesslike to the point of cruelty in his “professional capacity”
but friendly and playful outside of office hours.
But as much competition as she has, the crown jewel of the cast by a long shot is Jean Simmons, whom you’ll recall played the young Estella in the 1946 movie, as Miss Havisham. She brings a throaty growl to every line that she doesn’t venomously spit or deliver in a mournful wail. Even when she’s not speaking, she seems to radiate bitterness. I fully believe that she’s brooded over her grudge every day for years. This is the most awesomely creepy Miss Havisham I’ve ever seen, and she would have won the “Adaptee” for best tragic villainess with her hands tied behind her back.[8]I’ve gone on record as saying that Helena Bonham Carter was more moving as the remorseful Miss Havisham in the last act of the story and I’ll stand by that. But I enjoy Simmons’s … Continue reading
Nearly every minor character from the novel is present in this adaptation. There’s harried Matthew Pocket (Jonathan Newth) and his lazy, pretentious wife, Belinda (entertaining Angela Ellis),
Wopsle (John Quentin), the overly ambitious amateur actor,
“Trabb’s boy” (Mark Williams who’s good but I’d have preferred a younger actor in the role), the insolent tailor’s assistant who irritates Pip
and Orlick (Niven Boyd), the vengeful journeyman.
True, not all of these subplots are as well developed as in the book. I wish there were more audible heckling in the scenes of Wopsle’s bad performances to make them funnier and Orlick only shows interest in Biddy in one shot, making his later accusation that Pip “come twixt” the two of them rather inexplicable. Still, this is adaptation is an admirably complete take on the novel’s plot. In fact, it expands on the minor character of the useless young manservant who Pip hires for the sake of a genteel appearance and gives him a subplot to good effect. As played by Paul Reynolds, he resembles a young Uriah Heep and that’s no accident as this version has him conspire with his employer’s enemies.
Sadly, this adaptation does stumble a bit at the finish line. The way it handles a plot twist in the second-to-last scene[9]You’ll know it when you see it. makes Dickens’s bittersweet ending, which leaned more into the sweet in the book, lean more into the bitter here. A botched ending can sometimes ruin a whole story, but the very last scene of the miniseries, taking place eleven years afterwards, manages to mollify me. The adaptation moves the location to the churchyard to bookend with the very first scene of the first episode. I’m theoretically against this change since the scene’s location in the source material is thematically significant. But I’ll allow it since it gives the miniseries the opportunity to put a hilariously ironic inscription on the tombstone of one of the villains. I’d like to think Dickens himself would have gotten a kick out of that addition to his story.
No, I’m not going to show you the inscription. Maybe I should though since exasperatingly this, my favorite adaptation of Great Expectations, is unavailable for streaming anywhere and has only ever been released on VHS and Region 2 DVDs, something not every DVD player will play! Oh, the injustice! Currently, the miniseries can be watched on YouTube though it could be taken down for violating copyright at any moment. Normally, I would advocate paying for it but since whoever owns the series isn’t really selling it, I advise everyone to enjoy it while they have the chance.
This is going to be one of those blog posts where I don’t explain the story. If you haven’t the read the book, you should either do so or read my previous post.
The only other character here to be portrayed by two different actors is Herbert Pocket who is played by Henry Power as a boy and Adam Blackwood, who was Dick Swiveller in The Old Curiosity Shop from the same screenwriter, as a man. Did the director just have something against child actresses?
Viewers familiar with the historical culture in which this story takes place can theoretically tell that the characters are supposed to be younger based on how they wear their hair. But if said viewers aren’t familiar with the book, I can easily imagine them assuming on a first viewing that the makers of the miniseries just didn’t do research on age-appropriate hairstyles.
Though I must admit I prefer Ralph Fiennes from the 2012 movie, partly because, for once, the character is better developed there. Hopkins is still great though.
Don’t read this footnote if you haven’t read the book or experienced any adaptations. His most memorable scene is in the last episode where, after being chilly and inhumane throughout the series prior, he reveals himself to be capable of compassion.
I’ve gone on record as saying that Helena Bonham Carter was more moving as the remorseful Miss Havisham in the last act of the story and I’ll stand by that. But I enjoy Simmons’s overall take on the character more and it’s not like she’s bad in the scenes where we sympathize with Miss Havisham. Her reminiscing over the first time she saw Estella is especially powerful.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens has been adapted into several miniseries and you’d expect that I, as a fan of the book, would prefer those to the film adaptations. After all, they’re longer, slower paced and theoretically include more from the rich source material. But, weirdly enough, there is only one miniseries adaptation of Great Expectations that I love, one I hope to cover on this blog next week. The rest of them range from OK to bad in my estimation. Two of my favorites are shorter movie adaptations, one from 1946 directed by Sir David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago) and one from 2012 directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.) The first one isn’t a controversial choice since it’s widely considered a masterpiece, both as an adaptation of the book and a movie in its own right. The second, while not widely hated or anything, is regarded as inferior but I’m not convinced of this. I’m going to look at both movies, what they each do well and what they each do poorly.
Writing and Direction
David Lean’s Great Expectations is justly celebrated for its atmosphere. The opening scene of the main character, a young boy called Pip (Philip Pirrip), being confronted by an escaped criminal in a churchyard on the lonely Kentish marshes is magnificently creepy. So is Satis House, the manor whose mistress, Miss Havisham, has decreed that everything shall stay in it exactly as it was the moment she received a letter from her con artist fiancé breaking off their engagement on what was to be their wedding day. Mike Newell’s direction for his Great Expectations is basically fine but rather bland by comparison.[1]I really wish that another Harry Potter director, Alfonso Cuaron, could have directed this version of Great Expectations instead of the 1998 movie which reimagined the story in contemporary America … Continue reading It drives me crazy how much sunlight gets through the cracks of Newell’s Satis House when it’s supposed to be lit only by candles. This makes a line about how a character raised there has never seen her mother figure’s face by daylight ridiculous. But on the flipside, the emotionally uplifting scenes in Newell’s Great Expectations tend to be much better directed than those in Lean’s which tend to be rather flat compared to the creepy ones. To be fair, a great deal of that may be due to the scriptwriting.
There’s much to love about both the screenplay for the 1946 movie by Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allen, Kay Walsh and Cecil McGivern and the screenplay for the 2012 movie by David Nicholls. Each one stays very true to the book’s story and dialogue while gracefully simplifying them for the movie format and nearly every scene is packed with little fan-pleasing details. I think of the two I prefer the 2012 script since it does a better job of developing the most important characters and even some of the less important ones as I hope to show below. There are some great lines from the 1946 script that aren’t in the 2012 one though. I especially have to praise it for including more lines from the book that indicate the character of Estella’s dark side.
In a wonderful piece for the Guardian, David Nicholls mentions voiceover narration and flashbacks as risky cinematic devices. His Great Expectations uses flashbacks but not narration. The 1946 movie uses narration but not flashbacks. Each one demonstrates the benefits of the risk it takes. When Pip returns to his old neighborhood after having a fortune and the status of a gentleman dropped in his lap in the 1946 movie, voiceover grants us access inside his head and we learn exactly how he talks himself out of visiting his old friends from when he was a lowly blacksmith’s apprentice-the only friends he had growing up. This also allows it to include one of the most haunting quotes from the book. “All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretenses did I cheat myself.” By contrast, the 2012 movie has only an awkward scene of Pip walking all the way to the blacksmith’s forge, seeing one of his friends without being seen, and then wordlessly walking away again. On the other hand, the 2012 movie’s use of flashbacks for scenes of the various characters explaining their backstories makes them far more dramatic and compelling than the equivalent scenes in the 1946 movie, which were just a bunch of talking heads. I hasten to add that sometimes it’s more interesting to just watch a character explain their backstory and other characters react to it. I just don’t usually find it so in the 1946 Great Expectations.
Charles Dickens’s main claim to fame is his characters, so let’s take a look at some of them, shall we?
Pip
I’ve mentioned something before about movies that follow a character or characters from childhood to adulthood: it’s typical for either to actors playing them as a child to make a better impression than the one playing them as an adult or vice versa. These movies are a case in point. Young Anthony Wager who plays Pip is perfect in the role[2]Though I have read some criticize his accent as being too posh for a “common laboring boy.” A valid complaint, I suppose. with his perpetually traumatized facial expression. Believe me, considering that he’s raised by an abusive older sister, blackmailed by an escaped convict and regularly summoned to a creepy mansion to be systematically emotionally abused by a femme fatale, this kid should look perpetually traumatized. Toby Irvine is fine in the same role in the 2012 movie but not nearly as memorable.
Sir John Mills isn’t terrible or anything as the adult Pip in the 1946 film but he’s not nearly as great as Wager and the movie’s overall quality consequently takes a drop when he takes over as the lead. Part of the problem is that Mills was in his late thirties and Pip is supposed to be in his early twenties. He just feels too old for the immature character to me.[3]Part of the problem might also be that the first thing I ever saw Mills in was Swiss Family Robinson (1960) in which he played the father. Jeremy Irvine, brother of Toby, is far better as the adult Pip in the 2012 film, bringing much more youthful vigor and enthusiasm to the role. I have read some criticism to the effect that he’s too palpably angry and emotional for the character’s culture. But, hey, Pip is supposed to be an unusually passionate person and this movie doesn’t have voiceover to give us access to his thoughts and feelings.[4]And while this version of Pip is definitely one of the angriest I’ve seen, it never annoys me the way Ioan Gruffud’s even angrier one from the 1999 miniseries does. If the overall quality of the 1946 Great Expectations drops for me when Mills takes over as Pip, the overall quality of the 2012 one improves when Irvine takes over as the character.
Estella
No one should envy an actress who has to play the young Estella, the girl at Satis House who bewitches Pip. She has to portray a snobby, sadistic bully while also coming across as beautiful, elegant and somehow charming enough to make Pip’s lifelong romantic obsession with her understandable. Jean Simmons in the 1946 movie knocks it out of the ballpark! Helena Barlow is sadly less effective in the role in the 2012 film. Her performance isn’t terrible or anything, but she just doesn’t have the screen presence necessary to make Pip’s infatuation with her believable, especially when there’s another girl in his life who is no less pretty, has the same social status and is actually nice to him.[5]Her hairdos are also relatively less goofy looking. There are a lot goofy looking hairdos in both these movies but if they’re period accurate, I suppose I can’t complain. I feel cruel for critiquing such a young actress for not being convincing as a charismatic supermodel[6]I’m sure Barlow would do better as Estella now that she’s had more acting experience. but it’s impossible for me to critique the movie without doing so, especially as I’m comparing it the 1946 one. For what it’s worth, Jean Simmons was actually a teenager when she played Estella and so she had that advantage over Barlow.
Speaking of charisma or a lack thereof, Valerie Hobson as the adult Estella is rather a disappointment after Simmons, in some ways even more than John Mills is a disappointment after Anthony Wager. In her defense though, the adult Estella is arguably an even more difficult role than the youthful one. She’s still cruel and callous but not sadistic like she was as a child. We’re told that she’s tormenting many men by making them fall in love with her and then crushing their hearts, but she does this out of obligation to the vengeful misandrist who raised her, not for fun. In fact, we get the impression she really resents this obligation and wishes for a different life. But this is out of boredom, not compassion for her victims. She’s grown genuinely fond of Pip in a strange way and tries to avoid hurting him, but she can’t really empathize with his feelings for her, limiting any compassion on her part. The actress has to balance a ton of contradictions to play this character. She needs to be both casual and intense, cold yet warm.[7]Readers may remember I wasn’t a fan of Anya Taylor-Joy’s portrayal of Emma Woodhouse but I think she’d actually make a great Estella. If she did play her, it’d be the second … Continue reading During her early scenes, Hobson mostly just plays her as casual to the point of being bland and boring.[8]From what I understand, Hobson disliked working with David Lean and said he gave her inadequate direction, so maybe the fault lies with him. Fortunately, as the movie goes on and Estella is brought into conflict with Pip more, giving the actress more specific emotions to show, she improves. I still wish Jean Simmons could have played the character for the whole movie somehow.
Holliday Grainger certainly isn’t boring as the adult Estella in the 2012 film. In fact, for what it is, her performance is great, but I still consider it fundamentally misguided. As much as I love the screenplay for this adaptation, I have to admit that the fault lies with it or at least the script got the character off on the wrong foot. Like the 2011 miniseries, this version has Miss Havisham end young Pip’s visits to her house because she can tell that Estella is becoming genuinely attached to him, which would not fit in with her plans for the girl at all. (Remember this is while Pip is still common! In the book, she only becomes friendly to him once he’s a gentleman.) We’re told that Estella is “hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree” and that she’s deceiving many men. But we never see any evidence of this in Grainger’s performance. She comes across as sad and wistful in every one of her scenes. I can live with softening the character a little bit, especially in a shorter adaptation that has less time to develop her, but not in every single scene! It’s all but stated that this Estella really does love Pip but is in denial about it. This makes Pip seem far less delusional in his pursuit of her and an important choice of Estella’s, which was difficult to understand in the source material, downright incomprehensible here. Not helping much is that while Holliday Grainger is certainly a beauty, she’s not necessarily beautiful in an Estella-esque way. I feel that Estella should be tall and stately in keeping with her “inaccessibility” to use the book’s description. Grainger’s Estella, if anything, appears to be shorter than Jeremy Irvine’s Pip.
Miss Havisham
With the decaying wedding dress she always wears and the decaying wedding cake she keeps in her house, Miss Havisham is one of the most unforgettable antagonists in Dickens-no small praise-and for many readers, the most memorable character in Great Expectations. Martita Hunt is effectively eerie and brooding in the role in the 1946 movie. If I have a criticism of her performance, it’s that she could stand to be a little more energetic once in some moments, such as her rant ordering Pip to love Estella. (“If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love her…”) Don’t get me wrong. I prefer Miss Havisham to be somewhat subdued and withdrawn in her early scenes as if she’s always preoccupied with the grudge that she’s nursing. But I also feel like she should be more palpably gleeful in later scenes as her vengeance seems to be coming to fruition. It would be flat slander to accuse Hunt’s Miss Havisham of never being palpably gleeful though.
Helena Bonham Carter has been accused of doing nothing at this point in her career but recycle her performance as Bellatrix Lestrange from the Harry Potter movies. Looking back at all the recent movies in which I’ve seen her, I wouldn’t say that’s totally fair, but I will say with regret that her portrayal of Miss Havisham in the 2012 movie is very much what has become the generic Helen Bonham Carter performance. Still, the generic Helena Bonham Carter performance at least makes for a good solid cartoon character, not like Gillian Anderson’s irritating, squeaky-voiced Miss Havisham in the 2011 Great Expectations miniseries whom one critic accurately described as “the ghost of all bad Ophelias.” I don’t understand why she seems to be asleep or half asleep whenever Pip enters her room. Isn’t the idea of her sitting there, alert and waiting for him, creepier? But there are some interesting things about this Miss Havisham. When Pip says the only card game he knows is Beggar My Neighbor and she tells Estella to “beggar him,” she laughs like that’s the most hilarious joke she’s ever heard. Again, I prefer something less hammy for those early scenes but it’s not a bad take on the character. In her final scenes of penitence, Carter grants my wish that she treat this as one of her serious performances and actually makes her Miss Havisham more sympathetic than Hunt’s or any other actress’s I’ve seen.
Joe Gargery
If Miss Havisham is this story’s most dastardly villain[9]Another character, Compeyson (played by George Hayes in 1946 and William Ellis in 2012), is arguably a better candidate for the honor of being the main villain but it’s easy to forget about him., Pip’s brother-in-law, Joe Gargery, is its most lovable hero. Bernard Miles is appropriately gentle and childlike in the role in the 1946 movie, but he doesn’t bring a lot of depth to the character.[10]He also doesn’t look particularly muscular for a blacksmith but that’s a relatively minor criticism. For example, when Pip, having had wealth and status suddenly bestowed upon him, leaves him to be a gentleman in London, we don’t get the impression that Joe is really saddened but hiding it for Pip’s sake. To be fair, a lot of the blame for that lies with the script and direction. It feels as if David Lean simply wasn’t interested in Joe. Granted that the character wasn’t going to be as fully developed as in the book, there are far fewer scenes of him than there should be and the scenes we get are directed with none of the flair of, say, the scenes at Satis House. One bit of comic business in the scene of Joe’s awkward visit to London is downright bad. Joe is supposed to rush over to grab his hat before it falls off its stand and fumbles with it so much that it falls in the food. It’s staged so awkwardly that it looks as if a demon suddenly possessed Joe so he could ruin his hat and the meal. Happily, Jason Flemyng’s Joe in the 2012 movie is even more appealingly gentle and childlike as well as even funnier in the bits where he’s played for laughs and much better served by the script. The final scenes of reconciliation between him and Pip are far more heartwarming than their perfunctory counterparts in the 1946 film.
Biddy
The novel’s saintliest character next to Joe is Biddy, Pip’s aforementioned alternative love interest to Estella. The 1946 movie ages her up and makes her more of a mother figure to him. Goodness knows the kid needs one! Eileen Erskine is likeable and appealing in the role, but the movie sadly though understandably doesn’t give her much to do and it feels like she was included out of obligation. Biddy keeps her original age and is much more of a possible love interest in the 2012 movie in which she’s played by Bebe Cave as a child and Jessie Cave as an adult. In fact, at one point, she grabs Pip and kisses him on the lips, which I’m fairly sure would have been considered inappropriate in this time period.[11]Pip also kisses Estella on the lips right after she’s told him they’re never getting together. This was obviously done just so they could show the leads kissing in the trailer.The shooting script describes the moment thus. “Her hand reaches across and takes Pip’s hand (or perhaps even a kiss?)” They probably should have shown restraint and left it at that when filming or had the kiss just be on the cheek. It’s horribly frustrating for fans of the book to read that script and discover that some great lines of the literary Biddy’s were going to be in the movie but were cut for time. I especially wish the scene of her upbraiding Pip for his patronizing attitude towards Joe had made the cut.[12]There’s plenty of other great stuff in the script that ultimately wasn’t in the movie. The whole thing is well worth a read. Still, while she’s not nearly as memorable a character as in the book, this adaptation still probably does more justice to her than the 1946 one. Her introductory scene at the local schoolhouse effectively establishes her as kind, competent and someone who has had to grow up very quickly and a brief shot of her bursting into tears after Pip leaves for London is more moving than almost anything in the 1946 Great Expectations. And for once, the actor playing the character as a child and the one playing the character as an adult are equally great. The Cave sisters look so much alike in this movie, I barely noticed when the switch occurred.
Abel Magwitch
As Abel Magwitch, the escaped convict who terrorizes the young Pip in the churchyard, Finlay Currie is memorably fearsome in the 1946 movie’s early scenes. However, when Magwitch unexpectedly reenters Pip’s life in the second half and becomes a much more sympathetic figure, Currie’s performance is less effective. That’s not to say it’s bad. Just that it isn’t great. Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch in the 2012 film, on the other hand, is wonderful throughout the whole thing, helping it achieve its biggest tearjerking moments. He’s helped of course by the fact that the script devotes much more time to his backstory than that of the 1946 adaptation. (Remember what I wrote about flashbacks?) Fiennes still deserves a lot of credit though. Along with Jeremy Irvine and Bebe and Jessie Cave, he’s probably the 2012 cast’s biggest asset.
Random Thoughts on Other Characters
As Pip’s abusive older sister in the 1946 movie, Freda Jackson looks like Mrs. Tweedy from Chicken Run-which makes all kinds of sense! Sally Hawkins is less intimidating in the role in the 2012 version but she’s still good.
Miss Havisham’s gold-digging relatives aren’t much more than a cameo in either movie, but they serve more of a purpose in the 2012 one. They’re also very funny thanks to the performances of Pooky Quesnel, Kate Lock, Richard James and Roberta Burton. (Everley Gregg and Anne Holland play two of them in the 1946 movie. The other two are uncredited.) I’m not sure if it was such a good idea though to have one of them call Estella a “little bitch.”[13]That wasn’t in the script by the way.
The menacing character of Orlick is cut from both adaptations, reasonably so. While Orlick is a memorable villain in the book, he usually comes across as a bit extraneous in the adaptations that include him. With the 1946’s movie’s flair for creepiness and suspense though, I do wonder what it could have done with the final confrontation between him and Pip.
As Mr. Jaggers the lawyer, neither Francis L. Sullivan in the 1946 movie nor Robbie Coltrane in the 2012 one is quite as intimidating as the book’s character. Of course, you could argue he’s not meant to be as intimidating in the 2012 movie, which eventually humanizes him and has him admit to Pip that “there have been too many secrets.” I maintain this confession would have been more interesting though if he had been smugger and icier earlier. Come to think of it, the 1946 adaptation ends up humanizing Jaggers too in a subtler way.
The “Aged Parent” of Jaggers’s clerk, Wemmick (Ivor Barnard in 1946, Ewen Bremner in 2012), gets a cameo in both movies. (O. B. Clarence plays him in the 1946 film and Frank Dunne in the 2012 one.) The 1946 cameo is funnier but feels like it was included out of obligation. I actually prefer the 2012 one since it serves to develop Wemmick’s character. The scene’s joyfulness also makes for a nice break from the cynicism of that section of the story.
The Ending
Regrettably, there’s no way to discuss how the 1946 Great Expectations adapts the book without getting into the ending. I’ll try to keep the details about the movie-specific aspects of it vague, but I am going to have to give away the book’s conclusion. If you haven’t read it and don’t want it spoiled, skip to the end of this blog post.
The 1946 adaptation, to its credit, is so true to the book for most of its runtime that when it dramatically veers from it in the last scene, it’s downright jarring. The first time I watched the movie, I was too dumbfounded by the ending to know whether I liked it or not. After repeated viewings and years to reflect on the matter, I’ve decided I dislike the ending. It’s well written but losing Estella’s years of suffering makes her redemption feel unearned compared to the book. To be fair though, she does undergo an interesting humiliation in this version that she never does in the source material. I also dislike the way this revised ending makes Pip more of a romantic hero and Miss Havisham more of a symbol of evil whereas in the book, she’s ultimately seen as human and pitiable.[14]Frustratingly, nearly every adaptation has Pip be less forgiving to her than Dickens had him be. In the book, he tells her “I want forgiveness and direction far too much, to be bitter with … Continue reading
The 2012 movie’s ending is pretty much the same as that of the book except that it changes the location. This is somewhat unfortunate as I consider the location of the book’s last scene thematically significant but, on the plus side, it does allow the movie to show that Pip’s friend, Herbert Pocket (Olly Alexander in this one, Alec Guinness in the 1946), has remained helpful to him after his fortunes fell. The same can’t be said of the other film. Anyway, the 2012 version’s ending would be beautiful if only the adaptation hadn’t softened Estella’s character so much prior to it. The result is that it’s hard to see how she’s supposed to have changed at all. I can’t really see contrast between Holliday Grainger’s performance in this scene and every other one. That’s the only major problem with this Great Expectations as an adaptation, as opposed to any shortcomings it has as a movie in its own right[15]Though I’d argue it ends up being both., but it’s an aggravatingly big one.
Concluding Thoughts
For me, these two movies have a weird relationship where what each one does well the other does poorly. The 1946 film does a much better job with creepy characters and aspects of the book. The 2012 one does much better with the book’s healthier minded characters and heartwarming aspects. Which one you favor likely depends on what you consider the most important part. If only there were a way to combine their strengths! Actually, the one miniseries adaptation of Great Expectations that I do love does just that and I intend to write about it next week. Stay Tuned.
I really wish that another Harry Potter director, Alfonso Cuaron, could have directed this version of Great Expectations instead of the 1998 movie which reimagined the story in contemporary America and wasn’t nearly as well written. His emotional style would have been perfect for Dickens. Kenneth Branagh is another director whom I’d have preferred for this script.
And while this version of Pip is definitely one of the angriest I’ve seen, it never annoys me the way Ioan Gruffud’s even angrier one from the 1999 miniseries does.
Her hairdos are also relatively less goofy looking. There are a lot goofy looking hairdos in both these movies but if they’re period accurate, I suppose I can’t complain.
Readers may remember I wasn’t a fan of Anya Taylor-Joy’s portrayal of Emma Woodhouse but I think she’d actually make a great Estella. If she did play her, it’d be the second time to my knowledge that the same actress has portrayed both Emma and Estella.
Another character, Compeyson (played by George Hayes in 1946 and William Ellis in 2012), is arguably a better candidate for the honor of being the main villain but it’s easy to forget about him.
Pip also kisses Estella on the lips right after she’s told him they’re never getting together. This was obviously done just so they could show the leads kissing in the trailer.
Frustratingly, nearly every adaptation has Pip be less forgiving to her than Dickens had him be. In the book, he tells her “I want forgiveness and direction far too much, to be bitter with you.”
I admit it. I write about many famous stories on this blog. But one of my favorite things about it is drawing attention to works of art or entertainment about which many people haven’t heard. It gives me joy to think that readers might have been inspired to seek them out thanks to me. Or, you know, it would give me joy if my blog had actual fans but let’s pretend it does for the moment.[1]For the record, I meant that to sound humorous, not bitter. I understand that this blog is unlikely to have a big fanbase because it covers such a random assortment of stuff. A reader interested in, … Continue reading For The Adaptation Station’s three-year anniversary, I thought it would be fun to make a list of my favorite books, movies and TV shows that I’ve discussed on it about which your average joe or jolene probably hasn’t heard. First, I should lay down some guidelines.
I’m not listing every obscure thing about which I’ve blogged, just the ones I consider my favorites. There are others that I also enjoy, just not as much. I wanted to keep the list reasonably short.
I don’t love every item on the list. There are plenty of books, movies, etc. about which I’ve blogged that I prefer to many of the ones I’ve listed. This is the best of the obscure, not the best period. I do consider each one to be OK at the very least though.
I’m only listing adaptations of famous works if they’re ones about which most people haven’t heard. I love the 1999 David Copperfield miniseries and the 1996 Emma movie[2]The one directed by Douglas McGrath, not Diarmuid Lawrence. more than many of the adaptations on this list. But while the average person on the street may not have seen either of them or read their source material for that matter, they have probably heard of that source material and those adaptations are likely to appear first in a Google search, partly because of the famous actors in the lead roles. My goal for this list is to give more publicity to stuff that’s more removed from the mainstream.
On the other hand, I am listing the source materials for famous movies. People who pay attention to credits probably know that Freaky Friday and One Hundred and One Dalmatians were based on books, so, strictly speaking, they have heard about them. But I’m not sure how many have actually taken the time to read them, and I’d like to see the number increase, so they’re going on the list. So really this is a list of books about which people know without having read them and movies and shows about which they haven’t heard at all.
I’m counting filmed plays as movies/television. If I didn’t, I would have to include a category with only two entries.
I’m listing these in alphabetical order. Ranking them is just too hard for me.
If a title isn’t a link, it’s because I’ve already linked to the post about it. Some of my posts are about multiple adaptations of the same source material. Also, I’ve included both lesser-known books and (my favorite) adaptations of them. If an image intrigues you but there’s no link to it, just scroll back up and you should find what you seek before too long.
I can’t guarantee you’re going to like any or all of them. My taste can be weird sometimes. Of the people who have read or watched these things, not all of them enjoyed them as much as I did. In some cases, very few did. I mean, hey, what would be the point of having my own blog if I couldn’t express an unpopular opinion on it now and then? I do recommend everything on this list in that I think they each deserve a chance, but I don’t recommend them in that I think anyone reading this list will love every item on it. But there’s probably one that you, whoever you may be, would love though. It’s your job to figure out which one it is.
With that warning out of the way…
Books
Caging Skies by Christine Leunens[3]I know many people would find this book too unpleasant to be enjoyed and I can’t blame them. It’s not a big favorite of mine. But it has such great prose and such a striking story that I … Continue reading
Coriolanusby William Shakespeare[4]I know this is technically a script for a play, not a book but I’m recommending the play itself, not any particular production of it. Like Caging Skies, this is not a pleasant work of art with … Continue reading
The Cricket on the Hearthby Charles Dickens[5]I feel weird putting this on the list but not Bleak House by the same author. Both books contain many great things, and both are also very flawed. I decided to just include this one since while you … Continue reading
Love and Freindship (sic) by Jane Austen[6]OK, I’ve never actually blogged about any adaptations of this obscure book, just an adaptation of Lady Susan that borrows this book’s title. But it’s so hilarious that I had to … Continue reading
Mary Poppins Comes Back by P. L. Travers[7]Many people are probably inspired by the original Mary Poppins movie to check out the first book in the series, I don’t know how many of them go on to read the whole series. As you can guess … Continue reading
If you look closely, you’ll see that author P. L. Travers and illustrator Mary Shepard have cameos in this picture.
Fantasia 2000(which was actually released in 1999.)[8]You’ve probably heard of the original Fantasia even though you probably haven’t seen it but not this sequel.
Freaky Friday (1976)[9]Most people know about the 2003 Freaky Friday or perhaps the 2018 one since it’s the most recent but not the first adaptation. Many probably don’t even realize the 2003 movie is a remake.
Fun and Fancy Free (1947)[10]I feel bad for including this “anim-anthology movie” and not the more consistently great The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. But I’d feel weird including that one and not the … Continue reading
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1947)
Little Women (2018)[11]I still say Sarah Davenport is the best Jo March and Allie Jennings is the best Beth.
Peter Pan (2000)[12]Technically, people have heard of this musical but they’re more likely to watch either the first filmed version or the most recent one. That’s too bad because this “middle … Continue reading
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)[13]If all of Dreamworks’s animated movies were trapped in a burning building, I’d actually rescue this one before trying to save any of the Shrek or How to Train Your Dragon movies. … Continue reading
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1982)
The Life and Adventures of Nick Nickleby (2012)[14]Yes, I’m including each of my top four Nicholas Nickleby adaptations. What? It’s an awesome story!
Little Dorrit (2008)
Play It Again, Charlie Brown (1971)
Jim Henson’s The Storyteller(1987-1989)[15]Part of me feels bad for not also putting Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre on this list. But people are less likely to have heard of The Storyteller. And it is much more consistently great.
There’s No Time for Love, Charlie Brown (1973)
You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown (1972)[16]Yes, I’m also including every underrated Peanuts special. Just be glad I’m only doing the ones I described in some detail and not ones that got throwaway mentions.
Well, I think that’s a good list even if Nicholas Nickleby and Charlie Brown did take up large portions of it. As a reward for those who made it all the way to the end, I’d like to take this opportunity to recommend something I haven’t on this blog before. Well, technically speaking. If you’ll scroll up a little bit, you’ll see a link to an early post of mine about the old TV series The Storyteller, which adapted several European folktales in a way that felt both classic and unique. I didn’t mention that the show’s acclaimed screenwriter, Anthony Minghella, also wrote a tie-in book version of it, retelling each of the short-lived show’s nine episodes. It’s just as beautifully written as the show and since I’m more of a book guy than a television guy, I’d probably say I enjoy it even more.[17]Though it is true that the book doesn’t have the delightful comedy of the Storyteller’s dog. Give it a read if you can.
So… had you heard of anything on this list? Did anything pique your interest? It’d make me glad to know on my blog’s anniversary that it was responsible for directing anyone to a hidden gem.
For the record, I meant that to sound humorous, not bitter. I understand that this blog is unlikely to have a big fanbase because it covers such a random assortment of stuff. A reader interested in, say, my posts about adaptations of Les Misérables isn’t necessarily going to be interested in reading about Freaky Friday adaptations too. It’s a price I willingly pay to get to write about stuff that interests me rather than worrying about a target audience.
I know many people would find this book too unpleasant to be enjoyed and I can’t blame them. It’s not a big favorite of mine. But it has such great prose and such a striking story that I felt compelled to include it.
I know this is technically a script for a play, not a book but I’m recommending the play itself, not any particular production of it. Like Caging Skies, this is not a pleasant work of art with its rather unlikeable protagonist. But he’s an unlikeable protagonist to whom I personally relate, something I can’t say of every Shakespearean tragic lead. (To my way of thinking, Lear was an old idiot, Romeo and Juliet young idiots, Cleopatra a treacherous diva and Hamlet a self-righteous, self-absorbed, navel gazer.) And the play’s climax is one of the most powerful in all of Shakespeare’s oeuvre.
I feel weird putting this on the list but not Bleak House by the same author. Both books contain many great things, and both are also very flawed. I decided to just includethis one since while you likely haven’t read either, you’re more likely to have heard of Bleak House. And Cricket on the Hearth does have the virtue of brevity.
OK, I’ve never actually blogged about any adaptations of this obscure book, just an adaptation of Lady Susan that borrows this book’s title. But it’s so hilarious that I had to include it here, especially since many of the tropes it satirizes, mainly that forbidden love is inherently nobler than unforbidden love, are still familiar to us today.
Many people are probably inspired by the original Mary Poppins movie to check out the first book in the series, I don’t know how many of them go on to read the whole series. As you can guess from the title, this book was the main source for Mary Poppins Returns.
Most people know about the 2003 Freaky Friday or perhaps the 2018 one since it’s the most recent but not the first adaptation. Many probably don’t even realize the 2003 movie is a remake.
I feel bad for including this “anim-anthology movie” and not the more consistently great The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. But I’d feel weird including that one and not the 1995 animated Wind in the Willows which is a more accurate adaptation and that one sadly hasn’t endeared itself enough to me to make this list.
Technically, people have heard of this musical but they’re more likely to watch either the first filmed version or the most recent one. That’s too bad because this “middle child” is easily the best of the three and one of the most sheer fun Peter Pan adaptations I’ve seen.
If all of Dreamworks’s animated movies were trapped in a burning building, I’d actually rescue this one before trying to save any of the Shrek or How to Train Your Dragon movies. That’s not to say I dislike those. I just prefer this movie.
Part of me feels bad for not also putting Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre on this list. But people are less likely to have heard of The Storyteller. And it is much more consistently great.
Yes, I’m also including every underrated Peanuts special. Just be glad I’m only doing the ones I described in some detail and not ones that got throwaway mentions.
We transition from the battlefield to the sea. Sea people leap and dive in the water. We don’t hear them sing, something they do around this point in the book, but it’s great to see them at all. The camera pans up to the Castle Cair Paravel, which looks as beautiful as I could imagine or better than that.
Aslan leads Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, all four dressed in beautiful Narnian garb, to the fabled four thrones. The beavers stand with two silver crowns for Edmund and Lucy and two golden crowns for Peter and Susan on cushions. In another Narnia book, The Magician’s Nephew, C. S. Lewis describes dwarf-made Narnians crowns as “not ugly, heavy things like modern European crowns, but light, delicate, beautifully shaped circles that you could really wear and look nicer by wearing.” I think the movie’s designs live up to that description nicely. Tumnus, whose amusing idea of formal wear is a dress scarf and nothing else, places a crown on each Pevensie’s head as Aslan gives a speech. “To the glistening eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy the valiant, to the great western wood, King Edmund the Just, to the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle and to the clear northern sky, I give you King Peter the Magnificent. Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen in Narnia. May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.” In the book, those titles (valiant, just, etc.) are acquired by the Pevensies after years of reigning and they make more sense that way, but I understand why the movie didn’t feel like it had time to explain that and I don’t mind Aslan knowing what they would become, either through supernatural foresight or seeing their potential. This speech has some great shoutouts for fans of the book series. All the geographical information Aslan mentions comes from there and the stars raining down from the heavens is exactly what happens when the world of Narnia comes to an end in The Last Battle. Of course, a persnickety fan might point out that in The Horse and his Boy, a Narnian character says his fellow citizens have no use for sayings about wishing for their monarchs to live forever. (“I don’t want him to live forever and I know he’s not going to live forever whether I want him to or not.”)
If you look closely, you can see symbols of each king or queen on the back of their throne.
Aslan leads the guests in chanting, “Long live King Peter! Long live Queen Susan! Long live King Edmund! Long live Queen Lucy!” In a fun little gag, Mr. Beaver shouts, “long live Queen Lucy,” while his wife shouts, “long live Queen Susan!” Among the crowd, we see the fox has been saved from being a statue by Aslan.[1]C. S. Lewis never mentioned if the equivalent of the fox’s character was turned back in the book but he assured a younger reader that he was in a letter. If you have quick eyes, you can see a couple of badgers in the corner of another shot. Hopefully, one of them is the badger who was a friend of Mr. Beaver and whom the Witch turned to stone for helping Tumnus. More prominently, in the same shot as the fox, you can see the stone lion from the Witch’s courtyard, restored to flesh and blood but still with the moustache and glasses Edmund drew on her. Lewis described that act of Edmund’s as “something very silly and childish,” so he probably would disapprove of the visual joke. But I guess I’m silly and childish because it makes me laugh.
Later, we see Aslan walking along the beach, away from the castle. In the books, Aslan is described as always coming to Narnia from across the sea, so I took this as a nod to that, indicating that he’s returning to his home. On reflection though, it’s probably just because the sea is right beside Cair Paravel. Lucy runs out onto the balcony, the celebration visible behind her. She’s sad to see Aslan go without even a goodbye. “Don’t worry. We’ll see him again,” says a voice from behind her. It’s Tumnus. In the book, Mr. Beaver is the one to tell the Pevensies this and that arguably makes more sense since he and Mrs. Beaver are the main sources of exposition about Aslan and are implied to have been more devout followers of him than Tumnus. But I think the filmmakers were ultimately right to give the speech to Mr. T since his friendship with Lucy is so important, yet he has so little to do in the story. She asks him when they’ll see Aslan again. “In time,” he says ruefully. “One day he’ll be here and the next he won’t. But you mustn’t press him. After all, he’s not a tame lion.” Lucy looks thoughtful. “No,” she says, “but he is good.” Tumnus produces a handkerchief and hands it to her. “You need it more than I do,” he says. The two of them look back the seaside and see that Aslan has entirely vanished. Despite their sadness, they manage to smile acceptingly.
We cut to years later. The two kings and queens, now adults, are riding through the forest, hunting a stag. In the book, this is the legendary White Stag that can grant wishes to anyone who catches him. The movie doesn’t specify this, but it seems to be the subtext since they speak of “the stag,” not “a stag.” Edmund (Mark Wells-all the actors who play the Pevensies as adults are great by the way) slows down and asks his horse if he’s alright. “Not as young as I once was,” replies Philip. In this instance of riding a talking horse, I can’t even defend it by saying he’s training Edmund for war. What’s really annoying is that this the only instance in the scene of him speaking. Neither Philip nor any of the horses participates in their riders’ conversation or pays attention to what’s going on around them the way humans would. In the Narnia books, C. S. Lewis really worked out the implications of talking beasts and treated them as equals to the other intelligent species.
Edmund’s fellow monarchs rejoin him.
Susan (Sophie Winkleman): Come on, Ed. Edmund: Just catching my breath. Susan: Well, that’s all we’ll catch at this rate! Lucy (Rachael Henley, sister of Georgie): What did he say again, Susan? Susan: “You girls wait at the castle. I’ll get the stag myself.”
In the book, the adult kings and queens speak in a formal sounding medieval dialect. It might have been nice for the screenwriters to try to replicate this, but I don’t blame them for not doing so. Their dialogue in this scene was rather a pain to read in the book. Well, that’s to say it was a pain to read when I was a kid. As an adult who enjoys a good bit of Shakespeare now and then, I have no problem with it thought it’s still rather jarring to go from the rest of the book’s dialogue to “fair consorts, let us alight from our horses.” Anyway, the way Edmund is still a bit defensive about his sisters’ ribbing demonstrates that he’s still the same old Edmund while the concern he shows for Philip demonstrates how far he’s come. (I know I just criticized the bit with the horse, but I can have complicated opinions, can’t I?)
Everyone’s laughter fades as Peter (Noah Huntley) notices something strange and dismounts from his horse. The others follow suit. The strange thing is the lamppost, now overgrown with greenery.
Peter: What’s this? This looks familiar. Susan: As if from a dream. Lucy: Or the dream of a dream.
See how the horses are just acting like regular dumb horses?
Now we get my favorite bit of humor from the movie that’s not from the book though it is riffing on one from there. As Lucy stares at the lamppost, a memory stirs in her mind. “Spare Oom?” she says, causing the others to look at her in bewilderment. She runs into the thicket, and they run after her. (“Not again,” Susan grumbles. Another good funny moment.) As the Pevensies go deeper into the woods, they find themselves brushing against fur coats rather than pine branches. Then they tumble out the wardrobe into the old spare room, their old ages again[2]By which I mean the ages they were when they first went to Narnia, not that they reverted to being in their seventies or anything. and in their old clothes. The door to the room opens and Prof. Kirke enters. “Oh. There you are. What were you all doing in the wardrobe?” he asks with a twinkle in his eye. The Pevensies stare at each other in bittersweet wonder. “You wouldn’t believe us if we told you, sir,” says Peter. The professor raises his eyebrows and tosses Peter a cricket ball. “Try me,” he says.
As the end credits start to roll, a pop song starts. Now there are some people who hate the idea of pop music playing over the credits of a Narnia movie or any movie that takes place long before such music was invented. Me, I don’t really think you need any songs for the end credits of any given movie. It strikes me as an extra expense when you already have a musical score you could use. And I hate the idea of pop songs in the body of a Narnia movie itself, but I don’t necessarily mind them in the credits. In fact, I think having a modern song play over the credits of a historical story can emphasize that the themes in that story are still relevant today. It’s probably a stretch though to say that any of the songs that play over the credits of this movie do that with their rather vague lyrics. But I like the first one, I Can’t Take It In by Imogene Heep. Harry Gregson-Williams’s score for the last scene does a really nice job of transitioning into it so the sudden change in musical style doesn’t jar too much and the title expresses the marvelousness of finding Narnia in a wardrobe and all that it entails.[3]Another of the credits songs, Wunderkind by Alanis Morissette is something of a guilty pleasure of mine.
Before too long, the credits pause, and we see Lucy sneaking into the wardrobe room in the middle of the night. On my first viewing, I thought this was an outtake since there was an earlier scene like this in the movie. But, no, this time Lucy has no candle and when she opens the wardrobe door, a voice behind her says, “I don’t think you’ll get back in that way.” She turns to see Prof. Kirke, sitting on the windowsill in his bathrobe and pajamas. “You see, I’ve already tried,” he says ruefully. Lucy stares wistfully into the now ordinary wardrobe. “Will we ever go back?” she asks. “I expect so,” says the professor, closing the wardrobe door, “but it’ll probably happen when you’re not looking for it. All the same, best to keep your eyes open.” In the book, the part of his speech about keeping one’s eyes open was about finding others who have visited worlds like Narnia. I think it made more sense in that context, as the professor’s advice is rather contradictory this way. (“It’ll probably happen when you’re not looking for it” but “keep your eyes open?”) Lucy takes his hand and smiles at him as they leave the room. In their absence, the wardrobe door opens a crack. Lights pour out from it along with the sound of Aslan’s triumphant roar. Both the pre-credits ending and this post-credits one beautifully capture the spirit of the book’s ending. I love that our final image is of a door closing, symbolizing how the door to Narnia is closing for us as well as the characters.
The movie is dedicated to the director’s children, Isabelle and Sylvie by the way. Aww!
Concluding Thoughts
On the whole, I think this is a great movie with a beautiful sense of childlike awe and wonder, what the source material describes as “that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still.” I think it’s got a great story with great themes, great casting, great visuals, great music. (Well, maybe not all of the music is great but enough of it is.) I don’t think however that it has a great script. That’s not to say the script is terrible or anything. But even at its best, during the first act of the story or so, I would call it solid writing rather than inspired. The uninspired elements aren’t bad enough to keep the movie from being good, but they dilute the overall quality enough to hold it back from being as great as it could easily have been. As frustrating as that is though, I honestly find movies where everything is great except for the script, as long as that script is OK rather than terrible, less frustrating than movies where the script is the only thing about them that’s great.
It should be noted that while for many readers, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is their favorite Narnia book or even the only Narnia book they consider great, for me, it’s one of my least favorites in the series if not my least favorite period. Keep in mind though that being my least favorite Narnia books means I’d only grade it an A- rather than an A or A+. So I am going to be picky about any adaptation but not as picky as some fans. I’d argue that the many of the things this one adds or expands may be untrue to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe specifically but aren’t untrue to The Chronicles of Narnia in general. An emphasis on character development for the young leads and their relationships with each other, including conflict between them, is characteristic of The Horse and his Boy, The Silver Chair and The Magician’s Nephew. The Horse and his Boy and The Last Battle both feature epic battles. (It’s right in the title of the latter!) And even the short battle at the climax of the next Narnia book, Prince Caspian, is described in more detail than the one at the climax of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.[4]There’s also a case to be made that girl characters were more likely to be involved in action scenes in later Narnia stories. If you’re mainly a fan of the specific book which this movie adapts, you may not love it. But if you’re a fan of Narnia in general, you very well may. If I’m being completely honest, I kind of enjoyed seeing the familiar story be told in a different style. I even kind of enjoyed things like focusing more on the four children than on Aslan. It made me think about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe from a different angle. I don’t believe it improved on the book as a whole and I’ll always wish it had been truer to some aspects of it. But I believe I’ll also always enjoy the movie for what is.
Phew! It’s been taxing doing one blog post per week for so long, especially with each one being so detailed. I still intend on giving the two other Narnia movies, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, this treatment but I intend to take a nice long break first.
C. S. Lewis never mentioned if the equivalent of the fox’s character was turned back in the book but he assured a younger reader that he was in a letter.
We transition from the map of the battlefield to a gryphon (voiced by Cameron Rhodes) flying over the actual place. I apologize for starting off this post with some criticism, but it annoys me that there are gryphons in this movie when there are none in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia. “But, Stationmaster,” you say, “why shouldn’t gryphons be included in the fantasy kitchen sink that is Narnia? Aren’t you being ridiculous?” Well…maybe I am. I guess what bothers me is that while the books include creatures from different mythologies, the author made them his own. A Narnian centaur is different from your common or garden variety centaur. But he never made gryphons his own so I have no idea what a specifically Narnian gryphon would be like. As long as I’m criticizing, it’s unfortunate that this battlefield doesn’t take place near a ford as the book specifies. I understand that might have been difficult for staging and if it were just part of this story, I wouldn’t care. But the ford returns to play a greater part in the sequel, Prince Caspian, and because it hadn’t been established in this movie, it lacks the thematic significance it had in the source material.
Anyway, we see that Peter and Oreius are going to lead the cavalry and foot soldiers while Edmund and Mr. Beaver command the archers from higher ground.[1]The movie has Mr. Beaver wear armor in this scene by the way. In another Narnia book, a badger character refuses to wear any on the grounds that “he was a beast, he was, and if his claws and … Continue reading The gryphon lands beside Peter. “They come, Your Highness,” he reports, “in numbers and weapons far greater than our own.” Oreius counters by saying, “numbers do not win a battle,” which is kind of a corny line, but Peter has a good response to it. “No, but I bet they help.”
As battle horns sound from across the field, we see that there are two leopards in Peter’s army. This pleases me since there were also two leopards in the book.[2]You could argue Oreius replaced them in the movie. Actually, I think these might be cheetahs but I’m just going to imagine that they’re leopards because I want them to be a nod to the book.
The White Witch’s army appears on the horizon. I’m pleased to note a couple of giants on her side. They don’t do much, giants being an expensive special effect, but I’m glad they’re included because giants, both good and bad, play a big part in the Narnia books. OK, maybe not that big a part but they’re definitely a memorable one. (I just wanted to make a pun on “big.”)
We also see the Witch is in a chariot drawn by polar bears.[3]When I first saw an out-of-context promotional image for that polar bear-drawn chariot, I thought it was replacing her reindeer-drawn sleigh from the book. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I’m informed that she’s wearing a headdress made of Aslan’s mane, which is a really cool idea, but her wig is so bad that to me, it honestly looks like the headdress is just supposed to be part of it. After glancing back in Edmund’s direction[4]Ed nods but I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a signal since I don’t think Peter could see it from his location., Peter imperceptibly gulps[5]Well, obviously, it’s perceptible since I perceived it. But it’s not obvious and “subtly gulps” sounds weird. and draws his sword. His soldiers follow suit. “I have no interest in prisoners,” the Witch tells her general, “Kill them all.” Her army starts to charge. Long before they reach their opponents, Peter signals his gryphons to fly overhead and drop boulders on them. Some of the Witch’s soldiers are crushed but her dwarf archers shoot some of the gryphons too. In the extended cut of the movie, the Witch’s flying creatures also battle the gryphons in the air. That is the only thing besides the added springtime footage that I think improves on the theatrical version. I’m not super interested in battle scenes but if you’re going to have one with flying creatures on both sides, why wouldn’t they fight in the air? In both versions, after the gryphons retreat, the evil army is still surging forward in great numbers.
“Are you with me?” Peter asks Oreius. “To the death,” he replies. Sort of a weird exchange to have right then. It’s not like this would be a good time for Oreius to back out. But the actors manage to sell it as a legitimately emotional moment. Peter raises his sword again. “For Narnia,” he cries, “and for Aslan!” Not the most interesting battle cry but it feels very fitting considering what Aslan just did for everybody. Peter’s army charges to meet the enemy. I mentioned before that I’m not a fan of slow motion, but I think it works here just before the armies clash.
Once they start hacking and slashing, we go back to real time and then we somewhat abruptly cut back to the Stone table. This is technically the only example of a flashback in any of the Narnia movies since it takes place just before the sun rises and the beginning of the battle took place toward the end of the morning at the latest and quite possible midday. Apparently, at one point, the scenes were going to be in chronological order, but the director decided, probably rightly, that viewers would empathize less with Peter’s army if they knew what they do not. Susan and Lucy, who have been sleeping beside Aslan’s body, awaken. “We should go,” says Susan. “I’m so cold,” says Lucy. Their voices sound like they’ve both spent all their emotions. Susan gently leads Lucy away, but they pause to look over their shoulders at Aslan one last time. It’s all very sad.
As they turn back and continue walking, the ground suddenly trembles beneath their feet! They turn around to find that the Stone Table has split in two and the body on top of it has disappeared. “What have they done?” Susan whispers. As the sun rises over the hill, we hear a familiar music cue. It’s the same music that played when we saw Aslan for the first time. That’s no accident as he steps over the hill in time with the sun, mane intact and completely restored to life. I like the way the atmosphere of the scene changes from gray and chilly to warm and bright with his appearance.
Joyfully, the girls run around the Stone Table-the staging is somewhat awkward-and hug Aslan. “But we saw the knife…the Witch…” Susan protests. “If the Witch knew the true meaning of sacrifice,” explains Aslan, “she might have interpreted the Deep Magic differently, that when a willing victim who has committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Stone Table would crack and even death itself would turn backwards.” As he says this, the camera pans across the symbols carved on the rim of the Stone Table. In the book, these represent the Deep Magic. This pan is the only indication of that in the movie. Aslan’s explanation, by the way, is a bit different from the one in the book.
“…though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know: Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.”
Personally, that idea has more poetic appeal to me than the White Witch misinterpreting the Deep Magic. Director Andrew Adamson feared that the book’s explanation made it sound as if Aslan had conned the Witch, using knowledge she couldn’t possibly have had, and wanted to make it clear that her weakness was due to her moral inferiority, not her lack of power or mechanical knowledge. I don’t see why the adaptation couldn’t have had it both ways. Just have Aslan say, “If the Witch knew the true meaning of sacrifice, she would also have known of a magic even deeper than the Deep Magic,” or something like that but hopefully more eloquent. Oh well.
“We sent the news that you were dead,” says Susan, “Peter and Edmund will have gone to war.” Lucy whips out her dagger. “We have to help them,” she says. “We will, dear one,” says Aslan, laying a huge paw on her little hand, “but not alone. Climb on my back. We have far to go and little time to get there and you may want to cover your ears.” Weirdly, the roar he gives is actually one of the quieter ones in the movie.
I’ve got to say after Aslan’s death scene and the scene of the girls mourning him, which I loved, this resurrection scene feels disappointingly undercooked and anticlimactic. If I were a newcomer to the story, I wonder if I’d be annoyed that the movie spent so much time on this character’s sacrifice only to undo it in one little scene. This part of the book was much more emotional. What went wrong? I really don’t want it to blame it on Anna Popplewell and Georgie Henley whose performances throughout the movie are excellent. Maybe the fault lies in the pacing. In the book, Lucy and Susan are initially as freaked out by Aslan’s reappearance as they are ecstatic and need to be reassured that’s he not a ghost or a dream before they rush to embrace him. Keeping that might have made the movie’s version a bigger and more emotional moment. The way the dialogue in the film quickly turns to Peter and Edmund may also be a problem. In the book, after telling them about the Deeper Magic, Aslan romps around with the girls and even tosses them in the air with his paws before they ride on his back. (“Whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind.”) Including that might have helped but I can’t blame the filmmakers for feeling it would be selfish of Aslan to take time to do that when he could be helping the Narnians. And that’s not even getting into the technical difficulties of such a scene!
The long and short of the matter and the impression I can’t escape is that the filmmakers just weren’t very interested in this scene, seeing it as a hurdle through which they had to jump to get back to the battle. I wonder if in their heart of hearts, the screenwriters would have preferred for Aslan to remain dead and for Peter or Edmund to be the one to defeat the White Witch. (They would have Edmund metaphorically, if not literally, defeat her in each of the two sequels so I feel like that theory holds some water.)
Meanwhile-actually, sometime later, the battle is raging. Peter and the Witch make eye contact across the field. There’s a great subtle joke here as Edmund, from his vantage point, yells, “Fire!” and one of his archers shoot a flaming arrow which transforms into a phoenix. There actually are phoenixes in the Narnia books so props to the movie for that.[6]Actually, there’s only one phoenix in The Last Battle and it’s not in the land of Narnia itself, technically speaking, but details, details! This phoenix creates a wall of flame between Peter’s troops and the Witch’s, but she magically extinguishes it with her wand. Peter orders his army to draw the enemy back into the rocks for an ambush from the archers.
Since phoenixes are associated with death and rebirth, it’s thematically fitting to have one at this point.
Now we’re with Lucy and Susan riding across the countryside toward the Witch’s melting castle on Aslan’s back. This ride is one of the big emotional highpoints of the book so it’s sad to report that we get less than a minute of it here.
Back at the battle, Peter is thrown off his unicorn when Ginarrbrik shoots it. Seeing his king down and the White Witch headed his way, Oreius charges at her. He has to fight his way through her general, who dies with two weapons sticking out his back, to get to her but it’s to no avail. She ducks as he tries to slice off her head and, to Peter’s sorrow, turns him to stone with her wand. I’m sorry if I’m not describing this scene very well. It’s hard for me to enjoy it for two reasons. The first is that I find chase scenes more exciting than battle scenes. The second is that I resent this battle for taking time away from parts of the book’s climax that I love and wished to see fully depicted on the big screen. To be fair though, this isn’t a terrible scene or anything and I understand that battles are an expense in film with all the extras they require, so if filmmakers are going to include one, they’re also going to want to have their money’s worth. Taking that into consideration, I’ll actually write some things (sort of) in defense of this scene.
A common criticism of Walden Media’s Narnia movies is that they rip off of the Lord of the Rings movies which loomed large in the public consciousness at the time. People tend to either criticize this version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe either for trying to be too much like The Lord of the Rings or not enough like it and often both. I assume the criticism mostly comes from this scene since I can’t think of much else that the two stories have in common except for really generic elements like both being about heroes who go on a long journey by foot. I can’t say the accusations of this movie copying what was popular at the time are unfair, but I also can’t get too angry about it because…well, I can’t remember the specifics of any battle scenes from The Lord of the Rings well enough to notice which parts this movie is imitating. The only aspects that I know for certain were copied from those films were being filmed in New Zealand the use of WETA Digital. I can’t complain about either of those things since I think the movie’s locations are great[7]Though I think I prefer the ones from the Czech Republic. and so are the weapons, armor, etc. created by WETA. Should I wish for the movie to be less good? Also, while the Narnia books don’t have that much in common with the literary Lord of the Rings beyond some surface level aspects, there’s a significant overlap between the fanbases, so for a movie based on one to be influenced by movies based on the other isn’t the craziest idea. I mean, it makes more sense than for an adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to try to be like Game of Thrones.
And I do like the way the movie cuts from Oerius being turned to stone to a stone centaur in the Witch’s courtyard. The theme for Tumnus’s lullaby is heard on the soundtrack as Lucy finds him reduced to a statue. Water drips from the walls to his body and off again like tears. (Actually, it looks more like sweat but I’m sure the movie meant us to think of tears.) As Lucy sobs and Susan comforts her, Aslan breathes on Tumnus, actually making his stone curls rustle. Slowly, color starts to spread over the faun as he comes back to life. Lucy happily introduces him to Susan. They look around to see all the statues in the courtyard reverting to normal at once. “Come, we must search the castle,” says Aslan, “Peter will need everyone we can find.”
If I was irritated by the ride on Aslan’s back getting short shrift, I’m furious at how quickly this passes. The scene of Aslan breaking the spell on the statues has some of my favorite descriptive writing in the book and strikes me as perfectly cinematic in its use of color.
I expect you’ve seen someone put a lighted match to a bit of newspaper which is propped up in a grate against an unlit fire. And for a second nothing seems to have happened; and then you notice a tiny streak of flame creeping along the edge of the newspaper. It was like that now. For a second after Aslan had breathed upon him the stone lion looked just the same. Then a tiny streak of gold began to run along his white marble back then it spread — then the colour seemed to lick all over him as the flame licks all over a bit of paper — then, while his hindquarters were still obviously stone, the lion shook his mane and all the heavy, stone folds rippled into living hair. Then he opened a great red mouth, warm and living, and gave a prodigious yawn... Everywhere the statues were coming to life. The courtyard looked no longer like a museum; it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing round him till he was almost hidden in the crowd. Instead of all that deadly white the courtyard was now a blaze of colours; glossy chestnut sides of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, reddy-brown of foxes, dogs and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs; and the birch-girls in silver, and the beech-girls in fresh, transparent green, and the larch-girls in green so bright that it was almost yellow. And instead of the deadly silence the whole place rang with the sound of happy roarings, brayings, yelpings, barkings, squealings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs and laughter.
To be fair, I feel like the movie already ruined the color contrast by having the walls of the Witch’s house be made of ice instead of gray stone. Oh well. If the movie only had to focus on one statue being turned back into flesh and blood, it made sense for that statue to be Tumnus, a character about whom we care.[8]In the earlier draft of the script, this scene and the ride on Aslan’s back were longer and closer to the book. I wish they’d stayed that way but on the other hand, Lucy’s first … Continue reading I do like the way the movie cuts from this scene to the Witch having turned a satyr to stone, making it clear that said satyr and her other victims will be saved when Aslan arrives without the movie having to show that happening. It also shows her turning a gryphon into stone in midair. Conveniently for her, when it falls to the ground and smashes, it crushes some of Aslan’s soldiers, not any of hers. The statue smashing means that there’s at least one victim Aslan won’t be healing. In the book, between his breath and Lucy’s cordial, it’s implied that the good army suffered no casualties at all, making the movie slightly darker in one way.[9]Of course, given how long the battle had been going before Lucy arrived, some soldiers probably died before she could heal them.
Seeing which way the wind is blowing, Peter calls to Edmund, telling him to escape, find the girls and bring them home. Mr. Beaver starts to lead Edmund away, but Ed stops, seeing the White Witch heading towards Peter with her wand while he’s busy fighting a minotaur. “Peter said to get out of here,” Mr. Beaver reminds him. “Peter’s not king yet!” says Edmund, running toward the Witch. According to the book, he had to fight his way through three ogres to get to her, making this bit a rare case of the literary version being more action packed than this movie’s. (That’s not a complaint. I think the three ogres would have unnecessarily slowed down the pace.)[10]The extended edition is a bit closer to the book by having Edmund fight his way past Ginarrbrik. It doesn’t work very well in my opinion. Edmund leaps in front of the Witch. When she tries to stab him with her wand, he steps aside and shatters it with his sword.
Now the ordinarily aloof Witch is as visibly furious as we ever see her. She stabs Edmund with her sword, and he falls to the ground. She tosses the useless end of her wand away. Peter has witnessed everything and he’s not happy. After finishing off the minotaur, he runs at the Witch. The two of them fight and the Witch is clearly the one in control. She also clearly enjoys toying with Peter though and draws out the fight. The sound of a lion roaring interrupts the battle. Peter and the Witch look up to see Aslan standing in the rocky area above them, alive and well. “Impossible,” breathes the Witch. That line and even the shot of her saying it recalls Susan’s reaction to seeing Narnia for the first time, a nice bit of parallelism.
Formerly stone reinforcements pour into the valley. Rumblebuffin, the giant from the book, gets a cameo.
Amusingly, we even see the timid Mr. Tumnus in berserker mode, take down some of the enemy. (That’s not a criticism; it’s supposed to be amusing.) The Witch resumes fighting Peter but now she clearly wants to kill him as fast as possible before Aslan gets to her. To his credit, Peter makes her have to work for it a bit. Eventually however, she pins his arm to the ground and knocks aside his shield. But before she can finish the deed, Aslan comes bounding across the field and pounces on her. Aslan takes a moment to stare her in the face, almost pityingly, before it’s implied that he bites off her head. (Hey, he’s not like a tame lion.) Then he turns to Peter, who has gotten up from the ground, and gravely says, “It is finished.”[11]Those are actually the last words of Christ before His death but, according to the director, this was unintentional. The phrase is generic enough that I believe him, and I don’t think it makes … Continue reading This is weird because there’s nowhere else in the film that we’re supposed to feel sorry for the Witch. As Mrs. Beaver says in the book, “she’s bad all through.”
She almost looks happy to die in this shot. Again, weird.
Susan and Lucy come running to Peter. C. S. Lewis described him as looking older after the battle and I think William Moseley captures that well.
“Where’s Edmund?” asks Susan. He’s lying on the ground, near death. Ginarrbrik limps towards him with his battleax raised but Susan kills him with an arrow. (Bleeding to death from an arrow wound is actually a rather slow and agonizing way to die, so don’t picture what is happening to Ginarrbrik offscreen throughout the following scene. Not if you’re tenderhearted anyway.) Edmund’s siblings gather around him, and Lucy takes out her cordial. She pours a drop of it in his mouth. After a long, scary moment, Edmund’s breathing returns to normal and he comes back to life. The others embrace him. “When are you going to learn to do as you’re told?” Peter asks affectionately. That’s…actually a good point. Since one of Edmund’s main vices has been pride and refusing to submit to authority outside himself, having his big redemptive act be one of disobedience doesn’t make much thematic sense. Modern writers seem to feel that heroism has to involve defying authority in some way. This makes it somewhat hard for them to write good Narnia adaptations.[12]While the good guys in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are fighting against their acting monarch, the book stresses that Aslan and the Pevensies are the land’s rightful rulers, and her … Continue reading
Edmund looks over the others’ shoulders to see Aslan. I feel like he should be more amazed to see him alive, especially since he should also have been wracked with guilt over his death. Anyway, Aslan breathes on a stone satyr and nods at Lucy. She runs over to a wounded body with her cordial. Again, the movie does a great job letting us know what they’re going to do without a long montage. And I believe after one more post, I’ll have covered this whole movie!
The movie has Mr. Beaver wear armor in this scene by the way. In another Narnia book, a badger character refuses to wear any on the grounds that “he was a beast, he was, and if his claws and teeth could not keep his skin whole, it wasn’t worth keeping.” But, hey, beavers are less fearsome beasts that badgers.
When I first saw an out-of-context promotional image for that polar bear-drawn chariot, I thought it was replacing her reindeer-drawn sleigh from the book. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
In the earlier draft of the script, this scene and the ride on Aslan’s back were longer and closer to the book. I wish they’d stayed that way but on the other hand, Lucy’s first visit to Narnia, the one when she met Tumnus, was far too rushed in that draft and I’m glad it was revised.
Those are actually the last words of Christ before His death but, according to the director, this was unintentional. The phrase is generic enough that I believe him, and I don’t think it makes the movie particularly Christian, especially as Aslan says it long after his death, but it’s an amusing coincidence, isn’t it?
While the good guys in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are fighting against their acting monarch, the book stresses that Aslan and the Pevensies are the land’s rightful rulers, and her authority is bogus.
Unable to sleep, Lucy tosses and turns in bed at night. A silhouette passes the transparent wall of her tent. It’s Aslan. Lucy wakes up Susan and, taking their Christmas presents with them, the two follow Aslan as he slips out of camp. In the book, Susan didn’t need to be awakened as she was also awake, worrying about Aslan’s strange moodiness. I kind of wish that could have been the case in the movie too. Just because Lucy is the less flawed of the two it doesn’t mean Susan can’t ever be sensitive.
I wrote in a previous post about the movie seeming to avert the idea of Aslan being omniscient but, in this scene, he arguably comes across as more omniscient than in the book. There he only noticed the girls following him when he turned around while they were in an exposed place with nowhere to hide. Here, without turning around, he says to them while they’re hiding behind a tree, “Shouldn’t you both be in bed?” That could just be implying that they’re really bad at stealth though. After an embarrassed moment, they approach him. “We couldn’t sleep,” explains Lucy. “Please, Aslan, couldn’t we come with you?” Susan asks humbly. “I would be glad of the company for a while,” says Aslan, “thank you.” They put their hands in his mane and continue through the woods. This scene is more dramatic in the book with Aslan moaning and stumbling and the girls tearfully begging him to tell them what’s wrong. Honestly, I’m OK with the way they do it here though. Partly because I don’t think the movie has succeeded quite enough in making Aslan scary for his vulnerability to have the same effect as in the source material. While Lucy is a bit cautious about touching him, it doesn’t come across as the terrifying liberty that the book implies. And partly because, given the direction this scene is headed, a lot of moaning and weeping might have felt like overkill.[1]No pun intended. That’ll make sense in a little bit.
Aslan: It is time. From here, I must go on alone. Susan: But, Aslan- Aslan: You have to trust me for this must be done. Thank you, Susan. Thank you, Lucy. And farewell.
Aslan walks off. The girls watch him go. But instead of returning to the camp, they sneak around and, crouching in the undergrowth, see that Aslan is going to the Stone Table, around which a crowd with torches waits.
This doesn’t look good. (The situation, I mean. The visuals for this scene are superb.)
Head bowed, Aslan makes his way through the Witch’s followers.[2]I’m not going to list all the species. If you’re interested, read the book or maybe look up some old promotional material for the movie. C. S. Lewis quipped that if he described some of these monstrous creatures, “the grownups would probably not let (kids) read this book.” The movie does a great job of making these monsters look hideously grotesque while still keeping within a PG rating. The White Witch’s soldiers also have a variety and a whimsy to their designs, making them visually fun where, say, the orcs from the Lord of the Rings movies were simply repellent.[3]I don’t necessarily mean that as a knock on those movies. After all, they were trying to tell a very different story from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with a different atmosphere and to … Continue reading The movie also does a pretty good job in this scene of showing that they’re afraid of Aslan.
The White Witch stands atop the Stone Table, waiting for Aslan, dressed in black and carrying a ceremonial knife. “Behold the Great Lion,” she says. Her followers laugh on cue. From their hiding place, Susan and Lucy look confused. The minotaur general cautiously prods Aslan with his battleax. Aslan doesn’t resist but a little snarl escapes him. The general looks back at the Witch, not quite confident in proceeding. But then, to the girls’ shock, he violent knocks Aslan to the ground. The Witch’s other followers draw near and jeer at him. “Here, kitty, kitty,” taunts Ginarrbrik, “do you want some milk?” I’m surprised the movie doesn’t have Lucy try to rush to Aslan’s assistance here and Susan hold her back. It would have made a lot of sense. “Why doesn’t he fight back?” Lucy asks. Susan has no answer. “Bind him,” commands the Witch. Her soldiers, now that they’re not as scared, rush forward and tie cords around Aslan’s paws, body and mouth. (According to the book, they tie them so tightly that they cut into his flesh!) “Wait,” the Witch suddenly says, “let him first be shaved.” The creatures cheer at this. Ginarrbrik comes forward, saws off a tuft of Aslan’s mane and holds it up like a trophy to much cheering. Others eagerly gather around and hack off the mane, tossing hair into the air like confetti. “Bring him to me,” says the Witch. The creatures roughly drag Aslan up onto the table-the way his jaw bangs against the stones can make you wince-and tie him there. Their bloodlust is at a fever pitch when the Witch holds up her hand and the scene goes silent.
Then four hags carrying torches start-wait, I’ve got to talk about the design for these characters. I’ve always assumed that by “Hags” the Narnia books meant stereotypically old and ugly Halloween-type witches as opposed to the beautiful enchantress archetype represented by the White Witch. But for whatever reason, the movie gives them these weird beaks. My guess is that they felt unattractive older women would look mundane in the company of all these horrible monsters. It’s a bit of an odd decision but it doesn’t distract me in context.
The hags start pounding out a rhythm with their torches. Other creatures take it up. Some of them hiss or bellow. The wolves howl. It’s awesomely eerie. I love the music here. It would be easy to simply make the scene scary, but I applaud the soundtrack for focusing on the sadness of it just as this scene in the book does. For me, the whole sequence is one of the most epic in the movie. It’s one of the parts that makes me believe I’m watchingThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, not just a version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The White Witch kneels down and addresses her victim. “Now, Aslan,” she says, “I’m a little disappointed in you.” In the book, she begins this speech with the words, “And now who has won?” That strikes me as more dramatic but, oh well, I guess this isn’t bad. “Did you honestly think by all this that you could save the human traitor?” she asks. Lucy and Susan look at each other, aghast, as they realize the reason for Aslan’s lack of resistance. Don’t tell me they shouldn’t be able to hear from so far away and with the crowd making so much noise! It’s a great dramatic moment.
“You are giving me your life,” continues the Witch, “and saving…no one. So much for love.” That last line is really corny on paper, but Tilda Swinton’s delivery actually makes it chilling. The Witch rises and addresses her followers. “Tonight,” she proclaims, “the Deep Magic will be appeased. But tomorrow we will take Narnia forever!” In the book, that part of her speech came before her telling Aslan that his sacrifice will be in vain, and I think it flowed better that way, the idea being that once Aslan is dead, he won’t be able to stop her from killing Edmund and everybody else who is a threat to her. I wouldn’t say the movie’s rearranging ruins the speech though. You can still follow her logic; it just takes a little more thought. Anyway, her followers cheer and their rhythmic pounding speeds up, becoming more and more frenzied. The Witch raises her knife above Aslan. “In that knowledge,” she says, “despair…” Lucy seems to make eye contact with Aslan[4]Don’t tell me there’s no way she could do so! This is a great scene., silently begging him to do something.
“…And die!” concludes the Witch, bringing down her knife. The movie arguably makes the scene a tad darker than the book, according to which “The children did not see the actual moment of the killing. They couldn’t bear to look and had covered their eyes.” Here the camera cuts between Lucy’s wide-open eyes and Aslan’s face as the life goes out of him. The girls hug each other and weep. “The great cat is dead!” shrieks the Witch. Her army cheers. “General, prepare your troops for battle,” she says, “however short it may be.”
We cut to the Stone Table after the Witch and her followers have left. In the dim light of very early morning, Susan and Lucy approach Aslan’s lifeless body. In a poignant detail original to this version, Lucy has a moment of hope and takes out her bottle of healing cordial. “It’s too late,” says Susan gently. “He’s gone.” She manages to smile through her tears as she tells Lucy, “He must have known what he was doing.” Some fans of the book might reasonably object that for Susan to be calm and collected enough (initially anyway) to tell Lucy this lessens the scene’s power. In the book, basically all either girl could do at this point was cry, hold hands and be silent. Lewis writes of them being up all night and crying until they have no tears left in them. I can understand someone not liking this little moment in the movie. But I’ve got to say I love it. Up until this point, Susan has been the most skeptical character in the movie, expressing incredulity at the ideas of a magical world inside a wardrobe, robins and beavers talking, ordinary children becoming heroes and Father Christmas.[5]Remember that this adaptation’s version of Father Christmas specifically told her to trust in her bow. That wording might have significance. For her to be the one to maintain that Aslan knew what he was doing when it appears to common sense that he made a terrible mistake and played right into the Witch’s hands, rather than the more intuitive Lucy, is a powerful character moment. We’ve also seen her try to be a mother to Lucy without much success throughout the story and it’s nice to see her be as comforting a presence as possible in this devastating situation.[6]The book also arguably had Susan show some impressive growth a little before this scene. Previously, she’d been the most fearful of the Pevensies, but she asked to accompany Aslan wherever he … Continue reading In any case, she and Lucy do break down sobbing and bury their faces in Aslan’s body afterwards though this doesn’t go on for as long as the book implies. The music also isn’t as emotionally intense as I’d have imagined, but it’s still beautiful in its subtler way.
A squeaking noise causes the girls to look up from their crying. They see mice are crawling all over Aslan’s body. Disgusted, Susan tries to shoo them away, but Lucy stops her, realizing that the mice are actually chewing away the cords. The girls help remove the last of them. Lucy strokes Aslan’s unmuzzled face before burying her own in it.
Susan: We have to tell the others. Lucy: We can’t just leave him! Susan: Lucy, there’s no time! They need to know.
Lucy can’t argue with this, but she still doesn’t want to move. Then she has an idea. “The trees,” she says. We cut to a strange wind blowing through the forest, scattering leaves and cherry blossom petals. It enters Peter and Edmund’s tent, waking them. The petals coalesce into the form of a dryad (Katrina Browne.)[7]Browne is actually credited as a Green Dryad, not a cherry blossom one but since this is the only dryad with a speaking role in the movie, I assume it’s she. “Be still, my princes,” she says, “I bring grave news from your sisters.” Lucy and Susan send no such message in the book, being probably too distraught to think of doing so. I approve of this alteration. Since a lack of dryads in Narnia is important in the next entry in the series, Prince Caspian, it makes sense to emphasize their presence in this one.
I’ve never noticed before how creepy those eyes are though.
As the rest of the camp awakens, Peter sadly comes out of Aslan’s tent. “She’s right,” he says, “He’s gone.” He stares down at a battlefield map. Edmund is weirdly unphased by this, considering that he’s the one responsible for Aslan’s sacrifice. In the book, Susan even tells Lucy not to tell him about it lest the guilt be too devastating. Later books imply he was eventually informed as others mention Aslan’s death in front of him and he isn’t confused, so I guess I don’t necessarily mind the movie explicitly having Edmund learn of it but if you’re going to do that, have him react for crying out loud!
Still, I do appreciate how this scene demonstrates Edmund’s character development.
Edmund: Then you’ll have to lead us. (Beat) Peter, there’s an army out there and it’s ready to follow you. Peter: I can’t! Edmund: Aslan believed you could. So do I.
After being so resentful of Peter asserting any authority over him[8]Or Susan doing so for that matter., it’s really impressive to hear Edmund be the one to encourage him to take charge. I just wish Skandar Keynes, whose performance is generally stellar throughout the film, could have also conveyed that Edmund was experiencing horrific feelings of guilt during this moment. “The Witch’s army is nearing, Sire,” Oreius tells Peter. “What are your orders?”
I don’t necessarily mean that as a knock on those movies. After all, they were trying to tell a very different story from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with a different atmosphere and to a different audience. But if you ask at which evil army, I enjoy looking more, it’s the Narnian one.
The book also arguably had Susan show some impressive growth a little before this scene. Previously, she’d been the most fearful of the Pevensies, but she asked to accompany Aslan wherever he was going, no matter how bad it might be.
Browne is actually credited as a Green Dryad, not a cherry blossom one but since this is the only dryad with a speaking role in the movie, I assume it’s she.
Peter emerges from his tent in the morning to see Oreius passing by. Oreius motions with his head to where Aslan and Edmund stand on a rock in conversation. The book says that “There is no need to tell you (and no one ever heard) what Aslan was saying, but it was a conversation which Edmund never forgot.” You might expect this movie with its emphasis on character journeys to want to dramatize such an important moment in Edmund’s development. But, no, they stay true to the source material, leaving it ambiguous what is being said and whether Aslan was more stern or more compassionate. And while it may not make sense in theory to refrain from dramatizing it further, I think it works beautifully in practice.
I love the lighting/colors in this shot.
Susan and Lucy emerge from their own tent. Lucy sees Edmund, calls his name and starts to run towards him but Peter holds her back out of respect for the privacy of this moment. Edmund hears Lucy’s voice however and Aslan gives him a stern nod. The two of them slowly walk toward the other Pevensie children. I appreciate how the movie slows down and really gives this scene some gravitas. You really feel Edmund’s shame and awkwardness as well as the mixed emotions of his brother and sisters. The quiet music is also beautiful.
“What’s done is done,” says Aslan, “There is no need to speak to Edmund about what is past.” He leaves them alone. Edmund has a hard time at first meeting anyone’s eyes. With an effort, he blurts out a “hello.” Lucy runs over and gives him a hug which he returns. Susan puts a hand on his shoulder and gives him a gentler hug once Lucy’s is done. Peter’s expression is still somewhat lacking in friendliness. It’s unclear whether he wants to hug Edmund too or strangle him.
Susan asks Ed if he’s alright and he says that he’s a little tired, doubtless something of an understatement. “Get some sleep,” says Peter, a little curtly. Edmund starts to walk away, looking as if he wished for a warmer reception from his brother. On impulse, Peter calls after him, “And Edmund-” For a moment, it seems that Peter is going to pour out his heart, but he reconsiders and simply says, “try not to wander off.” That line could easily have come across as a rebuke. Indeed, in the earlier version of the script, that’s exactly what it was. But here it plays as friendly banter. The fact that Peter comes feels comfortable enough to joke about Edmund’s betrayal with him really shows that all his forgiven between the two.
After Edmund’s gone, Peter’s smile fades though. That may be less because of his feelings about Edmund himself however than it is about his worries over something else.
At a first glance, this movie seems much faster paced than the book that inspired it. That’s because the book is largely devoted to the scenes of characters walking and eating.[1]I don’t mean that as a criticism! It’s how C. S. Lewis himself described the books he wrote, walking and eating being some of his favorite pastimes. But this impression is something of an illusion. It’s right at this point in the book, when “everyone wanted very hard to say something which would make it quite clear that they were all friends with him again-something ordinary and natural-and of course no one could think of anything in the world to say,” that the White Witch requests a meeting with Aslan. The movie actually adds a scene or two, one of them a dialogue scene, in between. It’s not so much that the movie is fast paced, and the book slow paced as it is that they have different interests.
The Pevensies have a picnic. Edmund, how dressed in Narnian clothes, wolfs down bread and cheese, understandably starving. Peter says he’s sure the Narnians will pack plenty of food for the journey back. “We’re going home?” asks Susan incredulously. Up until now, she’s been the one insisting that they all return to their own world. But now when that seems about to happen, she sounds disappointed, which is strangely convincing. Peter says he’s sending his siblings back since he promised their mother he’d keep them safe, but he intends to stay and help Aslan’s army. “But they need us,” says Lucy, “all four of us!” Peter argues that it’s too dangerous. “You almost drowned,” he reminds her, “Edmund was almost killed!” To the others’ surprise, Edmund interjects that that is why they have to stay. (Presumably, he’s referring to the circumstances around his near demise, not Lucy’s.) “I’ve seen what the White Witch can do,” he says, “And I’ve helped her do it. But we can’t leave these people behind to suffer for it.” Lucy wordlessly grips his hand. There’s a moment of silence. Now I’m a pretty individualistic loner-type for whom the military holds no appeal, so the fact that the movie was able to move me with the Pevensies deciding to risk their lives to help a country means it deserves some kind of medal!
“I suppose that’s it then,” Susan says calmly. She rises from the table and walks away. “Where are you going?” asks Peter. “To get in some practice,” she says with a smile, picking up her bow and arrows. Fans of the original book and of the character of Aslan in particular may reasonably criticize this adaptation for emphasizing the role of the Pevensies at his expense but it’s worth noting that Edmund, Susan and Peter all show major character growth here, for seemingly no other reason than meeting him.[2]Of course, a viewer less enchanted with the movie than I might say that’s an example of badly structured character arcs. That should count for something. We get a brief scene of Susan practicing her archery on a field a bit removed from the camp. Amusingly, Lucy also practices throwing her dagger and turns out to have a better aim than her older sister. Peter and Edmund are also practicing riding on horses and sword fighting. The book, by the way, never depicted them training for battle at all. You could argue that by adding this bit, the movie makes their survival a tad more realistic. You could also argue that it’s still unrealistic and by trying to make it less so, the movie actually draws attention to the implausibility. But I won’t make that case.
Mr. Beaver comes running across the field, scaring Edmund’s horse who neighs and rears. “Whoa, Horsie!” says Edmund. “My name is Philip,” says the horse (in the voice of production manager Philip Steuer.) “Oh, sorry,” says an embarrassed Edmund. The moment is worth a chuckle but it’s actually one of the parts of the movie that annoys me most as a fan of the Narnia books, which state emphatically that talking horses are not to be ridden or used as beasts of burden.[3]Also, the name Philip does not sound at all like the horse names in The Horse and his Boy. It’s true that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe itself doesn’t mention this but this movie has already shown signs that the screenwriters skimmed the other books in the series at least and we’ll see more signs later. It would have been nice if they could have remembered that rule. It may be a little thing but it’s something that stands out about the Narnia books. As a fan of those, I want to watch these movie adaptations and imagine that I’m seeing the world of Narnia come to life before my eyes. The absence of the no-riding-talking-horses rule makes this movie’s world feel less like Narnia to me. It’s also worth noting that in the final book in the series, The Last Battle, seeing a talking horse be treated like a dumb animal so infuriates the good guys that they gruesomely kill the perpetrators without giving them a chance to defend themselves.[4]The Last Battle is somewhat darker than the average Narnia story. Had the movie series been able to adapt that book, it wouldn’t have been impossible for them to make that plot point work. After all, the horse wasn’t just being ridden but whipped and abused. But it would be a lot easier to sell if they established that talking horses should be differently from regular horses right from the start.
To be fair, the books do give an exception to the rule: “in war where everyone must do what he can do best.” Training Edmund for battle could technically count as that with some generosity. By the way, Peter’s horse is actually a unicorn, something that also isn’t supposed to be ridden in Narnia. The Last Battle also depicts unicorns as talking, something Peter’s unicorn never does. Technically, that makes it even less accurate to the book series but if they had to have the first inaccuracy, I’d rather they do the second since it actually makes the first less annoying. I know there are people out there who would laugh at me devoting so many words to this little moment, but their laughter doesn’t alter my opinion. Tiny moments in an adaptation can be what make fans of the original cheer the most and they can nag like mosquitoes.
Anyway, back to the story. Mr. Beaver tells the boys that the White Witch has demanded a meeting with Aslan. We cut to the Witch being carried into the camp in a portable throne by cyclopses. There are no cyclopses among the Witch’s followers in the book, but they fit. Ginarrbrik goes before the litter, crying, “Jadis, Queen of Narnia and Empress of the Lone Islands!” Those Lone Islands are mentioned briefly in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but aren’t really relevant until The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.[5]For that matter, the Witch’s first name, Jadis, is also mentioned once in the book and only becomes relevant much later in the series. The fact that the movie gave them a shoutout even though they didn’t need to do so makes me happy. See? Little details can make or break an adaptation. If I weren’t bothered by Edmund riding a talking horse, I couldn’t enjoy the mention of irrelevant islands and be consistent.
Aslan’s soldiers boo the Witch and her entourage as they approach Aslan’s tent. In the book, while Aslan and the Witch are described as the only ones who seem totally at their ease in this scene, it’s also implied that the Witch is still intimidated by Aslan. We get a closeup of his face and then a closeup of her face which can be interpreted as her being nervous but could just as easily not be interpreted that way. As much as I’ve praised Tilda Swinton’s aloof performance, there is a danger with aloof characters. It can be hard to tell what they’re feeling.
As the Witch alights from her litter, she makes eye contact with Edmund before turning her attention to Aslan.
Witch: You have a traitor in your midst, Aslan. Aslan: His offense was not against you. Witch: Have you forgotten the laws upon which Narnia was built? Aslan (snarling): Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written. Witch: Then you’ll remember well that every traitor belongs to me. His blood is my property.
In the book, Aslan comes across as more relaxed and seems to be toying with the Witch. His initial response to her first words is “well, his offense was not against you.” That one word, “well,” makes his tone more casual, humorous even, and less defensive than it is in the movie. When the Witch accuses him of forgetting the Deep Magic, he says, “Let us say I have forgotten it. Tell us of this Deep Magic.” Presumably, the filmmakers didn’t want Aslan to seem too in control for fear the scene would lose tension. (When Aslan rebukes her, the Witch actually seems a little triumphant at having gotten a rise out of the lion.) As we’ll see with the battle between Aslan’s army and the Witch’s, they also really wanted this to be an underdog story. Personally, I think having Aslan be totally calm, on the surface anyway, is more interesting and I actually think it could have heightened the suspense by making viewers worry that he might be overplaying his hand. Oh well.
In response to the Witch claiming Edmund’s blood, Peter draws his sword. “Try and take him then,” he says. In the book, that line[6]Well, actually, the line is “come and take it then” in the book but never mind. is actually said by a bull with a man’s head.[7]Not to be confused with a man with a bull’s head. I think transferring it to Peter is a good way of confirming that the brothers are reconciled. The White Witch gives Peter a condescending look. “Do you really think that mere force will deny me my right, little king?” she says. “Aslan knows that unless I have blood as the law demands, all of Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water. That boy will die on the Stone Table as is tradition! You dare not refuse me.” Edmund looks devastated by this news as you’d expect. His emotions are a bit more complex in the book.
He felt a choking feeling and wondered if he ought to say something; but a moment later he felt that he was not expected to do anything except to wait, and do what he was told.
I think that’s more interesting than what the film does but it probably would have come across as bad acting so changing it was the right call. Actually, you could argue that Edmund’s reaction is true to the book in that he’s disturbed but refrains from saying anything.
In the book, by the way, we learn a little more about this mysterious Deep Magic/law but not much more. It was apparently created by Aslan’s father, the Emperor beyond the Sea, and is engraved on his scepter. That really raises more questions than it answers though. This Emperor is mentioned in a couple of the books, mostly prominently in this, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but never appears or receives much more than a mention, so I think it was reasonable for this adaptation to drop him.[8]From a Christian theological perspective, the Emperor corresponds to God the Father and Aslan corresponds to God the Son. However, this is never really developed and in The Magician’s Nephew, … Continue reading Anyway, Aslan says he’ll talk with the Witch in private and leads her into his tent. We cut to sometime later as the Pevensies and the rest of Aslan’s followers are waiting for a verdict. The movie does a good job of capturing the book’s description of this scene with even small background noises being prominent in the nervous silence.
I also like how Edmund works out his nervousness by pulling grass apart. It feels very realistic.
Everyone’s attention turns to the tent as the Witch emerges, followed by Aslan. She gives Edmund a piercing look. Aslan’s head is bowed, and it really feels as if he’s about to admit defeat. But then he says, “She has renounced her claim on the Son of Adam’s blood.” The scene is kind of brilliant. It fools you into thinking Aslan is going to say the opposite of what he does without him or the Witch doing anything that doesn’t make sense. That is to say, it doesn’t make sense now, but it will once we know all as we will shortly. “How do I know your promise will be kept?” demands the Witch. Aslan roars at her. When he did that in the book, “the Witch, after staring for a moment with her lips wide apart, picked up her skirts and fairly ran for her life.” Here she just sits down, looking scared, which manages to be less lame than you’d imagine. It’s perfectly valid for book fans to criticize the adaptation for not having the Witch be scared of Aslan enough but the filmmakers must have wanted her to be somewhat scared of him or they wouldn’t have included this moment at all.
Nevertheless, as her bearers carry her away, the Witch looks over her shoulder at Aslan with an I’ll-Get-You-For-This expression. Everyone is clapping Edmund on the back and congratulating him and his brother and sisters. Lucy looks over at Aslan, expecting him to be rejoicing too. But instead, he bows his head and, with a brief, sad glance at her, goes back into his tent. Lucy is disturbed by this quickly gets caught up again in the celebration. No moment like this is described in the book but Lucy and Aslan have a very close relationship in later installments of the series[9]According to Prince Caspian, she “understood some of his moods.”, so this feels very consistent with that.
Next Week: So… What’s This Promise Aslan Has to Keep Now?
From a Christian theological perspective, the Emperor corresponds to God the Father and Aslan corresponds to God the Son. However, this is never really developed and in The Magician’s Nephew, Aslan fills God the Father’s role of Creator.
Remember how at the end of Part 4, I wrote that we’d reached a place where I felt the movie’s quality, the quality of its writing anyway, started to go downhill? Well, I’m happy to report that we’ve now reached a point where it starts going uphill again. I’m not sure if it’s as consistently great as it was before, at least from an adaptation standpoint, but I find it closer than it was during that middle section we just went through, maybe because the characters whose dialogue I enjoy the least talk less.
As Peter, Susan, Lucy and the beavers walk uphill toward Aslan’s camp, we see what appear to be a horse’s hooves. The camera pans up to reveal that the hooves actually belong to a centaur who blows a horn signaling our heroes’ arrival. (By the way, the movie portrays some centaurs as being female even though, like fauns, they’re a one-sex species in mythology.)
I love the colors in this part of the movie! Actually, I love the art direction throughout this whole film, but we’ve reached a turning point of sorts when it comes to the visuals that makes it worth bringing up the topic again. The bright green of the hillside contrasts with the black and white visuals that have defined Narnia up till now. Not that those weren’t beautiful in their own way. Sheesh, I can theoretically understand some viewers finding them easier on the eyes. But in context, they come across as very refreshing. And the bright, almost circus-like colors of the tents make Narnia feel like something out of a storybook. It’s perfect.
Right before the characters enter the camp, Lucy notices a couple of dryads who wave at her. This movie series portrays the dryads’ bodies as being composed of seemingly windblown leaves and flower petals. The book depicts them more as people with bark for skin and leaves, willows and moss for hair and clothing. I’d have preferred something like that, but I don’t dislike these dryads. Actually, I appreciate that they don’t look like the ents in the Lord of the Rings movies, which still loomed high in the public’s memories when this movie was released.
Lucy waves back at the dryads. This moment reminds me of one from another Narnia book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Lucy makes eye contact with a Sea Girl e.g. a mermaid.
Neither could speak to the other and in a moment the Sea Girl dropped astern. But Lucy will never forget her face…Lucy had liked that girl and she felt certain the girl had liked her. In that one moment they had somehow become friends. There does not seem to be much chance of their meeting again in that world or any other. But if ever they do, they will rush together with their hands held out.
As they enter the camp, various Narnian creatures stare at the humans in awe. Susan nervously wonders why, and Lucy suggests she looks as strange to them as they do to her. In another look-they-really-do-love-each-other moment, Mrs. Beaver starts to groom her fur and her husband tells her to stop fussing because she looks lovely. Aslan’s soldiers fall in behind the Pevensies as they approach a big tent in the middle of the camp.
Outside stands a centaur (Patrick Kake.) This character isn’t from the book but he’s true to the Narnia books’ depictions of centaurs in that he’s intimidatingly stern[1]In the book, Prince Caspian, a character says that “no one ever laughed at a centaur., wise and noble though he’s more of a warrior whereas in the books, centaurs are defined more by being astrologers/prophets. His name is Oreius, which sounds like it could easily be a name from the Narnia books, but it should be the name of a faun, not a centaur. (Centaur names in the books include Glenstorm, Cloudbirth and Roonwit. Faun names include Tumnus, Mentius and Obentinus.) Oh well, nice try.
Peter unsheathes his sword and salutes Oreius. “We have come to see Aslan,” he says, his voice trembling. That’s not a criticism of Moseley’s performance. He’s clearly supposed to be nervous.[2]As well he should be. In the book, Mrs. Beaver says, ““if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just … Continue reading Oreius turns toward the tent and all the soldiers bow.
A tremolo is then heard on the soundtrack that give me the shivers, more so, regrettably, than the music that plays when the tent flap opens and Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson), who is here revealed to be a lion, steps out. Peter, Susan and Lucy kneel before him. Now one of the most memorable parts of the book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the Narnia books in general is the feeling that Aslan’s presence inspires in all the characters.
People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan’s face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn’t look at him and went all trembly.
Every fan hopes seeing Aslan onscreen will give them this feeling. Does it in this movie? Well…for me, not really. To be fair though, I’m not sure how it could. While the fact that Aslan is a lion is certainly part of what makes him “terrible”, it’s not just that.[3]In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a character who has been transformed into a dragon describes meeting Aslan thus. “I was terribly afraid of it… I could have knocked any lion out easily … Continue reading And while we can theoretically understand why meeting a lion is scary for the characters in the movie, it’s not that scary for us to watch it onscreen, knowing that the lion is a good guy who won’t eat them. Aslan doesn’t really do anything intimidating in this scene in this book. It’s more a matter of his aura, something that might be easier to describe in a book[4]Though even with that medium just saying that someone has an aura can be unconvincing by itself, especially if you lack C. S. Lewis’s eloquence. than to actually generate in a movie.[5]I wouldn’t say it’s impossible for a movie. One I’ve written about on this very blog, The Prince of Egypt, kind of nails the numinous effect which Lewis gave Aslan in its burning … Continue reading I’m not bitter toward the filmmakers for their failure because, while there are things they perhaps could have done better[6]In the book, the characters are in such awe of Aslan, that none of them dares be the first to address him and they get into a little argument over it. Including that might have helped the movie sell … Continue reading, I get the impression from the actors’ performances, from the soundtrack and the general staging that they were trying.
As Aslan’s voice, Liam Neeson is…fine. The fact that his isn’t one of the best vocal performances in the movie actually says great things about the voice acting and acting in general in it. He sounds suitably soothing when comforting the Pevensies and suitably stern when confronting the White Witch. He just isn’t much about which to write home for such a major character. According to the book, Aslan’s voice “was deep and rich and somehow took the fidgets out of (the characters.”) Neeson’s voice isn’t particularly deep, which I think may actually have been a good thing as a deep voice is the obvious route to go with a lion. It also might have worked better for the character though. On the plus side, Neeson’s voice can reasonably be described as rich. Previous actors portraying Aslan have all hammed it up in the role in their own unique ways and there is something refreshing about Neeson’s Aslan not being a ham. I can’t blame those other actors for wanting to ham it up with such a big character, especially the ones in radio dramas which depend almost solely on them to bring that character to life, but hearing a version of Aslan deliver his lines like a normal person does make for a nice change.
I like the bell designs on Aslan’s tent. They can be considered a nod to the fact that this is supposed to take place over Christmas even though the movie seems a little embarrassed by the Christmas part of the story.
The ensuing dialogue is fairly close to the corresponding conversation in the book.
Aslan: Welcome, Peter, Son of Adam. Welcome, Susan and Lucy, Daughters of Eve. And welcome to you, Beavers. You have my thanks. But where is the fourth? Peter: That’s why we’re here, sir. We need your help. Susan: We had a little trouble along the way. Aslan: Captured? How could this happen? Mr. Beaver (after an awkward pause): He betrayed them, Your Majesty. Oreius: Then he has betrayed us all! Aslan: Peace, Oreius. I’m sure there’s an explanation.
This is a minor but, I think, interesting difference between the book and the movie. In the former, Aslan never asks for an explanation for Edmund’s betrayal, not that we learn anyway. (He has a private conversation with Edmund later to which we are not privy.) Lewis just writes that “something made” Peter give a partial explanation anyway. It can be inferred though that Aslan’s presence was that something. Meeting him seems to accelerate character development for each of the Pevensies in both the book and the movie. “It was my fault really,” Peter says at this point in the latter to his sisters’ surprise, “I was too hard on him.” Susan puts a supportive hand on her older brother’s shoulder. “We all were,” she says. That isn’t really true since Susan wasn’t really hard on Edmund that we saw. In fact, you’ll recall that when Peter and Lucy were upbraiding him, she tried to change the subject. But after seeing Peter and Susan butting heads for so much of the movie prior to this moment, it’s very heartwarming. “Sir, he’s our brother,” adds Lucy. “I know, dear one,” says Aslan, “but that only makes the betrayal all the worse.” That’s also a minor but interesting change from the book. Lewis doesn’t have Aslan verbally condemn Edmund here. Neither does he blame Peter or excuse him. He “merely stood looking at him with his great unchanging eyes. And it seemed to all of them that there was nothing to be said.” Again, that’s something that’d be hard to accomplish in a film as opposed to a book. “This may be harder than you think,” says the cinematic Aslan. His literary counterpart says something similar when Lucy asked him if he could save Edmund. According to Lewis, “Up to that moment Lucy had been thinking how royal and strong and peaceful his face looked; now it suddenly came into her head that he looked sad as well.” The movie’s animators capture that well. I think it would have been even more powerful if Aslan’s face had looked sterner before this moment and it’s not like they were incapable of that. His features are quite stern looking in some other scenes. Still, as it is, the movie does a great job with this pivotal scene.
Later, at sunset, Peter stands on a hill overlooking the camp. He has now changed into a Narnian outfit. The book never specifies that he or his brother or sisters do this, but it makes perfect sense, given the state their clothes would realistically be in at this point, and it allows costume designer Isis Mussenden to showcase royal Narnian garb, something Lewis doesn’t describe in great detail but the beauty of which he stresses.[7]He also emphasizes that in Narnia, unlike in our world, fancy clothes are actually comfortable. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Peter’s Narnian costume isn’t really Mussenden’s best work but don’t worry. We’ll see better examples of it shortly. Aslan comes up behind Peter and points out to him a shining castle on the seacoast in the distance. “That is Cair Paravel, castle of the four thrones on one of which you will sit, Peter, as High King.” Peter doesn’t respond enthusiastically to this. Aslan asks if he doubts the prophecy. “No,” says Peter, “it’s just…it. Aslan, I’m not who you think I am.” To his surprise, the lion responds, “Peter Pevensie, formerly of Finchley. Beaver also mentioned you planned on turning him into a hat.” Some fans may be disappointed in that moment since it seems to imply that Aslan is omniscient-or more “niscient” than your average lion-only to humorously subvert it. In the books, Aslan is meant to be the Christian God who is omniscient but, to be fair, the book version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe does have moments that imply Aslan isn’t. (He outlines two possible battle plans, one for fighting the White Witch in the forest and one for assaulting her castle if his army can’t cut her off from it and in the same scene, he gets distracted and asks Peter to repeat a question.) But in the very next book in the series, Prince Caspian, he says he’s sometimes wondered if the character of Reepicheep, whom he’s never met face to face, thinks too much about his honor. The plots of The Horse and his Boy and The Silver Chair depend on Aslan, at the very least, being able to accurately predict the future. His lack of omniscience in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is something of an example of Early Installment Weirdness, something of which the book has a fair bit. Of course, the filmmakers clearly did research on the later Narnian installments so maybe I shouldn’t let them off the hook so easily.
“Peter,” Aslan says, “there is a Deep Magic, more powerful than any of us, that rules over all of Narnia. It defines right from wrong and governs all our destinies, yours and mine.” This metaphysical Deep Magic, which corresponds to the Christian concept of God’s Law, is easily one of the weirdest parts of the book, especially as it’s not introduced until the last third of the story and proves integral to it. I understand the screenwriters introducing it a little earlier here, if only by a couple of scenes. I don’t love the way they describe it though. Somehow it sounds vaguely like the Force in Star Wars. Maybe what rubs me the wrong way about the phrasing is that it implies the Deep Magic outranks Aslan. To be fair, that’s not entirely wrong. When someone asks Aslan in the book if he can do anything against the Deep Magic, he responds with grave anger. And in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when a character expresses incredulity that a magic spell could have the power to make Aslan visible, he says, “Do you think I wouldn’t obey my own rules?” Whether Christians believe God is somehow bound by his law is a tricky question, one I’d prefer these screenwriters not try to answer so glibly. But what I do like about this part of the movie is that we get more subtle foreshadowing that Aslan is planning to do something painful for him. When he talks about having no choice regarding his own destiny, he turns his face away from Peter, hiding a rather sad expression from him.
Peter doesn’t pick up on Aslan’s melancholy. (I don’t mean that as a criticism of the character by the way.) “But I couldn’t even protect my own family,” he protests. “You brought them safely this far,” counters Aslan. “Not all of them,” Peter says wistfully. “Peter, I will do what I can to help your brother,” says Aslan[8]I wish he said, “all I can,” since that’s closer to what he says in the book but that’s a nitpick., “but I need you to consider what I ask of you.” He looks down at his subjects in the camp below. “I too want my family safe.” It’s a moving moment that recalls a scene from another of the Narnia books, The Magician’s Nephew, in which Aslan expresses empathy for a character’s concern for their family but asks them to put it on hold for the sake of Narnia.
We cut to the Witch’s camp where Edmund is gagged and tied to a tree. Ginarrbrik taunts him. “Is our little prince uncomfortable? Does he want his pillow fluffed? Special treatment for the special boy. Isn’t that what you wanted?” This dialogue is no more subtle than that during the melting waterfall scene, but for whatever reason, it works a lot better for me.
Back at Aslan’s camp, Susan and Lucy have been given Narnian dresses that are better examples of Isis Mussenden’s talent than Peter’s outfit and are admiring their reflections in a stream.
Lucy (approvingly): You look like Mum. Susan: Mum hasn’t had a dress like this since before the war. Lucy: We should bring her one back! A whole trunkful! Susan: If we ever get back.
Susan notices Lucy’s face falling at those last words and apologizes. “We used to have fun together, didn’t we?” she says. “Yes,” says Lucy wistfully before adding with a laugh, “before you got boring.” The girls have a splash fight in the stream then they go up the bank to get towels. Susan removes one from a clothesline, only to reveal a snarling Maugrim behind it. “Please don’t try to run,” he says, “we’re tired.”
“And we’d prefer to kill you quickly,” adds another wolf (Jim May.)[9]I’m aware this wolf is called Vardan in the credits, but no one says his name in the film proper, so using it feels weird to me. The movie is in a bit of a tricky spot here. In the book, Peter ends up rushing to his helpless sisters’ rescue and this adaptation doesn’t want to change that. Indeed, it has built up Maugrim as an enemy of Peter specifically in a way the book didn’t. But in this day and age, the trope of a female character needing a male character to save her life has fallen so out of favor as to be offensive. The movie finds a graceful compromise by having Susan need to get past Maugrim to get her magical horn from Father Christmas, which she’s left with her old clothes, and having her hit him with a towel to do so.[10]If you’d like my opinion on the controversy over the Narnia books’ portrayal of gender, here’s the shortest answer I can give. While Lewis did go on record as being antifeminist in … Continue reading Back on the hilltop, Peter and Aslan hear the horn. “Susan!” cries Peter and runs in the direction of the sound. In the book, Aslan had to tell him it was her horn. That would have made more sense, but I understand the movie wanting to tighten the pace of a suspenseful action moment. (I guess we can assume Peter had a general idea of where his sisters were and knew anything like a warning signal from there meant trouble.) Susan and Lucy have climbed into the branches of a tree, but the wolves are snapping at the former’s dangling ankles and those aren’t the thickest branches either. Peter comes running with his sword, yelling, “Get back!” The wolves turn their attention to him.
“Come on,” says Maugrim, “we’ve already been through this before. We both know you haven’t got it in you.” Suddenly, Aslan’s clamps down on the non-Maugrim wolf, leveling the playing field for Peter. Oreius and some other soldiers from the camp arrive but Aslan tells them to stay their weapons on the grounds that “this is Peter’s battle.” With one last taunt (“You may think you’re a king but you’re going to die like a dog!”), Maugrim pounces on Peter, knocking him over. The girls scream. Suddenly, both Peter and the wolf lie still. Susan and Lucy leap down and run over. Maugrim is dead with Peter’s sword in his stomach while underneath him, Peter is very much alive. The three Pevensies hug, all of them looking somewhat traumatized, much as the book describes at this point.[11]Well, it describes Peter and Susan as crying. Lucy isn’t the focus as much in this part of the book.
Perhaps surprisingly, given how this adaptation ups the action from the book, this scene isn’t as exciting to watch as its literary equivalent is to read.
(Peter) rushed straight up to the monster and aimed a slash of his sword at its side. That stroke never reached the Wolf. Quick as lightning it turned round, its eyes flaming, and its mouth wide open in a howl of anger. If it had not been so angry that it simply had to howl it would have got him by the throat at once. As it was — though all this happened too quickly for Peter to think at all — he had just time to duck down and plunge his sword, as hard as he could, between the brute’s forelegs into its heart. Then came a horrible, confused moment like something in a nightmare. He was tugging and pulling, and the Wolf seemed neither alive nor dead, and its bared teeth knocked against his forehead, and everything was blood and heat and hair. A moment later he found that the monster lay dead, and he had drawn his sword out of it and was straightening his back and rubbing the sweat off his face and out of his eyes.
To be fair though, I’m not sure how the film could have captured that intensity except by filming the scene from Peter’s point of view and that might have cost it is PG rating. I think PG was the right rating for this movie to aim. You could argue that the descriptions of violence in the book are technically more gruesome, but I’d describe it as a book that’s good for kids if they have parental supervision and I’d prefer an adaptation’s rating to correspond to that.
Anyway, Aslan lets go of the other wolf who runs away, whimpering. “After him,” says Aslan to Oreius. “He’ll lead you to Edmund.” Oreius and a party of other swift soldiers chase after the wolf. Then Aslan turns his attention back to the Pevensies. “Peter, clean your sword,” he says. In the book, his line is “you have forgotten to clean your sword.” The contrast between the intensity of what just happened, and the mundanity of Aslan’s chiding is pretty funny and I wish the movie could have kept that. We cut to Peter kneeling with his sword now clean and Aslan putting his paw on his shoulder. “Rise, Sir Peter Wolfsbane,” he says, “knight of Narnia.” In the book, he concludes by saying, “And whatever happens, never forget to wipe your sword,” again making this a funny moment.[12]Though it should be noted that for all that Aslan’s words are jarring in their mundanity, keeping your sword clean is important as you don’t want it to rust. Oh well. If the movie had to omit the humor there, it’s a decent enough serious moment.
Night has fallen on the Witch’s camp, and we see some of her monstrous followers preparing weapons. This is a bit of change from the book in which she only summons them after she’s learned of Maugrim’s death. The movie wisely refrains from showing the most gruesome of the creatures until the point the book shows them though. The Witch’s minotaur general (Shane Rangi) is discussing a battle plan with her. I don’t get why the movie has the minotaurs’ bodies be entirely covered with hair. They’re supposed to be like men with the heads of bulls. But to be fair, Narnian minotaurs don’t have to be exactly like classical depictions.
The wolf comes running into camp, followed by Aslan’s rescue party. The Witch and the general go to investigate. They find several of their soldiers dead, Edmund gone and Ginarrbrik gagged and bound in his place. There’s even a knife stuck in his cap! The idea that Oreius and company would have the time to do all that and leave before the Witch and her reinforcements arrived to stop them is pretty ridiculous but the visual is amusing enough that I’ll allow it.[13]In the book, as I mentioned, the Witch’s army hadn’t arrived yet and one of Aslan’s soldiers knocked her wand out of her hand. She was only able to escape by magically disguising … Continue reading
In the book, the Witch is about to kill Edmund right before he’s rescued, preventing the prophecy of the four thrones being fulfilled that way. It’s somewhat unfortunate that the movie doesn’t do this since it makes her dumber.[14]You could argue she was already dumb in the book for waiting as long as she did before trying to kill Edmund. In an earlier draft of the script, she planned to kill Edmund as soon as she could do so … Continue reading Anyway, the Witch brandishes a knife of her own and for a moment, it looks like she’s going to kill Ginarrbrik in anger. But she only cuts his bonds. “You’re not going to kill me?” he asks hopefully. “Not yet,” she says. Then she turns back to her general. “We have work to do.”
Next Week: Do the Pevensies Go Home or Stay and Fight? And Just What Work Does the Witch Have in Mind?
As well he should be. In the book, Mrs. Beaver says, ““if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a character who has been transformed into a dragon describes meeting Aslan thus. “I was terribly afraid of it… I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it — if you can understand.”
I wouldn’t say it’s impossible for a movie. One I’ve written about on this very blog, The Prince of Egypt, kind of nails the numinous effect which Lewis gave Aslan in its burning bush scene. A kids’ fantasy movie of a similar vintage to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Nanny McPhee, does a great job making its title character come across as both “good and terrible at the same time.” Nanny McPhee arguably has some advantages over Aslan in that she dresses in black and actually does scary things when we first meet her.
In the book, the characters are in such awe of Aslan, that none of them dares be the first to address him and they get into a little argument over it. Including that might have helped the movie sell the “Aslan effect.”
If you’d like my opinion on the controversy over the Narnia books’ portrayal of gender, here’s the shortest answer I can give. While Lewis did go on record as being antifeminist in other things he wrote, Narnia doesn’t relate to that much and half the accusations of misogyny it receives contradict the other half. Some say it’s misogynist because it portrays stereotypically feminine female characters positively and stereotypically masculine ones negatively. Others say it’s misogynist because it portrays stereotypically masculine female characters positively and stereotypically feminine ones negatively. (Many of the books’ young heroines could be described as either.) These two things can’t both be true, so half of the criticism must be wrong.
Though it should be noted that for all that Aslan’s words are jarring in their mundanity, keeping your sword clean is important as you don’t want it to rust.
In the book, as I mentioned, the Witch’s army hadn’t arrived yet and one of Aslan’s soldiers knocked her wand out of her hand. She was only able to escape by magically disguising herself as a boulder. While this is a memorable scene, I understand why the filmmakers omitted it since it amounted to randomly giving the Witch a new power and then not having her ever use it again.
You could argue she was already dumb in the book for waiting as long as she did before trying to kill Edmund. In an earlier draft of the script, she planned to kill Edmund as soon as she could do so on the Stone Table in keeping with tradition. In the book, she expresses regret over not being able to do that but decides that beggars can’t be choosers.
The Pevensies and the beavers are trudging across a vast frozen lake. There’s a nice transition from the white landscape to the white sky. Mr. Beaver, who is far ahead, calls behind him, “Come on, humans! While we’re still young.” Peter takes the weary Lucy on his back. “If he tells us to hurry one more time,” he says, “I’m going to turn him into a big fluffy hat!” William Moseley’s line reading indicates that he’s less annoyed with Mr. Beaver than trying to cheer up Lucy with humor. This is noteworthy in retrospect because in this movie’s sequel, Moseley’s performance would pass up on most of the opportunities it had to make Peter likeable. “Come on,” Mr. Beaver calls again. “He is getting a little bossy,” says Lucy. “No, behind you! It’s her!” cries Mrs. Beaver. The Pevensies turn around and see a sleigh in the distance. Lucy gets off of Peter and they race for their lives. Sharp-eyed viewers, unfamiliar with the book, will be able to guess that this a misdirect when we see that the sleigh is being drawn by reindeer but they’re gray rather than white like the White Witch’s deer. (In the book, they were brown. Maybe the filmmakers thought gray would be less obviously not white than brown would be.) Fans will already be able to guess what’s coming.
Our heroes hide in a ditch. They hear the sleigh stop and see a tall shadow pass over them.
Peter reluctantly volunteers to get out and check to see if its’ safe, but Mr. Beaver insists on being the one to do so, saying, “you’re worth nothing to Narnia dead.” There’s a nice they-really-do-love-each-other moment as Mrs. Beaver objects that her husband isn’t worth anything dead either. He appreciates the sentiment but sneaks out of hiding anyway. After a tense moment, his head pokes down over the culvert’s upper lip. “Come here! Come here,” he says, ” I hope you’ve all been good because there’s someone here to see you!” They climb up out of hiding to see a white-bearded man (James Cosmo) in red[1]Actually, it’s more of a brown but whatever. standing in front of the sleigh. Lucy’s face lights up. “Merry Christmas, sir,” she says. “It certainly is, Lucy,” he replies, “since you have arrived.” Yes, this is Father Christmas.[2]They never say his name aloud in the movie, presumably because American kids might not be familiar with it. Not saying the name allows them to assume it’s Santa Claus while English kids can … Continue reading
The inclusion of this character in the story of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has always been controversial. Both the people to whom C. S. Lewis showed his draft felt he didn’t fit but Lewis stubbornly insisted on keeping him. Unsurprisingly, given that this adaptation has less of an emphasis on charming tea parties and more of an emphasis on military preparations, the filmmakers were tempted to cut Father Christmas and have Aslan give the children their gifts.[3]The 1979 made-for-TV cartoon did the same thing though weirdly they still had another character refer to Father Christmas. Were they speaking literally or metaphorically? But whether it was the insistence of C. S. Lewis’s literary estate, fear of fan backlash or some storytelling instinct of their own, the character was included though their intentions were to portray him “not as a jolly old St. Nick with a bag of video games but as a wise old Norse warrior, returning home after years of battle, full of both hard-earned wisdom and love for the children.” I’d argue that was already how C. S. Lewis depicted him, minus being Norse or a warrior.[4]And, hey, it’s not like Lewis specifically wrote that he wasn’t a Norse warrior.
Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly. But now that the children actually stood looking at him, they didn’t find it quite like that. He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn.
I actually imagined Father Christmas in the book to be more serious than James Cosmo plays him as being in the movie. He doesn’t go “ho, ho, ho,” but he does chuckle quite a bit throughout the scene, and he shows more of a sense of humor than his literary counterpart, apologizing for scaring the characters but adding, “in my defense I have been driving one of these longer than the Witch.” He does get the glad part though and the music that plays during the scene matches the description of glad-but-solemn quite well. It’s one of my favorite parts of the soundtrack. “I’ve put up with a lot since I got here but this…” Susan whispers to Peter. That line likely reflects the screenwriters’ own reaction to encountering Father Christmas in the source material. If the movie had emphasized the line, I’d probably find the self-aware lampshade hanging annoying, but the director wisely keeps Susan’s incredulity in the background and for the most part, plays the joy of the moment straight. “I thought there was no Christmas in Narnia,” she says out loud. (Nobody’s actually mentioned that to her in this movie that we’ve heard but I suppose we can infer Lucy did so offscreen.) Father Christmas sadly affirms that this has been true for a long time but “the hope that you have brought, Your Majesties, is finally starting to weaken the Witch’s power.” That is probably the line in this adaptation most criticized by fans of the book which portrays Aslan as being responsible for the return of spring and Christmas to Narnia, not the prophesied kings and queens. I’m not as mad as some fans about this, mostly because the change didn’t surprise me. From comments I’d read from the director and just the way the movie itself had been setting up the story, I figured it would be Pevensies’ presence in Narnia that would break the Witch’s spell in this version. It’s considered bad storytelling nowadays to have side characters be the main ones to save the day rather than your heroes, so I had already resigned myself to this inevitable change, annoying as it is for fans of the character of Aslan.
Anyway, even with all the hope they’ve brought, Father Christmas says the Pevensies could probably use some help against the Witch, so he pulls out a sack and gives each of them some gifts. He hands them out in the reverse order that he does in the book. Perhaps this is because the movie wants Peter to be a bigger hero than he was in the book[5]Well, actually he was just as big of a hero in the book, but the book wasn’t particularly interested in his heroism. and so also wants his gift to be the big climax of this scene. First, Father Christmas gives Lucy a bottle. “The juice of the fire flower,” he explains. “One drop will cure any injury.” He also gives her a fancy dagger-the props in this movie are beautifully designed-though he tells her he hopes she’ll never have to use it.
I’m pretty sure the design of that vial holder is supposed to evoke the sun. In the book, those fire flowers are said to grow “in the mountains of the sun.” Nice!
“I think I could be brave enough,” Lucy argues, a little uncertainly. “I’m sure you could,” says Father Christmas, “but battles are ugly affairs.” This is a change from his potentially controversial line from the book, “battles are ugly when women fight.” Personally, I think changing the line was the right idea since it would have seemed like a political commentary on women in the military and I prefer to keep political commentary out of my escapist fantasies.[6]Of course, I understand why writers want to include commentary about issues that are important to them, and I don’t expect them to avoid writing about those issues just to please me. But I … Continue reading Honestly, even if I wanted this story to make a case against women in the military, Father Christmas’s original line doesn’t exactly do that very well. (Battles are ugly by definition.) Then again, you could argue the new version of this line isn’t unanswerable either since other characters are going to be sent into battle despite its ugliness. But to its credit, the movie is going to hang a lampshade on that, one that actually makes me laugh. I think there’s a value to keeping Lucy’s question about whether she should fight in the battle, despite the controversy it invites, since it differentiates her character from that of Susan who is quite happy to just have weapons for self-defense and permission to sit out any battle.[7]In the later Narnia books, The Horse and his Boy and The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis would have his heroines, one of them an older Lucy, take part in battles albeit only as archers. This may not have … Continue readingSpeaking of Susan, Father Christmas gives her a bow and a quiver of arrows. In a fun, whimsical touch, the quiver has her initials (S. P.) on it. “Trust in this bow and it will not easily miss,” Father Christmas tells Susan. “What happened to ‘battles are ugly affairs?'” she objects. “And though you don’t seem to have a problem making yourself heard,” he chuckles, handing her an ivory horn shaped like a lion’s mouth, “blow on this and wherever you are, help will come.” Susan manages a smile and thanks him, though characteristically she still seems a little uncomfortable with these special gifts.
Then it’s Peter’s turn. Father Christmas gives him a sword and a silver shield with a red image of a lion on it. “The time to bear these may be near at hand,” he explains. “These are tools, not toys. Bear them well and wisely.” Peter gravely accepts his gifts and seems much more openminded about using them than Susan is about using hers, which doubtless disturbs her.
If you look closely, you can see the prophecy in the book that was cut from the movie inscribed on the sword. (The prophecy about Aslan being the one to bring spring, ironically enough.)
You know what annoys me about how this scene plays out in the movie? Unlike in the book, the beavers don’t get any presents. They’re the ones who have been denied Christmas for most of their lives, not the humans! C. S. Lewis had Father Christmas’s gift to Mr. Beaver be to repair his not quite finished house and his gift to Mrs. Beaver be a new and better sewing machine to replace the one she was worried about the White Witch ruining. (See why that should have been kept?) An earlier draft of the screenplay alluded to these gifts without specifying what they were but, alas, that bit didn’t survive the editing process.
Sure, they’re smiling but I can tell they’re disappointed on the inside.
“Now I must be off,” says Father Christmas, putting the sack back in his sleigh. “Winter is almost over and things do pile up when you’ve been gone a hundred years. Long live Aslan and merry Christmas!” As he drives off, everybody waves and calls, “merry Christmas,” after him. “Told you he was real,” Lucy says to Susan. I feel like eight is a bit old to still believe in Father Christmas but it’s a funny line. Despite my various nitpicks, I really am grateful this scene wasn’t scrapped from the movie for fear of being too cute. The joy of it makes a nice break from what is tense, dramatic part of the story.
Speaking of tension and drama…
“He said winter was almost over,” muses Peter. “You know what that means,” he says to his sisters, “no more ice.” We cut to the frozen river they’re supposed to cross, which is not looking so very frozen anymore.
I can resign myself to an adaptation adding an action scene to this part of the story. I don’t love the idea, but I don’t passionately despise it either. However, from when I first heard the specific idea for this action scene, I thought it didn’t make sense thematically since the melting of snow and ice is supposed to be a good thing in the story. The book at this point states that they couldn’t have kept to the river valley because it was flooded with melting snow, but that didn’t matter since the Witch could no longer pursue them in her sleigh and they could afford to take their time.[8]The 1979 cartoon would also add an action scene at this point with the Witch’s sleigh almost catching up to the characters. But in that one, the coming of spring would save the day as it slowed … Continue reading Fortunately, when I saw the movie for the first time, I was so caught up in the action that I forgot to worry about thematic considerations. On subsequent viewings, knowing exactly what’s going to happen, I find my mind wandering more. Oh well.
“We need to cross now,” says Peter. Lucy suggests Mr. Beaver make a dam. “I’m not that fast, dear,” he says. I feel like that’s obvious, but I guess they had to point it out to all the little kids watching.
Peter: Come on! Susan: Wait! Would you just think about this for a minute? Peter: We don’t have a minute! Susan: I’m just trying to be realistic. Peter: No, you’re trying to be smart! As usual!
Yeah, this isn’t the most interestingly written scene in the film. The actors do the best they can with the generic dialogue though. Susan receives motivation to follow Peter when she hears wolves howling from not too far away. We briefly cut to the White Witch’s sleigh driving across the same landscape our heroes traversed in the last scene. Back at the river, Mr. Beaver volunteers to be the first one to cross, which doesn’t make much sense since, as a beaver, he presumably weighs less than the humans and wouldn’t be the best test subject but oh well. The ice cracks somewhat as he gingerly makes his way over it. “You’ve been sneaking second helpings, haven’t you,” his wife calls triumphantly. “Well, you never know which meals going to be your last,” he says, “especially with your cooking.” That line annoys me because the book implies that Mrs. Beaver is an excellent cook. I dislike seeing her reputation besmirched for the sake of a middling joke. With the frozen waterfall to their left and the flowing river to their right, the other characters gingerly start to follow Mr. Beaver. The ice cracks under their feet but initially no piece sinks or drifts away until they’re off it. In all fairness, this bit is effectively nerve-wracking. If I sound like I hate the action sequences in this movie, I don’t. It’s just that the scenes that aim for majesty or picturesqueness or childlike awe and wonder in general strike me as not only closer to the original book’s spirit but more memorable as cinema in their own right. This bit is just…fine. “If Mum knew what we were doing,” Susan murmurs. “Mum’s not here!” Peter snaps. The dialogue is again obvious, but I appreciate how it reinforces the theme of the kid characters being thrust into this situation where they have to suddenly be adults.
Icicles start to fall from the waterfall. Is it about to completely collapse? No, the wolves are running across it! They jump down and block their prey’s path. Even if running back across the crumbling ice were feasible, more wolves appear behind them. One of the ones in front, not Maugrim, grabs Mr. Beaver by the neck. Peter unsheathes his new sword and awkwardly points it at Maugrim who says, “put that down, boy. Someone could get hurt.” Do you see what I mean about this character being full of pulpy bad guy cliches? (I apologize for using “pulpy” as a descriptor so much lately. Suggest a better word and I’ll be happy to use it for variety.)
Mr. Beaver: Don’t worry about me! Run him through! Maugrim: Leave now while you can, and your brother leaves with you. Susan: Stop, Peter! Maybe we should listen to him. Maugrim (chuckling): Smart girl. Mr. Beaver: Don’t listen to him! Kill him! Kill him now! Maugrim: Oh, come on! This isn’t your war. All my queen wants is for you to take your family and go. Susan: Look, just because some man in a red coat hands you a sword, it doesn’t make you a hero! Just drop it! Mr. Beaver: No, Peter! Narnia needs you! Gut him while you still have a chance! Maugrim: What’s it going to be, son of Adam? I won’t wait forever. And neither will the river.
OK, there are a number of things this dialogue is doing or trying to do. One of them is to try to build enmity between Peter and Maugrim so that when the former later kills the latter, it will be a more satisfying moment. (In the book, that was the only chapter that really focused on Peter’s coming of age, which the movie wants to be, more or less, the emotional center of the story.) On that level, it works.
Another thing it wants to do is present Peter with a dilemma. Should he listen to the wolf and possibly save Edmund or not? That part of the scene is pretty dumb since, unlike the White Witch when she first met Edmund, Maugrim is transparently villainous and there’s no reason to believe he would just release Edmund and let all the Pevensies go if Peter were to put down his weapon. In fact, there’s a good argument to be made that it’s ridiculously out of character for the sensible Susan to fall for Maugrim’s obvious lies. I’d make the counterargument that while the character of Susan is supposed to be pragmatic, she’s also supposed to be a bit of a coward. (No offense meant. I’m a bit of one too.) I can buy that with all the stress she’s under that she’d panic and temporarily lose her normal good sense even though I don’t love how that plays out here.
Another thing this scene is doing or trying to do is to give voice to all the contradictory thoughts and impulses going through Peter’s mind without him actually saying anything. Susan and Maugrim are voicing his doubts and insecurities as well as the obligation he feels to his family while Mr. Beaver is voicing the other obligation he feels to fulfill the prophecy and save Narnia. That aspect of the scene strikes me as somewhat annoyingly heavy handed. But you could argue that’s the point. The viewer maybe feels overwhelmed by the lack of subtlety just as Peter feels overwhelmed by his high-pressure situation.
Water starts to spurt out of the waterfall. The long-frozen icicles tremble. But Peter gets an idea. “Hold on to me!” he cries to the girls. They do so as he plunges his sword, not into Maugrim, but into the ice directly in front of him. The ice above collapses and all the characters are engulfed by water.
I’ve got to say it was a shocking decision on the movie’s part to kill off Peter, Susan, Lucy and the beavers here. Definitely a change from the book and not what you’d expect from a children’s movie, but I think it works.
Just kidding! After a moment of silence, a chunk of ice surfaces on the river with Peter, Susan and Lucy clinging to Peter’s sword which still sticks out of it. How did he know the sword wouldn’t split the ice apart? Or that the chunk around it would be big enough to support them all? I don’t know. This is one of those scenes that rewards not thinking about it. Fortunately, if I like a movie and it needs me to not think about it, I’m willing to not think about it. But since I’m doing this lengthy in-depth analysis, I suppose I must. I guess you could say Peter was trapped in any case and this idea was worth a shot.
As the ice floats downstream, Lucy almost slips off, but Peter grabs her shoulder, almost losing hold of his sword in the process. The beavers, who naturally can swim in the cold water, reappear and push the ice toward the shore, allowing the Pevensies to climb off it. But then Peter realizes that he’s not clutching Lucy but only her coat. “What have you done?” screams Susan. We get a shot of the icy rushing river.
Oh, poor Lucy! She was so young, so innocent, so…no, it’s another fake out. Lucy is elsewhere on shore, looking for her coat. Peter just hands it to her, too overjoyed for words. “Don’t worry, dear, your brother’s got you well looked after,” says Mr. Beaver. “And I don’t think you’ll be needing those coats anymore,” says Mrs. Beaver. As the characters pass some frozen trees, we see the frost on them melt and buds start to blossom. Then we cut to later when the previously snowy wood is almost entirely green, more flowers are blossoming in fast motion and Peter, Susan and Lucy have abandoned their coats. Of course, those coats would have been useless even if it were still winter, considering that they’re now cold and wet. Why aren’t Peter, Susan or Lucy getting hypothermia from their dip in the icy river? Magic, I guess.
Meanwhile the White Witch stands…wait. That’s it? Returning spring to Narnia is one of the story’s main goals and a big part of its appeal to the emotions. This seems like the obvious time to have a montage of the landscape changing from white to brown to green. You can’t say it would have made the movie too slow as we just had a tense action scene. I feel like the film earned the right to stop and smell the roses and some its best scenes are when it does just that.
In 2006, an extended cut of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was released. It was a pretty obvious cash grab. The reinstated footage added up to a little more than six extra minutes, mostly consisting of awkward moments that were rightly cut from the theatrical version. But there are a couple of bits that genuinely improve the movie. One of them is the arrival of spring, which is a more drawn-out moment if only by a matter of seconds. They’re seconds well spent. The scenery is lovely, it’s refreshing to see the characters enjoy it, especially Susan the worrywart, and we actually see them passing the hill of the Stone Table. In the book, Aslan’s camp is originally right next to the sacred table, and he later moves it. That would be expensive and time consuming to show in a movie, so the camp is portrayed as removed from the table right from the start. But confusingly, the characters still refer to the camp as being at the Stone Table even though we don’t see it until a later scene somewhere else. This is still a bit confusing in the extended cut but nonetheless relatively easier to parse. Clear exposition sadly isn’t a strength of any of the Narnia movies but that’s less of a problem with this first one then it is with the 2008 Prince Caspian or the 2010 Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
You can just barely see the Stone Table just a little to the left on top of that hill in the center.
Meanwhile the White Witch stands by the now clear waterfall with Edmund and Ginarrbrik. “It’s so warm out,” says the dwarf as he starts to remove his coat. The Witch gives him a look. While she retains her aloof attitude, she’s clearly furious inside. Ginarrbrik wisely excuses himself to check the sleigh. We see Edmund smile for the first time since he sat on the Witch’s throne. The wolves, who have survived the river, appear with the fox in one of their mouths. “We found the traitor,” one (in the voice of either editor Jim May or fellow editor Sim Evan-Jones; IMDB isn’t clear) says to the Witch, “He was rallying your enemies in the Shuddering Woods.” In the book, the fox or the fox’s dramatic equivalent was caught celebrating Christmas along with some other Narnians. The movie, as I’ve mentioned before, emphasizes military matters over feasting. (I don’t mean that as a criticism, but I don’t mean it as a compliment either.) Shuddering Wood is the name of a location in the Narnia books though so props for that. The wolf drops the fox on the ground. “Ah, nice of you to drop in,” says the Witch. Here is one of the things that makes Tilda Swinton’s performance in this film so great. Given an obvious villainous one-liner like that, she manages to make it sound menacing. “You were so helpful to my wolves last night,” she continues, “Perhaps you can help me now.” The fox hangs his head. “Forgive me, Your Majesty,” he says. “Don’t waste my time with flattery,” says the Witch, sounding pleased, nonetheless. “Not to seem rude,” says the fox, “but I wasn’t actually talking to you.” It’s a great moment. The Witch’s head swerves to look at Edmund and she continues to stare at him in fury as she moves closer to the fox and points her wand at him.
“Where are the humans headed?” she demands. The fox doesn’t look like he’s going to answer. She raises her wand to strike but Edmund suddenly gets between her and her victim. “Wait! No, don’t,” he says, “The beaver said something about the Stone Table and that Aslan had an army there.” The fox shakes his head, but the Witch seems pacified. “Thank you, Edmund,” she says, “I am glad this creature got to see some honesty-before he died!” She touches the fox with her wand and to Edmund’s horror, he turns to stone. The book had mentioned this ability of the Witch’s in the second chapter and the movie had been gradually building up to it, but this moment is the first time in either version that we actually witness her turning someone into a statue and it’s still shocking. She then smacks Edmund’s face and tells him, “Think about whose side you’re on, Edmund, mine or theirs.” The book describes this as the first time in the story that Edmund felt sorry for someone other than himself. That isn’t the case in this movie as we’ve already seen him pity Tumnus, but he still gains more sympathy from the audience.
I’m not sure how Edmund could have had time to hear about Aslan’s army and its location, considering how quickly he got from the beavers’ house to the Witch’s. And I’m not even sure if there was a narrative purpose to him withholding the information from her before, only to spill it now. In the aforementioned earlier draft of the script, Edmund’s well-meaning confession comes before the melting waterfall scene and knowing which direction the other Pevensies are headed is how the wolves are able to catch up with them there. That would have made more storytelling sense, but I do prefer the pacing of the final version. “Gather the faithful,” the Witch instructs her police, “If it’s a war Aslan wants, it’s a war he shall get.” That’s another cliche line that Swinton makes chilling. She’s helped by the fact that as she says it, the Witch randomly zaps a passing butterfly, turning it into stone.
Next Week: We’ve Seen the Wardrobe. We’ve Seen the Witch. Now It’s Time for the Lion.
Bibliography
Lewis, C. S. (1950) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. HarperCollins Publishers.
Moore, Perry. (2005) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: The Official Illustrated Move Companion. Disney Enterprises Inc.
They never say his name aloud in the movie, presumably because American kids might not be familiar with it. Not saying the name allows them to assume it’s Santa Claus while English kids can rightly assume it’s FC.
The 1979 made-for-TV cartoon did the same thing though weirdly they still had another character refer to Father Christmas. Were they speaking literally or metaphorically?
Of course, I understand why writers want to include commentary about issues that are important to them, and I don’t expect them to avoid writing about those issues just to please me. But I don’t feel obliged to enjoy their work either.
In the later Narnia books, The Horse and his Boy and The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis would have his heroines, one of them an older Lucy, take part in battles albeit only as archers. This may not have been so much him changing his position as it was him realizing that keeping the girls away from warfare was an impractical rule when he was giving each book at least one point-of-view character who was a girl and giving many of them battles for climaxes.
The 1979 cartoon would also add an action scene at this point with the Witch’s sleigh almost catching up to the characters. But in that one, the coming of spring would save the day as it slowed down the sleigh. To be fair, while it seems like a bad thing at the moment, spring will also end up saving the characters by the end of this scene. Sort of. It’s kind of an odd plot point.
As Edmund enters the White Witch’s courtyard, he looks up and sees what appears to be a giant man about to hit him with a club, but it turns out to be a stone statue. Fans of the book will recognize this as Rumblebuffin the giant, who becomes a major source of comic relief in the second-to-last chapter. In this movie, he’ll just be a cameo since giving a lot of characterization to minor characters who aren’t introduced until a story’s climax doesn’t seem to work as well in a movie as it does in a book. (That’s one of the reasons literature is the more interesting of the two mediums in my opinion but never mind about that now.)
Edmund cautiously makes his way across the courtyard, which is full of stone statues of Narnian creatures, all of whom look as if they’re either about to attack or are cringing in terror. Since this version of the story hasn’t established that the White Witch turns people to stone yet[1]Though genre-savvy viewers probably guess she does at this point., this scene arguably doesn’t make the same impression as in the book but that doesn’t mean it makes a bad impression. Sheesh, you could argue it’s more interesting if we don’t know what the statues are right away. It’s a wonderfully eerie bit.
At one point, Edmund’s feet brush against a pile of charred logs on the ground. He picks one up and makes an ash moustache and glasses on the face of a stone lion. In the book, the reason Edmund does this is that he believes the stone lion[2]Who also becomes a source of comic relief at the climax by the way. is Aslan, the sound of whose name has filled him with such dread. But in the movie, we haven’t been told Aslan’s species yet, so this moment feels a bit random and doesn’t really fit in with the scene’s creepy tone. Maybe it would have been better if, as in the book, the lion were the first statue Edmund encounters.[3]This was so in an earlier draft on the screenplay.
In a great jump scare albeit one the book handed to the movie, Edmund tries to step over what appears to be a stone wolf, only for it to rear up, snarling, and pin him to the ground. “Be still, stranger, or you’ll never move again,” it says (in Michael Madsen’s voice), “Who are you?” Michael Madsen is the only voice actor in the movie whose casting I can’t decide if I like. He sounds suitably gruff and scary but something about his line readings bothers me just a tad. Maybe it’s because he’s the only Narnian in the film who sounds like he has an American accent. The others either speak with English accents of some sort or another or sound too generic to place.[4]Another exception is Kiran Shah as Ginarrbrik with his Persian accent. Since this wolf is one of the White Witch’s followers though it arguably makes sense to give him a different accent from the followers of Aslan. But, given the historical backdrop the movie has established, wouldn’t it make more thematic sense for the bad guys to have German or Japanese accents?[5]For the record, I don’t think either the movie or the book should be interpreted as a metaphor for World War II. That idea really falls apart if you think about it for any length of time. C. S. … Continue reading I guess that would have had its own drawbacks. Maybe it just bugs me that this wolf is written like a generic bad guy from a pulpy, even cheesy, action movie and has a voice to match. Of course, the character was always a generic bad guy but not a pulpy one. Anyway, Edmund hastily explains his identity and his relationship to the Witch. The wolf lets him up. “My apologies,” he says, “fortunate favorite of the Queen-or else not so fortunate.” That line is from the book. It’s kind of sad that that’s rare enough to be worth mentioning.
The wolf leads Edmund upstairs to an empty throne room and tells him to wait there. Once he’s alone, Edmund sits on the throne and grins, obviously imagining himself king. “Like it?” asks a cold voice. Edmund jumps up as the Witch enters, followed by Ginarrbrik. Since I just described the movie’s writing, for one character anyway, as being pulpy and even cheesy, I’m happy to say that the following exchange is one of the best written parts of the movie and even improves on the book by having the Witch toy with Edmund before unleashing her anger on him.
Witch: Tell me, Edmund, are your sisters deaf? Edmund: No. Witch: And you brother, is he…unintelligent? Edmund: Well, I think so, but Mum says-
“Then how dare you come alone?!” shouts the Witch. Edmund feebly protests that it’s not his fault as the Witch continue to lay into him. “I did bring them halfway,” he says, “they’re at the little house at the dam with the beavers.” Ginarrbrik raises his eyebrows and the Witch, after pausing and twiddling her fingers a bit, resumes her former iciness. “Well, I suppose you’re not a total loss then, are you?” she says. Then she turns back to her throne, clearly having no more interest in Edmund. “I was wondering,” he says, “could I maybe have some more Turkish Delight now?” The Witch turns to Ginarrbrik. “Our guest is hungry,” she says coldly. (Sorry for all the corny winter-related puns in this post. And right after I called the movie’s dialogue cheesy! Those puns are just so irresistible.) Ginarrbrik starts to lead Edmund out of the room at knifepoint, saying, “This way for num-nums!” In the book, it’s actually a different dwarf who brings Edmund food and drink. I kind of wish that could have been kept to show that the Witch has many dwarf minions, not just one, but fantasy movies like this are expensive enough without unnecessary speaking parts. Edmund and Ginarrbrik pause as the Witch calls, “Maugrim,” which viewers may remember was the name of the captain of her secret police. The wolf steps forward. “You know what to do,” she says. Maugrim howls and more wolves appear out of various alcoves and entrances. As Edmund looks on in horror, they run out of the room and out the castle. The movie does a good job of making them look scary except for one ill-advised slow motion shot where they’re obviously regular wolves and not evil. Slow motion is usually a bad idea in my opinion. It looks silly way too easily.
That is not the face of Evil.
“Hurry, mother, they’re after us!” cries Mr. Beaver as he bursts into his home with the non-treacherous Pevensies. “Right then,” says Mrs. Beaver and begins packing. “What is she doing?” Peter demands. Mr. Beaver just throws up a hand in exasperation. “You’ll be thanking me later,” explains Mrs. Beaver. “It’s a long journey and Beaver gets pretty cranky when he’s hungry,” to which Mr. Beaver says, “I’m cranky now!” As a fan of the book, I have mixed opinions about this scene. On the one hand, Mrs. Beaver calmly packing while everybody else freaks out about the coming secret police is one of the funniest parts of the book and I love that it’s included here. On the other hand, it feels like the comedy here is more at Mrs. Beaver’s expense than it is the book. There, when everyone else protests that they need to get away as soon as possible, she calmly explains that they have no hope of outrunning the Witch or her forces in any case and that their best bet is to “keep under cover and go by ways she won’t expect” and that it’d be foolish for them to leave without taking any food, all of which is true in the movie too but it doesn’t feel that way in the moment. The only ridiculously silly thing Mrs. Beaver says in the book’s version of this scene is “I suppose the sewing machine’s took heavy to bring?” Even that is somewhat understandable, given what the secret police did to Tumnus’s house. No sewing machine is mentioned in the movie. How do you write a version of Mrs. Beaver that leans into comedy and not include that hilarious line about the sewing machine? Pearls before swine, I tell you, pearls before swine!
The wolves arrive and start tearing through the walls of the house. (Don’t ask me why they don’t try breaking down the door.) But once inside, they find the place empty. One of them finds a cupboard opening to a secret underground tunnel, which sort of corresponds to the “old hiding place for beavers in bad times” in which our heroes took refuge for the night in the book. “Badger and me dug this. It comes out right near his place,” explains Mr. Beaver. “You told me it led to your mum’s!” says Mrs. Beaver accusingly. Do you see what I mean about the movie leaning into cliches about bickering married couples with these characters? Lucy trips on a root and when the others stop to help her, they hear that the wolves are now in the tunnel. In the book, our heroes leave well before the secret police arrive and are able to avoid them. While adding a chase scene is arguably part of making Mrs. Beaver’s preparations come across as sillier, I don’t necessarily mind since I love a good chase scene and while a chase scene is technically against the spirit of the book in that it’s not from the book, it doesn’t feel deeply antithetical to it or anything. Setting the source material aside, how does the ensuing chase scene work just as a chase scene? Well, it’s fine though I don’t think anyone would call it a highlight of the film.
For a moment, it looks like Mr. Beaver has accidentally led them to a dead end, but it turns out there’s a hole above. The group clambers out into another part of the woods and blocks the entrance with a nearby barrel. When they have time to catch their breaths and look around, they see that this little village is full of stone animals, including a stone badger. “I’m so sorry, dear,” says Mrs. Beaver to her husband. “He was my best mate,” he says sadly.
“What happened here?” asks Peter. “This is what becomes of those who cross the Witch,” says a new voice. It’s a fox (voiced by Rupert Everett.) This character will end up corresponding to a fox from the book but whereas that fox was a groveling victim of the White Witch, this one turns out to be a wily rebel against her. I like the character and Rupert Everett does a great job of voicing him[6]Though I’m given to understand that Everett himself, while eager to be part of an adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, was unhappy with the result, feeling that talking animals … Continue reading but I’m not a fan of the way he’s written.
Mr. Beaver: Take one more step, traitor, and I’ll chew you to splinters! Fox: Relax. I’m one of the good guys. Mr. Beaver: Yeah? Well, you look an awful lot like one of the bad ones! Fox: An unfortunate family resemblance but we can argue breeding later. Right now, we’ve got to move. Peter: What did you have in mind?
The term, “good guys,” feels too American to me to sit right in a Narnia movie.[7]“One of the goodies” might have been an improvement. Besides which, this whole exchange feels like something from a quippy action movie. Not that I don’t enjoy a fun quippy action movie now and then but it’s really not what I want from a Narnia adaptation. Basically, everything this fox says and a good deal of what the beavers say as well as anything out of Maugrim’s mouth feels like it belongs in a Star Wars-style action movie and not even a particularly distinguished one. Two of the screenwriters, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who would stick with this film series to the end, later went on to write Marvel movies and I’ve got to say, yeah, that feels about right.[8]I hasten to add that from what I’ve heard, some of their scripts for Marvel were really good with Avengers: Endgame even being put up for awards consideration. I hate myself for doing this but I’m going to have compare this movie negatively to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie, which was released the same year and was also based on a popular English children’s fantasy novel. For all that that movie irritates me, both as an adaptation of its source material and as an overall viewing experience, and as much as I prefer The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) on the whole, I must acknowledge that John Augst’s script for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory feels like it was written by a wordsmith with a specific style, not produced by some automatic Hollywood screenplay writing machine. The generic pulpiness of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe‘s script is particularly strong in this middle section so it’s a good thing it directly follows a really strong opening act, getting viewers invested in the characters, and is the most action filled part of the movie, making it easy to get caught up in the story and ignore the low quality of dialogue. For me, it doesn’t make the movie bad, but it keeps it from being as great as it could very well have been.
Back to the movie. We cut to the wolves bursting out the tunnel. They surround the fox, seemingly all alone, just as he’s finishing sweeping away the refugees’ footprints with his tail. (The movie doesn’t spell out that he’s doing that, but it can be inferred.)
Fox: Greetings, gents. Lost something, have we? Maugrim: Don’t patronize me. I know where your allegiance lies. We’re looking for some humans. Fox: Humans? Here in Narnia? Now that’s a valuable bit of information, don’t you think?
The voice actors do a good job of conveying that the idea of humans being something truly out of the ordinary in this world. As the fox speaks, we pan up to see that the Pevensies and the beavers are hiding in the branches of a tree. One of the wolves grabs the fox’s body with its jaws. Peter has to cover Lucy’s mouth to keep her from crying out and one of the beavers has to do the same for the other. I can’t tell which because apparently, I’m racist towards beavers.
Sorry. They all look alike to me.
“Your reward is life,” says Maugrim, “it’s not much but still…” The fox raises a paw and for a moment, it looks like he might betray the heroes but, no, he says they went north. “Smell them out,” commands Maugrim and the wolves toss the fox’s limp body aside and run off. (I don’t know why their noses can’t lead them to the tree. Just go with it.) Fortunately, the fox’s wounds don’t prove to be fatal. We cut to Mrs. Beaver tending to them as the characters gather around a campfire. The fox explains that the badger and the other stone animals were caught helping Tumnus. (Apparently, Tumnus wasn’t actually in his house when the wolves broke into it. They had to track him here.) “Are you alright?” a concerned Lucy asks the fox in response to his yipping. This is a neat bit of foreshadowing as Lucy will soon become something a doctor albeit because she’ll receive a magic potion, not because of any particular medical skill on her part.
“I wish I could say their bark was worse than their bite,” quips the fox. You see what I mean about this dialogue being really generic? That’s the most obvious and predictable joke you could make about doglike characters in this scenario! “Stop squirming! You’re worse than Beaver on bath day!” Mrs. Beaver tells the fox. “Worst day of the year,” Mr. Beaver confides to the Pevensies. I’m not proud that I laughed at that line when I first heard it, but I did, and it is refreshing to see Susan and Lucy smile at it after seeing them be betrayed by their own brother and chased by fearsome wolves.
“Thank you for your kindness but I’m afraid that’s all the cure I have time for,” says the fox, rising. “You’re leaving?” says Lucy, disappointed. The fox bows to her, saying, “it has been a pleasure, my queen, and an honor.” This is the first time in the movie someone addresses any of the Pevensies as royalty[9]Unless you count Ginarrbrik calling Edmund “Sire.” and it’s something of a cool moment. “But time is short,” he continues, “and Aslan himself has asked me to gather more troops.” The beavers are impressed by this news. “You’ve seen Aslan?” Mr. Beaver asks incredulously. “What is he like?” Mrs. Beaver inquires. The fox smiles. “Like everything we’ve ever heard,” he says. If my memory of the filmmakers’ audio commentary is correct, this exchange was something of a late addition to the movie in response to test audiences feeling that the character of Aslan hadn’t been built up enough. A common criticism of this adaptation from book fans is that it doesn’t do enough to establish Aslan as the awe-inspiring figure C. S. Lewis intended. While this little moment doesn’t render that criticism untrue, it’s still a nice gesture.
The fox also tells the Pevensies they’ll be glad to have Aslan on their side in the battle against the Witch. Susan quickly disclaims any intention of them fighting. “But, surely, King Peter, the prophecy…” the fox protests. “We can’t go to war without you,” says Mr. Beaver. All Peter can do is exchange a sad glance with Susan and says, “we just want our brother back.”
Edmund meanwhile sits in the White Witch’s icy dungeon with his legs chained. He gnaws at a hunk of dried bread. When it makes him gag, he tries to drink water from a cup but it’s frozen. Props to the adapters. The water wasn’t frozen in the book, so they actually managed to make Edmund’s sufferings worse. A prisoner in the adjoining cell asks for the bread if Edmund doesn’t want it. It’s Mr. Tumnus! (This is something of a change from the book which implies that Tumnus has already been turned to stone around this point. That’s just an observation, not a complaint by the way.) “You’re Lucy Pevensie’s brother,” he says. “You have the same nose.” Do Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley really have similar noses? I’ve never noticed. “Is your sister alright?” he asks. From outside comes the noise of wolves yapping. “I don’t know,” Edmund says miserably.
Tumnus and Edmund scoot away from each other as the Witch enters, followed by Ginarrbrik. In my last post, I criticized the decision to have the Witch’s fortress be made out of ice, calling it cliche for a winter-themed villain but the way the lighting in these scenes combines with her coloring really conveys that she’s in her element, making her extra intimidating, especially combined with the camera angles that emphasize her height. “My police tore that dam apart,” she tells Edmund, “Your little family are nowhere to be found.” The Witch grabs Edmund by the collar and lifts him into the air. (The character is noted for her strength in the books.) “Where did they go?” she demands. “I don’t know,” says Edmund. She drops him. “Then you are of no further use to me,” she says, raising her wand. Edmund is clearly seconds from being a lawn decoration. His mind races. “The beaver said something about Aslan,” he blurts out. Tumnus looks up and the Witch is rendered momentarily speechless. Another fan complaint about this adaptation is that it portrays the Witch as less frightened of Aslan than she is in the book, undermining the message that the powers of Goodness are stronger than those of Evil. Again, this critique has some weight behind it but, to be fair, the Witch’s reaction to the news of Aslan in this scene can easily be interpreted as fear and it’s a great dramatic moment.
“Aslan? Where?” she asks. Tumnus anxiously interjects that Edmund as a stranger to Narnia couldn’t possibly know that. Ginarrbrik hits him on the head with the butt of a weapon. (I’m sorry I don’t know that particular weapon is called.) The Witch turns back to Edmund. “I said where is Aslan?” In response to Tumnus’s desperation, Edmund backpedals, saying, “I don’t know. I left before they said anything. I wanted to see you,” he adds, trying to turn it into flattery. In the book, Edmund tells the Witch everything about Aslan and the Stone Table as soon as he meets her. The movie has him withhold information to increase suspense though it doesn’t really end up impacting the plot at all. After observing Edmund suspiciously, the Witch calls for a guard who I think is an ogre. This is another minor change from the book which doesn’t introduce us to the Witch’s non-dwarf, non-wolf followers until the story’s final third. The movie has them slowly start to trickle in, starting here though we won’t see them in great numbers, including the ugliest ones, until the same point as in the book.
The Witch orders the guard to release Tumnus. He smashes the faun’s chains while they’re still on his hooves(!) and drags him before her. “Do you know why you’re here?” she asks. “Because I believe in a free Narnia,” he says. Ugh! That has to be the clunkiest line in the movie and it depresses me that it was given to such a well-cast actor in the role of such an iconic character. The Witch points at Edmund. “You’re here because he turned you in,” she says, “for sweeties.” Then she has the guard take Tumnus away and orders Ginarrbrik to ready her sleigh. (“Edmund misses his family.”) As he’s dragged off, Tumnus looks reproachfully at Edmund who, once he’s alone, buries his face in his knees. This does demonstrate the White Witch’s sadism but as a way to make Ed feel guiltier, which I assume was the intent, it doesn’t really make sense. Technically, it was his siblings and the beavers he betrayed “for sweeties.” He just blurted out Tumnus’s secret without having any idea of the consequences. I guess you could argue that by joining with the White Witch he was betraying all of Narnia or something like that. I do understand why the screenwriters felt the need to do something to show that Edmund was feeling guilty since viewers of the movie don’t have the direct access to his thoughts that readers of the book do.[10]You could argue that at this point in the book, Edmund wasn’t really feeling guilty so much as he was regretting his misdeeds for selfish reasons but that may be overanalyzing.
We transition to morning when the other Pevensies and the beavers stand atop a huge rock bridge, giving them the lay of the land. (This scene is kind of notorious among the fanbase for its poor greenscreen though, personally speaking, it doesn’t bug me much.)
Mr. Beaver: Now Aslan’s camp is near the Stone Table just across the frozen river. Peter: River? Mrs. Beaver: Oh, the river’s been frozen solid for a hundred years. Peter: It’s so far! Mrs. Beaver: It’s the world, dear. Did you expect it to be small? Susan: Smaller.
That dialogue really doesn’t make sense. It’s true that in the Narnia books, the children who travel back and forth between worlds call going to the world of Narnia going to Narnia. But that’s just shorthand. Narnia is technically a country, not a world.
Meanwhile, Edmund exits the dungeon under the custody of Ginarrbrik and sees to his horror that the Witch has a new statue in her courtyard.
The Witch’s sleigh rockets out of the gates of her castle. Edmund is forced to sit at her feet. In the book, for purposes of stealth, she doesn’t use sleigh bells at this point. It sounds like she does in the movie, making her less smart but making it a better fake out for the viewers when…well, we’ll get to that in the next scene.
For the record, I don’t think either the movie or the book should be interpreted as a metaphor for World War II. That idea really falls apart if you think about it for any length of time. C. S. Lewis did allude to real world dictators in the last chapter of The Magician’s Nephew, his prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which Aslan tells two children from Edwardian England “Soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants…”
Though I’m given to understand that Everett himself, while eager to be part of an adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, was unhappy with the result, feeling that talking animals didn’t work in live action.
I hasten to add that from what I’ve heard, some of their scripts for Marvel were really good with Avengers: Endgame even being put up for awards consideration.
You could argue that at this point in the book, Edmund wasn’t really feeling guilty so much as he was regretting his misdeeds for selfish reasons but that may be overanalyzing.
