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I might have been exaggerating for dramatic effect when I said we were leaving behind the most consistently great part of the movie with the last post in this series. The scene of the Pevensies discovering that Tumnus’s house has been broken into and vandalized some time ago is quite effective in its ominousness.

Edmund accidentally steps on the picture of Tumnus’s father and sees that it’s been slashed. I assume that by having Edmund desperately try to rescue a picture of his father earlier the screenwriters were giving him an extra reason to feel guilty here. That doesn’t really make sense though since there’s no way Ed could know the faun in the picture was Tumnus’s father, let alone that said father was a soldier like his who may very well have died on the battlefield. Oh well. Interesting idea anyway.

Peter finds a note written in a rather jagged, fearsome looking scrawl pinned to the wall and reads it aloud. The language is from the book though somewhat simplified for pacing purposes.

The Faun Tumnus is hereby charged with high reason against her Imperial Majesty, Jadis, Queen of Narnia, for comforting her enemies and fraternizing with humans. Signed: Maugrim, Captain of the Secret Police. Long live the Queen.

Susan: Alright, now we really should go back.
Lucy: But what about Mr. Tumnus?
Susan: He was arrested just for being with a human! I don’t think there’s much we could do.
Lucy: You don’t understand, do you? I’m the human! She must have found out he helped me!
Peter: Maybe we could call the police.
Susan: These are the police.
Peter: Don’t worry, Lu. We’ll think of something.
Edmund: Why? I mean, he’s a criminal!

This is another strong dialogue scene that is true to the characters from the book.^[1]Well, except for Peter being a tad more flustered. I especially like the bit about the police, underlining how these kids are used to having adults help solve their problems and now have to solve them on their own, even be pitted against adults. In both the book and the movie, Tumnus’s trashed home and Maugrim’s letter mark a major turning point in the story. While the White Witch has been established as a threat to the characters already, her wickedness has been implied a lot more than shown and we get the impression the story is about to get a lot darker and more suspenseful. All that is well conveyed. Still, as a fan of the literary source material, I have a few nits to pick.

The bigger one is that it’s disappointing that all Edmund says is that Tumnus is a criminal. In the book, he actually makes a reasonable argument to Peter-or a reasonable sounding one anyway, pointing out that they’ve been dropped in a world about which they know nothing, that Tumnus could have been lying to Lucy and the White Witch could very well be a good person for all they know. He’s trying to delude himself, of course, since he wants her to have been the telling the truth to him about a crown and unlimited Turkish Delight. But readers can understand how he could delude himself and maybe even imagine themselves thinking along the same lines if they were in his situation. It’s regrettable that the movie cuts most of this in the interests of tighter pacing.

Another omission is that while Susan does immediately advocate going home after hearing Maugrim’s note in the book, she changes her tune shortly after though with reluctance.

“I’ve a horrid feeling that Lu is right,” said Susan. “I don’t want to go a step further and I wish we’d never come. But I think we must try to do something for Mr. Whatever-his-name is — I mean the Faun.”

This arguably makes her a more nuanced, interesting character than in the movie. Of course, the cinematic Susan will eventually come around to her literary counterpart’s perspective after she undergoes some development. In the book, while character development was implied for all the Pevensies, Edmund was the only one with a real arc and even with him much of it was offstage. The movie, as we’ll see, tries to give each of its leads a significant character arc except for Lucy and she has so many dramatic moments that it’s easy to forget she doesn’t technically have much character development. And to the film’s credit, I think Susan’s character arc is one of its best.

Anyway, the Pevensies hear a voice saying, “psst,” from outside. They glance out the door and see a robin, the first bird we’ve seen in Narnia, hopping up and down on a tree branch, chirping and seemingly beckoning to them. “Did that bird just psst us?” asks a bewildered Susan. They step outside and the robin flies away. In the book, the robin actually leads them quite some distance from the house before flying off, so distant in fact that they realize they’ve gotten lost. In the movie, it’s not even clear if the robin really was trying to communicate with them or if they just imagined it. Still, I’m glad the robin got a cameo in this adaptation since most leave it out and it’s very memorable in the book.

The Pevensies hear a twig cracking behind some rocks and the mysterious voice going, “psst,” again. Peter, Susan and Lucy draw closer together for protection, but Edmund doesn’t. This whole section of the movie does a great job visually portraying his isolation from his siblings. As with the reveal of Mr. Tumnus earlier, I feel like the music takes on a slightly over-the-top quality that gives away that this tense moment is building up to a comedic anticlimax.^[2]Well, it’s not an anticlimax in that what the characters are hearing is a big deal but it’s not something scary. What emerges from behind the rocks turns out to be a beaver. Peter bends down and extends his hand, going, “here, boy, here, boy.” The beaver stares at the hand before saying (in Ray Winstone’s voice), “Well, I ain’t going to smell it if that’s what you want!” I’m not a fan of this moment because in the Narnia books, C. S. Lewis states that talking animals^[3]He typically refers to them as talking beasts. can be told apart from dumb ones just by looking at their faces. Also, I’m not really sure if someone encountering a beaver in the wild would try call them like a dog or a cat. I mean, beavers aren’t as dangerous as wolverines or anything but they’re still wild animals. That being said, the contrast between the siblings’ different reactions to this reveal, with Edmund and Susan looking terror-stricken, Peter being embarrassed and Lucy just laughing, are pretty funny.

And it’s worth remembering this adaptation’s historical context and appreciating the animation of Mr. Beaver, as this character is called, and the story’s other talking animals. Previous adaptations could only have human actors in costume which didn’t really capture the Lewis’s depictions of them. While the CGI for the animal characters isn’t as convincing as that of Tumnus’s legs, I actually think they look more real than a lot of other CGI characters in modern family popcorn movies.^[4]I sometimes get the impression that modern moviemakers have just given up on making computer animated elements in their fantasies look real and solid. I’m so glad the first Narnia was made … Continue reading By the way, the book implies (and all but states) that the talking beavers are as big or bigger than the children. This is consistent with how talking beasts are portrayed throughout the Narnia books, but the movie was probably wise to have them be the size of regular beavers. They’d likely have looked terrifying otherwise.

Lucy stops laughing when the beaver calls her by name. He sadly hands her a familiar looking piece of cloth.

It’s the handkerchief she gave to Mr. Tumnus. “He got it to me just before they took him,” Mr. Beaver explains. “Is he all right?” asks Lucy. Mr. Beaver looks around warily. “Further in,” he says and hurries into the woods. Peter and Lucy automatically start to follow him. But Susan grabs them. “What are you doing?!” she asks in a muffled shriek.

Edmund: She’s right! How do we know we can trust him?
Peter: He said he knows the faun.
Susan: He’s a beaver! He shouldn’t be saying anything! Mr. Beaver: Everything all right?
Peter: Yes, we were just talking.
Mr. Beaver: That’s better left for safer quarters.
Lucy: He means the trees.

After exchanging helpless glances with Susan, Peter, along with Lucy, follows Mr. Beaver. The other two Pevensies reluctantly. As the sun sets, they arrive at Mr. Beaver’s house which sits atop a dam he’s built across a frozen river.

We’ve now come to a rare instance of the movie improving on the book’s writing. In response to the sight of smoke coming from his chimney, Mr. Beaver says, “Looks like the old girl’s got the kettle on, a nice cup of Rosie Lee,” which conveys more personality than just “it looks as if Mrs. Beaver is expecting us.” Then we get some dialogue similar to the book though not exactly the same. Lucy compliments Mr. Beaver on his home^[5]It’s Susan who does so in the book by the way. and he says, “Oh, it’s merely a trifle, you know. Still plenty to do, ain’t quite finished it yet. But it’ll look a business when it is done.”^[6]In the book, he just says, “Merely a trifle! Merely a trifle! And it isn’t really finished!” Mrs. Beaver (voiced by Dawn French) can be heard inside the house, saying, “Beaver, is that you? I’ve been worried sick! If I find you’ve been out with Badger again…” Her voice trails off as she comes outside and sees her human guests. “Oh,” she gasps, “those aren’t badgers. Oh, to think that I should live to see this day!” Then she turns on her husband. “Look at my fur! You couldn’t have given me ten minutes’ warning?” To which Mr. Beaver replies, “I’d have given you a week if I’d thought it would have helped.”

OK, let’s get this out of the way. I’m not a big fan of how the beavers are written in this movie. They’re the main comic relief, which is a bit of a stretch from their counterparts in the book, but I don’t hate the idea in the theory. After all, the literary Mrs. Beaver does have one hilarious line in the scene of her preparing to flee her home and a couple of fairly funny lines elsewhere. And what with the dramatic stakes having been upped and the characters about to be given their main goal, it does feel like the right time in the story to introduce new comedic supporting characters. I guess my problem is how cliche the comedy feels with the beavers being written like a stock old married couple. On reflection however, C. S. Lewis also wrote the beavers like a stock old married couple. (One of Mrs. Beaver’s humorous lines in the book is saying that Peter and her husband are acting “just like men” in letting the tea get old while discussing weaponry.) I guess my problem is that while the Narnia books do contain stock jokes about stereotypical married couples, etc., they also often display a more distinctive style of humor. (The wonderful character of Puddleglum in The Silver Chair with his weird combination of optimism and pessimism is the probably the greatest example of this.) This movie’s humor, on the other hand, even when it’s really, really funny, is basically all generic movie humor. And even when C. S. Lewis was making stock jokes in the Narnia books, they were still really funny. The bickering of the film’s beavers isn’t horribly unfunny or anything but neither does it bring the house down.^[7]From what I remember of the filmmakers’ audio commentary, part of the director’s reasoning behind playing the beavers so much for laughs was to get around viewers’ potential … Continue reading

Having said all that, I really do love the casting of their voice actors. I know that may sound strange in the case of Dawn French since she’s primarily a comic performer and I’ve just criticized the beavers’ comedy. But it’s arguably more important to have a hilarious performer when the writing for a humorous character isn’t all that hilarious and French. I also don’t feel like the quality of her line readings drops whenever Mrs. Beaver gets a serious moment, not noticeably so anyway.^[8]OK, French doesn’t give the most harrowing emotional performance ever or anything but it’s not like the movie was meant to be Schindler’s List with beavers.

The Pevensies find the beavers’ banter funnier than I do except for Edmund who remains sullen and suspicious as ever. Mrs. Beaver invites them inside for “some food and some civilized company,” the implication being she doesn’t consider her husband civilized. In a nice touch, Susan finds it easier to trust the practical, motherly Mrs. Beaver who is kind of her furry soul sister. She, Peter and Susan follow her into the house, but Edmund lingers outside. He’s noticed that the two hills the White Witch pointed out to him are within walking distance. “Enjoying the scenery, are we?” Mr. Beaver says, eyeing him suspiciously. Edmund doesn’t reply but silently goes into the house. This is a great moment original to the movie that establishes Mr. Beaver suspects Edmund’s treacherousness beforehand rather than just having him say he always suspected it after the fact as in the book.

Peter, Susan and Lucy are seated around the beavers’ dinner table while Edmund sits apart as usual. I’ve got to say the set design for this house is rather disappointing. It’s true that C. S. Lewis describes the pragmatic beavers’ abode as more practical than Tumnus’s, with no books or pictures, but his description also made it just as picturesque in its own way. You’d never guess that from this adaptation. Did the movie have to make everything inside the color brown? Maybe the problem isn’t so much the design as the pacing. This scene doesn’t really give us a good chance to look around the way we had with Tumnus’s cave.

“Isn’t there anything we can do to help Tumnus?” Peter asks. “They’ll have taken him to the Witch’s house,” explains Mr. Beaver, “and you know what they say. There’s few that go through them gates that come out again.” Mrs. Beaver, fearing that Lucy might be saddened by this news, rushes over with a plate of refreshment. “Fish and chips?” she says, proffering what appears to be fish garnished with woodchips. This may be a very brief moment, but it really irritates me. The book lovingly describes the meal of creamy milk, potatoes with “deep yellow butter,” freshwater fish and “a great and gloriously sticky marmalade roll” that the beavers give their human guests. The descriptions of food in the Narnia books are arguably a big part of their appeal and I resent this adaptation changing that for the sake of a pun and not even a particularly funny pun.

“There is hope, dear lots of hope,” Mrs. Beaver tells Lucy, referring to Tumnus’s fate, not the quality of the food. “Oy! We’ve got a right bit more than hope,” says Mr. Beaver. Then, leaning forward and lowering his voice, he says, “Aslan is on the move.” Now we come to one of the most memorable and lyrical bits of the book that is sadly kind of unfilmable.

None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream, it feels as if it had some enormous meaning — either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.^[9]This actually takes place before they go to the beaver’s house in the book and it’s implied to be part of why Peter, Susan and Lucy trust him while Edmund still does not.

The only way the movie could indicate emotions that specific would be to have each character say something like, “Wow! I don’t know why but when you said that name, I felt suddenly brave, etc.” And that could easily come across as clunky. Instead, the camera pans across each Pevensie’s face as music plays. Except for Edmund, each one instinctively smiles. I think that’s what they’re supposed to be doing anyway. But as much as I love William Moseley’s, Anna Popplewell’s and Georgie Henley’s performances in this film, their facial expressions just aren’t interesting in this moment. And while Skandar Keynes’s Edmund looks suitably wary at the mention of Aslan, that’s how he’s looked for several scenes now, so it doesn’t stand out much.

“Who’s Aslan?” he asks. Mr. Beaver laughs, assuming he’s joking, which doesn’t endear him to the boy. He’s astonished to realize the Pevensies really have never heard of Aslan. “He’s only the lord of the whole wood,” he says, “the top geezer, the real King of Narnia.” As a fan, I cringe at that “top geezer” line, given with what reverence the character of Aslan is described the beavers in the book. To the movie’s credit, I think the line may have been improvised by Ray Winstone. To the movie’s discredit, the improv could have easily been cut out and wasn’t. I do like the way Edmund frowns at hearing Aslan described as Narnia’s king since he’s after that title himself. “He’s been away for a long while,” says Mrs. Beaver. Remember what I wrote about Dawn French doing a good job with her character’s dramatic lines considering she’s mainly known as a comic performer? Well, that line is a good example. You really do get an impression from her voice that the citizens of Narnia have been regretting Aslan’s absence and yearning for his return for quite some time. “But he’s just got back,” Mr. Beaver explains excitedly, “and he’s waiting for you at the Stone Table!” Susan expresses surprise that someone important would be waiting for them specifically.

Mr. Beaver: You’re blooming joking! (to his wife) They don’t even know about the prophecy!
Mrs. Beaver: Well then?
Mr. Beaver: Look. Aslan’s return. Tumnus’s arrest. The Secret Police. It’s all happening because of you!
Susan: You’re blaming us?
Mrs. Beaver: No, not blaming! Thanking you!

If Mr. Beaver didn’t want that to sound like blame, maybe he shouldn’t have said it in such an angry voice. I’m kind of with Susan here. Anyway, Mr. Beaver explains that there’s a prophecy in Narnia.

When Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone
Sits at Cair Paravel in throne,
The evil time will be over and done.

“You know, that doesn’t really rhyme,” says Susan. “Yeah, I know it doesn’t but you’re kind of missing the point,” protests Mr. Beaver. There are Narnia fans out there, many of them perhaps, who cringe at that “doesn’t really rhyme” line as much as I cringe at the “fish and chips” and the “top geezer” lines since it amounts to a joke at the original book’s expense. But I don’t cringe. Actually, it really makes me laugh. Maybe it’s because Anna Popplewell has great comedic timing. Maybe it’s because I hate eye rhymes. For me, it’s one of the movie’s best jokes.^[10]As a poet, I would describe C. S. Lewis as a marvelous prose writer. Returning to the scene, “It has long been foretold,” says Mrs. Beaver, “that two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve will defeat the White Witch and restore peace to Narnia.” In the book, there are actually two (sort of) rhyming prophecies, one about the children and another about Aslan.

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

And the one about Aslan is actually treated as more important with Mr. Beaver mentioning the one about the Pevensies and Castle Cair Paravel almost as an afterthought. (“The quickest way you can help (Mr. Tumnus) is by going to meet Aslan. Once he’s with us, then we can begin doing things. Not that we don’t need you too…”) This is problematic for Christian fans of the books as well as non-Christian who really like the character of Aslan since he, corresponding to God, is supposed to be the ultimate hero. For what it’s worth though, you could argue that the fact that Aslan is God makes it self-explanatory why his return to Narnia would be a big deal and if the movie had to cut one of the prophecies, it was more important to retain the one explaining why four random kids coming to Narnia would be a big deal. “And you think we’re the ones?” says Peter. “Well, you’d better be,” says Mr. Beaver, “because Aslan’s already fitted out your army!” The book actually doesn’t mention that Aslan has any army until we actually meet them. As we’ll see, the movie really expands on the military aspect of the story. I’m not overjoyed about this since movies about war don’t interest me much but, to be fair, it’s not like there was no military aspect in the original book at all and a few of the other Narnia books have an even greater one.

Susan reminds Peter that the whole reason they were sent away from London was to avoid war. (You’ve got to love that bit of irony.) “I think you’ve made a mistake. We’re not heroes,” Peter apologetically tells the beavers. “We’re from Finchley,” adds Susan as if that inherently disqualifies them. (I’m not saying that to poke fun at the movie. I think the movie itself is poking fun at Susan.) She thanks the beavers for their hospitality in what C. S. Lewis would have described as “her most annoying grownup voice” but insists that she and her siblings have to go now. “You can’t just leave,” protests Mr. Beaver. “He’s right,” says Lucy, “we have to help Mr. Tumnus.” This is probably the biggest change the movie makes to the book’s story. The literary Pevensies never really express any enthusiasm about being the ones to save Narnia, but they don’t really question why it should be them or try to back out of it either. Truth be told from here on in the book, Lewis treats Peter, Susan and Lucy like chess pieces and doesn’t give them much in the way of inner lives. That never bugs me when I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but I can theoretically understand the screenwriters feeling like it was a flaw. I wouldn’t say the fairly standard reluctant hero arc they gave the characters, mainly Peter, was necessarily the best or the only way to fix that though. Still, it’s not a bad standard reluctant hero arc either. Some of it is quite touching.^[11]And if the word, standard, sounds too judgmental, I’ll readily allow that there were plots and characters in the Narnia books that were also stock plots and characters. Those just aren’t … Continue reading Peter and Susan are a lot more likeable here than some reluctant heroes. They don’t act annoyed by the beavers or anything^[12]Well, maybe Susan does a little but that feels broadly true to the character from the book series as a whole. and since they don’t have any obvious superpowers, it makes perfect sense that they wouldn’t believe they could help save Narnia.

I also don’t feel like Peter’s feelings of fear and uncertainty in the movie are that much of a stretch from the book’s character. When he’s called upon to rescue one of his sisters in a later scene, Lewis writes that “Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do.” Doing the brave and honorable thing despite fear is a minor theme in the book, as we saw earlier with the Pevensies deciding whether to try to help Tumnus or go back to their own world, one on which the movie expands, not something it pulls out of nowhere. It’s also worth noting that other good kings in the Narnia books express a sense of unworthiness when offered the role so this really doesn’t feel untrue to the books’ portrayal of leadership to me. And Lucy being the only sibling to instantly accept the Call to Adventure feels true to her role in the books too.

It’s possible, maybe even likely, that part of the motivation for this change on the part of the filmmakers is that they weren’t comfortable with the idea of the Pevensies deserving the roles of kings and queen just by virtue of being human and prophesied and especially with the idea of Peter deserving the role of high king just by virtue of being firstborn. Having the characters themselves question that was a way of making them more relatable from their point of view. You can definitely argue that C. S. Lewis was too enamored of the idea of natural hierarchies himself to convey their romantic appeal to anyone who didn’t already share his feelings.^[13]Though the Narnia books certainly don’t suffer from this anywhere near as much as That Hideous Strength does. You can also definitely argue that modern screenwriters are too skeptical about the idea of natural hierarchies and that their fantasies would be better if they just relax and accept them, if only for the sake of their stories. I can see both sides. There’s a school modern criticism that is skeptical of the whole idea of prophesied heroes, seeing them as lazy storytelling. I sympathize with this criticism, but I also think prophesied heroes have a poetic appeal into which both versions of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the movie and the book, tap.^[14]In The Horse and his Boy, Lewis uses the prophesied hero trope with the twist that neither the reader nor the hero himself learn about the prophecy until after it’s been fulfilled.

While I’ll defend this added character arc on the whole, I have to admit that it comes with some major downsides. Having Peter initially refuse to go to the Stone Table means cutting one of his most memorable lines of dialogue in the book, where he tells the beavers that he’s longing to see Aslan “even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point.” The reason he might feel frightened is that in Mrs. Beaver’s words, “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.” In arguably the book’s most memorable line which is totally absent from the movie’s version of this scene, Mr. Beaver says that Aslan isn’t safe, but he is good. Thankfully, the movie will give us a version of that line towards the end, and it will be a nice moment though you could argue the movie won’t have Aslan scary enough for it to really make sense. Then again, you could say the same of the book. (Aslan’s scariness there is less about anything he does than it is the atmosphere his presence creates. More on this later.) Of course, there’s no reason the movie couldn’t have used the line both in this scene and towards the end. It’s not like the screenwriters are averse to callbacks. Another omission I consider unfortunate is not clarifying that Aslan is the one being (or possibly one of very few beings) that the White Witch can’t turn into stone. Without that established, it’s unclear why she doesn’t just do that and solve her main problem. Then again, this version of the story hasn’t established that she can turn anyone into stone yet.

Phew! Where we in the plot again? Oh yeah. Peter tells Lucy that there’s nothing they can do and that it’s time for them to go. He then turns around to see that Edmund has mysteriously disappeared.

“I’m going to kill him!” he grumbles. “You may not have to,” says Mr. Beaver ominously. “Has Edmund ever been to Narnia before?” We cut to Edmund making his way through the snow. As in the book, he’s left behind his coat but isn’t going back for it.

Mr. Beaver and the Pevensies are on his trail. They come to a stop when they see the White Witch’s house in the distance and Edmund about to enter it. I’m not a fan of the movie decision to have the Witch’s castle be made out of ice. It strikes me as obvious and cliche for this kind of villain. I’d have preferred a stone fortress like in the book. That would have been grimmer and fit in with her turning her enemies into stone statues. Stone also has certain grim connotations that ice doesn’t. After all, the latter melts and the former doesn’t. (I guess making her home out of ice is supposed to be a boast on the Witch’s part. “I don’t need to worry about it melting because my winter will never end!”) Even if the house had to be made of ice, I don’t love the design which looks more like a bunch of pointy ice shards stuck together than a building in which one could actually live. But, while it may lack grimness, the eerie light coming from the Witch’s house does allow the characters to get a good look at Edmund.

In the book, of course, the Pevensies don’t actually see him do this. Mr. Beaver just explains to them that he’s doing it. I actually love this change on the movie’s part. True, it’s questionable how the characters could run all the way to the Witch’s house, run back to the beavers’ house, pack and then flee before her police caught up with them,^[15]Actually, they don’t do that as we’ll see. but this way it feels a lot more credible that they would take Mr. Beaver’s word that their own brother could betray them and the visual of them watching Edmund, helpless to stop him, packs a real emotional punch. Lucy tries calling to him, but Mr. Beaver shushes her. Biting his lip, Peter starts to run after Ed, but Mr. Beaver stops him.

Susan: We can’t just let him go!
Lucy: He’s our brother!
Mr. Beaver: He’s the bait! The Witch wants all four of you!
Peter: Why?
Mr. Beaver: To stop the prophecy from coming true! To kill you!

They look back at the castle in time see the gates closing behind Edmund as he passes through them.

Susan lashes out at Peter. “This is all your fault!” she says. “None of this would have happened if you’d just listened to me in the first place!” I know there are some fans of the book’s characters who feel the movie sullies them by having them fight with each other too much. I guess this is an example of that, but I don’t really mind. After all, around this point in the book, Susan does say, “Oh, how I wish we’d never come,” which isn’t really an I-told-you-so line but, given her early suggestions that they leave, isn’t very far from it. And, given the characters’ terrible situation, it feels believable to me that they would panic and turn on each other this way. Peter and Susan look like they’re about to get into a really nasty tiff when Lucy interrupts them. “Stop it!” she says. “This isn’t going to help Edmund.” I love the irony of Lucy the youngest pointing this out rather than the older, more pragmatic and ostensibly more mature Susan. “She’s right. Only Aslan can help your brother now,” says Mr. Beaver. “Then take us to him,” says Peter before giving the Witch’s house one last look.

Next Week: Remember That Captain of the Secret Police Who Arrested Mr. Tumnus? We Meet Him.

Peter and Susan stop in their tracks as they find Lucy hugging the professor (Jim Broadbent) and sobbing into his stomach.

An angry Mrs. Macready appears. (“You children are one shenanigan shy of sleeping in the stable!”) The professor calms her down and sends Lucy with her to have some hot chocolate. Peter and Susan try to sneak away but he summons them to his office and not for hot chocolate.

Professor: You seem to have upset the delicate internal balance of my housekeeper.
Peter: We’re very sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.
Susan: It’s our sister, sir. Lucy.
Professor: The weeping girl.
Susan: She’s upset.
Professor: Hence the weeping.

Theoretically, as a fan of the book, I don’t really approve of making the character of the professor be this sarcastic, but Jim Broadbent’s dry deliver and comic timing are perfect, making this one of the funniest bits in the movie.^[1]The 1988 miniseries portrays the professor as a goofy, bumbling, childlike eccentric and from what I understand, so do many stage adaptations. That actually strikes me as further removed from the … Continue reading Also, as a fan of the book, I’m a little miffed that Peter tries to stop Susan from telling the professor about the Lucy situation, saying that they two of them can handle it themselves. In the text, Peter is actually the one who advocates getting an adult involved, saying, “it’s getting beyond us.” To be fair though, since Susan is generally portrayed as being less often right than Peter or Lucy, there’s something to be said for having her be the one who knows when to ask for help, making things more nuanced.^[2]You could also interpret Peter in the movie’s scene less as too proud to ask for help and more as not wanting his youngest sibling sent to an insane asylum.

The professor’s intrigued reaction to hearing that Lucy believes she’s found a magical forest inside the upstairs wardrobe clearly indicates the filmmakers had the entire Narnia book series in mind, not just The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Some fans might find the scene overly full of fanservice, but I think it’s fair to point out that C. S. Lewis hadn’t worked out the professor’s entire backstory when he wrote the first Narnia book and if he had done so, he might have this scene more like the screenwriters did. Speaking for myself, this particular fan enjoyed the service.^[3]In this context, “fanservice” means referring things that only fans will understand or remember, not anything to do with nudity.

Susan: She won’t stop going on about it.
Professor (awed): What was it like?
Susan: Like talking to a lunatic!

That line always makes me laugh. Anna Popplewell probably had the best comic timing of all the younger actors in this movie. Anyway, back to the conversation.

Professor: No, no, not her! The forest.
Peter: You’re not saying you believe her?
Professor: You don’t?
Susan: Well, of course not. I mean, logically it’s impossible.
Professor: What do they teach in schools these days?

That line was funnier in the book where it was something of a catchphrase for the character. (“I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.”) Peter points out that Edmund said he and Lucy were only pretending about Narnia. When the professor asks if Edmund is usually more truthful than Lucy though, Peter admits that it’s usually the other way around. “Well, if she’s not mad and she’s not lying, then logically we must assume she’s telling the truth,” Prof. Kirke says. This is his conclusion in the book too, but Peter and Susan brought up other objections to Lucy’s story there, mainly that there was nothing in the wardrobe when she showed it to them and that her alleged adventure took no time. I’m sympathetic to making movie adaptations faster paced than their literary source material but it’s unfortunate that it makes the character look less smart as they ignore obvious arguments to make. It’s also regrettable that the scene ends with the professor telling Peter and Susan they should believe Lucy on the grounds that “she’s your sister, isn’t she? You’re her family. You might just try acting like one.” In the book, it’s fun and surprising how the professor makes the case for believing Lucy with sheer reasoning and philosophical open-mindedness rather than appealing to sentiment. Plus, you know, Edmund is part of Peter and Susan’s family too and the professor isn’t advocating believing him. The book’s version of this exchange concludes rather unsentimentally with the professor telling them that a good way to deal with Lucy would be for everybody to try minding their own business. But I guess Hollywood can’t help itself from indulging in sappy speeches about love and family and good dental hygiene. Still, the movie’s version of the scene is still basically good in its way and, considering that it’s a dialogue driven scene, something that probably lends itself more to the page or the stage than screen, and one that isn’t strictly necessary to the plot, maybe Narnia fans should be grateful it was included at all.

We cut to the Pevensies playing cricket outside the next day or some days later. Edmund is preoccupied, doubtless by thinking about the White Witch and her succulent Turkish Delight, and gets hit with a cricket ball, something I’m sure we all enjoy seeing after what he did to Lucy. “Wake up, Dolly Daydream,” says Peter. Why the filmmakers thought expression from the book like “by Jove” and “Great Scott” were too corny to use but the modern audiences would accept “Dolly Daydream” is beyond me but oh well.^[4]I honestly do understand why the screenwriters didn’t use those expressions from the book since we now tend to associate them with comedic stereotypes of English people, not serious dramatic … Continue reading Edmund, probably trying to finagle a way to get back to Narnia, asks why they don’t play hide and seek again. Peter reminds him that he was the one that said it was a kids’ game. (Edmund didn’t actually say that that we heard but it’s easy to infer that he said it offscreen. The implication earlier was that Lucy was always trying to get her siblings to play hide and seek with her to their annoyance.) “Besides we could all use the fresh air,” says Susan. “It’s not like there isn’t air inside,” grumbles Edmund. That’s what I’d tell my mother when I was a kid and she pestered me to go out and get more fresh air.^[5]Though not those exact words. It didn’t work on her. As Susan says the fresh air line, she glances at Lucy who is apart from the rest of the Pevensies, seated under a tree and looking rather sad. This is a bit different from the book which states at this point in the story that Peter and Susan by avoiding the subject of the wardrobe had managed to reach an understanding with her. I can understand the movie feeling that this would have been too time consuming to show. It’s also possible they felt having the characters be estranged for longer would make for better drama.

Peter pitches the ball again and this time Edmund hits it, smashing one of the stained-glass windows of the professor’s house in the process. Lucy’s expression when she looks up suggests she’s happy to see him get in trouble.

The Pevensies go inside to the scene of the crime and find that the cricket ball has also knocked over a suit of armor. Before Peter and Edmund can argue about which of them is at fault here, Mrs. Macready-or the Macready as they refer to her-is heard coming and they make a run for it. In the book, the characters are trying to avoid her because she’s giving a tour of the old house and has instructed them to keep out of her way.^[6]A suit of armor does play a role in the book’s version of the scene albeit an inconsequential one. Edmund and Peter are looking at it “and wondering if they could take it to bits” … Continue reading I’ve read some fans opine that this change makes the characters sillier and considerably less mature than in the source material. (After all, it’s not like they can avoid facing up to the consequences for long, staying in the house as they are.) For whatever reason though, this doesn’t bug me. Maybe it would bug other viewers less if the movie made it clearer that we were supposed to laugh at the characters’ immaturity rather than playing exciting chase music on the soundtrack. I’ve got to say I love that music though. I also love the way no matter which direction the Pevensies run in this scene, they always seem to hear footsteps coming towards them, forcing them to change direction until they’re finally forced into the wardrobe room. This really captures the book’s equivalent scene which I mentioned in a previous post. (“Whether it was that they lost their heads or that Mrs. Macready was trying to catch them
or that some magic in the house had come to life and was chasing them into Narnia they seemed to find themselves being followed everywhere…”)

Edmund doesn’t stop running once they’re in the room but heads straight for the wardrobe flings open the door and impatiently urges the others to get inside. Doubtless, he’s thrilled by this unexpected opportunity to take his siblings to the Witch’s house and become king.^[7]Could he have deliberately broken that window to orchestrate this? Nah, that’d be crazy! This is actually a tad different from the book. There, once Peter and Susan start to notice that it’s strangely cold and wet in the back of the wardrobe, Edmund actually says, “Let’s get out. They’ve gone,” his reluctance to let his older brother and sister know of his dishonesty momentarily winning out of over his lust for power and Turkish Delight. I like that kind of complex characterization in a book, but I imagine it would have just been confusing in a movie where it’s harder to establish Edmund’s goals. Anyway, Susan expresses incredulity at the suggestion they hide in the wardrobe but ultimately that’s what they do when they hear footsteps outside the door. As the children squeeze in together, Peter and Susan fall backwards and land in Narnia. They rise and gape at the landscape in amazement. This may not be quite as magical as the scene of Lucy seeing Narnia for the first time^[8]It’d be weird if it was since we, the viewers, have now scene the place twice before. but that’s a high standard. It’s still a cool moment in its own right. In fact, this movie as a whole has a beautiful, childlike sense of awe and wonder.^[9]This is especially impressive considering that the director’s main claim to fame prior to this was codirecting the Shrek movies, much of the comedy of which was about deflating childlike awe … Continue reading “Impossible,” breathes Susan. (Remember that line for the climax.)

“Don’t worry,” says Lucy, “I’m sure it’s just your imagination.” That line makes her sound smugger and more vindictive than her character in the book. Some fans may object to that. What reconciles me to it is that both this movie and its two sequels will make Lucy the most idealized Pevensie, which she was in the books too but not quite to the same extent.^[10]In the cinematic Voyage of the Dawn Treader, her main flaw will be that she doesn’t realize her own awesomeness. Suffice to say her weakness in the literary version was related but somewhat … Continue reading It’s good to have reminders that she’s not completely perfect. “I don’t suppose saying we’re sorry would quite cover it,” says Peter. That line could have easily sounded glib, but I have to give credit to William Moseley (and maybe to director Andrew Adamson.) He actually makes it sound like a heartfelt apology.^[11]It may be significant that in both the book and the movie, Peter apologizes to Lucy, but Susan doesn’t. “No, it wouldn’t,” says Lucy before hitting him with a snowball, “but that might!” Peter and Susan laugh and start making snowballs of their own. It’s a nice, joyful moment. Edmund, looking sulky, refrains from joining the snowball fight and looks for the two hills the Witch pointed out to him. He’s interrupted by Susan throwing a snowball at him. “Stop it!” he cries, unwisely drawing attention to himself.

“You little liar!” says Peter. In the book, he and Susan don’t figure out that he lied about Narnia until he mentions that they should go near the lamppost, something Lucy never mentioned to any of them. I kind of enjoyed that since it’s fun to see Edmund accidentally give himself away after he’s been such a jerk. But I also understand the screenwriters feeling that Susan and Peter would naturally realize that he’d been lying once they saw Narnia for themselves. You could argue they tried to keep to the spirit of the book’s scene by having them only stop to realize Edmund’s duplicity after he draws their attention to himself. Peter insists Edmund apologize to Lucy. When he doesn’t, he moves toward him threateningly, Edmund quickly acquiesces. As you can guess, his apology doesn’t sound very sincere. “That’s alright,” says Lucy with a smirk. “Some little children just don’t know when to stop pretending.” Again, that makes her sound more vindictive than in the book though I doubt anyone watching isn’t on her side.

As in the book, Susan the peacekeeper tries to change the subject at this point. “Maybe we should go back,” she says. “Shouldn’t we at least take a look around?” asks Edmund, gesturing in the broad direction of the Witch’s house. “I think Lucy should decide,” says Peter, much to her gratitude. “I’d like you all to meet Mr. Tumnus,” she says. Susan objects to hiking in the snow in her summer clothing. “I’m sure the professor won’t mind us using these,” Peter says as he passes out fur coats. “Anyway, if you think about it logically, we’re not even taking them out of the wardrobe.” In the book, it’s Susan who makes that suggestion. It might have been nice to keep that since in both the books and this movie, Peter is portrayed as being right more often than Susan and this would have been an opportunity to make their relationship more nuanced and show a good side to her practicality. “But that’s a girl’s coat,” Edmund objects when Peter hands him the garment. “I know,” says Peter. The I’ll-Get-You-For-This look Edmund gives him is perfect.

We get a little montage of Lucy leading the others through the forest as the musical theme from the opening credits returns. It does a good job of showing that she and Peter are delighted with Narnia, Edmund is unhappy, and Susan is somewhere in between.

As they’re in sight of cave, Lucy is telling her siblings how great it’ll be at Tumnus’s. Her voice trails off as she sees that the door to his home has been torn off its hinges. She gasps and runs toward the cave.

I’m sorry to say we are now leaving behind the most consistently strong portion of this movie. That’s not to say that everything from here on is going to be weak. Some of it will be wonderful. But it will be a long time before we get as many scenes in a row that I consider great as we’ve covered in these first four posts.

Next Week: We Take a Break from Narnia for Valentine’s Day

Lucy bursts out of the wardrobe, not noticing in her haste that it’s still raining outside and Peter, whom you’ll remember was “it” in hide and seek, can be heard finishing counting to one hundred. “It’s all right!” she calls as she runs down the halls. “I’m back!” To her surprise, Edmund pokes his head out from behind a tapestry and hisses, “Shut up! He’s coming!” Peter does indeed come around the corner and see both of them. (This probably could have been staged a little better since it looks like Edmund had a good couple of seconds to pull his head back in first.)

Peter: You know, I don’t think you two have quite got the idea of this game.
Lucy: Weren’t you all wondering where I was?
Edmund: That’s the point! That was why he was seeking you!
Susan (emerging from her hiding place): Does this mean I win?
Peter: I don’t think Lucy wants to play anymore.
Lucy: I’ve been gone for hours.

You guessed it. No time has passed while she was in Narnia.^[1]I mean, you probably didn’t need to guess since this is a famous story. But let’s pretend it’s not.

After hearing her story (offscreen), they investigate the wardrobe but when they pull back the coats, there’s nothing but your average, everyday back of a wardrobe. Susan even knocks on it and so does Edmund from the other side. “Lucy, the only wood in here is the back of the wardrobe,” Susan says. “One game at a time, Lu,” says Peter affectionately, “we don’t all have your imagination.” Edmund just rolls his eyes in disgust. While the dialogue is different from that of the book, I love that the movie keeps each siblings having a different reaction to Lucy’s crazy story, Susan’s being more schoolmarmish, Peter’s more indulgent and Edmund’s simply rude. It’s a great way to demonstrate their individual personalities. They’re all about to walk out of the spare room when Lucy protests that she wasn’t imagining. “That’s enough,” says Susan sternly. Mature viewers can tell that her sternness comes from fear for her sister’s sanity, but Lucy thinks Susan is angry at her. “I wouldn’t lie about this,” she cries, aghast. “Well, I believe you,” says Edmund. “Didn’t I tell you about the football field in the bathroom cupboard?” Peter pulls him aside to tell him off.

Peter: Oh, would you just stop? You just have to make everything worse, don’t you?
Edmund: It was just a joke.
Peter: When are you going to learn to grow up?
Edmund: Shut up! You think you’re Dad but you’re not!

Edmund storms out of the room. “Well, that was nicely handled,” says Susan and stalks off herself. (I’m not really sure why she should be mad at Peter in this moment, but the movie wants the scene to be as sad as possible.) Peter turns to a rather small and pathetic looking Lucy. “But it really was there,” she says.^[2]And somewhere out there Candace Flynn nods and sighs in sympathy. “Susan’s right, Lucy,” says Peter, “that’s enough.” The scene is a great tearjerker.

In the book, Peter and Edmund don’t actually have a big fight until after Lucy’s second trip to Narnia. I feel like that made more emotional sense since Edmund’s misbehavior had been building for longer but there’s definitely something to be said for making him as mad at Peter as possible right before the following scene.

We see Lucy lying awake at night, wondering about what happened. Finally, she gets up, pushes aside a pair of bedroom slippers with her feet and takes out a pair of boots from under the bed, a great wordless way of telling us her plans. She makes her way down the hall with a candle. Edmund emerges from the bathroom in time to see her^[3]Trivia Time: Reports on early screenings made some fans worried that the audible toilet flush in this moment would be an example of bathroom humor but thankfully in context, it doesn’t come … Continue reading and, grinning, follows her on tiptoe. Because of the adaptation’s compressed timeframe, he hasn’t been mercilessly teasing Lucy about her story for as long as in the book and as a result doesn’t come across as unlikeable, especially since the movie starts off by giving him a sympathetic quality. (He misses his father.) Still, it’s not a completely whitewashed take on the character.

In the spare room, Lucy cautiously approaches the wardrobe and opens the door, scared she’ll find the same thing as last time. Suddenly, a gust of wind from within the wardrobe blows out her candle. The music rises ecstatically as Lucy’s face lights up and she clambers inside. This is fairly different from how the book portrays this scene, but I love it.

Edmund opens to the door to spare room just in time to see Lucy enter the wardrobe and close the door behind, leaving it open just a crack. He jumps inside, yelling “boo” but gets no response. “I hope you’re not afraid of the dark,” he taunts, closing the door all the way behind him. The book emphasizes the fact that Edmund closes the wardrobe door all the way, making it harder for him get out again, to show that he’s not as mentally superior to Lucy as he believes. Sure enough, he gets lost in all the fur coats and tumbles out on his keister into Narnia. “Lucy? I think I believe you now,” he calls as he wanders the woods. When I first saw the movie, I laughed at that line but also felt it made Edmund more of a caricature than he was in the book. On reflection though, I feel like it was necessary to convey that he dislikes admitting he’s wrong and only does so because he’s afraid of being alone in this strange place, something that might not have registered otherwise. And it is a really funny line.

Edmund wanders past the lamppost and hears the sound of sleighbells in the distance. Suddenly a sleigh drawn by white reindeer comes barreling out of the mist, nearly running him over. We can only see who’s seated inside for a brief second.

After the sleigh passes Edmund, it stops, and the driver gets out. It’s a dwarf (Kiran Shah) wearing a red cap with tassel but don’t get the idea he’s one of Santa’s elves. The first thing he does is chase after Edmund and pin him to the ground, presumably as punishment for getting in his way.

“What is it now, Ginarrbrik?” asks a beautiful but bored sounding voice from the sleigh. “Make him let me go!” cries Edmund. “I didn’t do anything wrong!” “How dare you address the queen of Narnia?” Ginarrbrik snarls. (This dwarf wasn’t given a name in the book by the way. When christening him for the movie, the filmmakers took inspiration from Nikabrik, the name of another evil dwarf from Prince Caspian.) “I didn’t know,” says Edmund. “You will know her better hereafter,” says Ginarrbrik, raising his knife. “Wait!” the voice suddenly cries urgently. The dwarf allows Edmund to sit up and see the inhumanly tall woman (Tilda Swinton) who has risen from the sleigh.

OK, I love most of the makeup work in this movie, but I’ve never loved the look of this White Witch. It doesn’t look as bad in this scene as in some others, but her skin doesn’t look so much white (“Not merely pale but white,” the book stresses, “like snow or paper or icing sugar”) as gray and the effect is less beautiful than grotesque. Her wig looks downright terrible and if they really couldn’t use the actress’s real hair, why not give her either dark hair to contrast with the white skin and polar bear fur coat or white hair to match them? Blonde hair just doesn’t go well with the rest of her color scheme. I can only assume they wanted her to have dreadlocks in the belief that they would suggest icicles. Her crown by the way is made of actual icicles.^[4]In-universe, I mean. I assume Tilda Swinton did not wear actual icicles when filming this. That wouldn’t have been practical. This differs from her golden crown in the book but I see the symbolic appeal of her crown melting as her spell on Narnia break and spring returns. Whatever problems I have with the Witch’s appearance, Tilda Swinton delivers in spades, bringing a very powerful screen presence to the role. She’s not exactly the White Witch from the book, being chillier^[5]Forgive me for the obvious and irresistible pun., more aloof and emotionally undemonstrative but she makes for a great villain in her own right. The Witch in the 1988 miniseries of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was performed in a very broad, pantomime villain way and in the 1979 cartoon, seemingly the only direction the voice actress received was to scream louder.^[6]I regret to say that since director Bill Melendez did a lot of great work for the Peanuts and Garfield franchises. I prefer Swinton’s White Witch to those though if I were directing my own adaptation, I’d aim for a happy medium between the two takes on the character as that’s the impression I get from the book.

Witch: What is your name, Son of Adam?
Edmund: Edmund
Witch: And how, Edmund, did you come to enter my dominion?
Edmund: I’m not sure. I was just following my sister.
Witch: Your sister? How many of you are there?
Edmund: Four. Lucy’s the only one that’s been here. She said she met some faun called Tumnus. Peter and Susan didn’t believe her. I didn’t either.
Witch: Edmund, you look so cold. Come and sit with me.

In the book, Edmund only tells the Witch all the information about his siblings and Tumnus after he’s grown comfortable with her. I feel like that makes more sense than the way he just blurts everything out right away here. Actually, this whole scene is staged quite differently from the book though some of the initial dialogue is similar. There it was the Witch who ordered the dwarf to stop the sleigh and angrily interrogated Edmund. The movie avoids having her come across as obviously evil right off the bat though I suspect the fact that she employs such a violent chauffeur tips off many viewers. (I suspect they also wanted to add more action to the story by having the dwarf chase down Edmund and almost kill him.) I hesitate to say this improves on the book since I never feel like the scene needs improvement when I read it. But I never wish the movie had stuck closer to the text when I watch this scene. (Well, not that part of it anyway.) The Witch initially looks and sounds quite neutral when she questions Edmund. Then when she invites him to sit with her for warmth, she sounds downright friendly. But when she turns her face away, we briefly see how frightened she really is by Edmund’s appearance in her realm and what he’s told her.

The Witch wraps a nervous Edmund in her mantle and offers him something warm to drink. She produces a little silver bottle and lets a drop of it fall on the ground, magically creating a goblet of refreshment. According to the book, “Edmund saw the drop for a second in mid-air, shining like a diamond. But the moment it touched the snow there was a hissing sound and there stood a jeweled cup full of something that steamed.” This obviously brings to mind a stage effect with the cup appearing in a puff of smoke, which is unusual for C. S. Lewis who typically used the medium of literature for things that would have been impossible (in his day anyway) for television, movies and the stage. The adaptation arguably improves on the description by having the goblet slowly materialize before our eyes and fill up with liquid.

Ginarrbrik hands it to Edmund with grudging respect. The Witch tells him she can make anything he’d like. “Can you make me taller?” asks Edmund. That’s a great line original to the movie as it reinforces the character’s resentment of his older siblings. The Witch clarifies that she can make anything he’d like to eat, and Edmund asks for Turkish Delight. She creates a box of it which the dwarf hands to Edmund. Ginarrbrik then throws away the cup (even though it looks like Edmund barely drank any.) It turns into snow as soon as it hits a tree. This could imply that anything the Witch creates is an illusion and not real refreshment just like her false kindness. Or, given the story’s Christian themes, in its original form anyway, it could imply that only God has the power to create, and the forces of evil can only imitate His creation. Or it could be the filmmakers just thought it looked cool.

The Witch tells Edmund she’d love to meet his family. “Why? They’re nothing special,” Edmund grouses with his mouth full. “Oh, I’m sure they’re not nearly as delightful as you are,” says the Witch. Hilariously, as she says this, she takes Ginarrbrik’s cap from him and uses it to wipe Edmund’s sticky face, much to the dwarf’s dismay.

Witch: But you see, Edmund, I have no children of my own and you are exactly the sort of boy who I can see becoming prince of Narnia. Maybe even king.
Edmund: Really?
Witch: Of course, you’d have to bring your family.
Edmund (disappointed): Oh. Do you mean Peter would be king too?
Witch: No! No, no. But a king needs servants.
Edmund: I guess I could bring them.

In the book, the Witch says she’ll make Edmund’s brother and sisters lesser nobles under him. The movie makes her playing on his pride less subtle with the whole servant thing but I actually think making a movie version less subtle than a book is fine sometimes, even necessary. I don’t think as much while I watch as I do while I read so there’s something to be said for clearly spelling out some things. To Edmund’s disappointment, the Witch takes the box of Turkish Delight from him and gives it to Ginarrbrik who happily finishes off its content. Some fans of the book have objected to this, feeling it contradicts what Lewis wrote about the enchanted Turkish Delight, “that anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it, and would even, if they were allowed, go on eating it till they killed themselves.” I don’t really see how it contradicts it though. Maybe enchanted snacks are also how the Witch keeps Ginarrbrik enslaved to her. While the movie, not having a narrator, never specifies that the Turkish Delight is enchanted/addictive, that still seems to be the implication because otherwise I’m really not sure what it’s purpose in the story could be. Later in the book, a character tells Peter, Susan and Lucy that Edmund has “the look of one who has been with the Witch and eaten her food.” If I were adapting the story and couldn’t use a narrator, I would likely include that line and then expand on it, having him explain just what that means. Interestingly, most other adaptations refrain from spelling out the Turkish Delight’s exact effect on eaters too, perhaps out of concern that it would give the impression that Edmund’s misdeeds were out of his control.

The Witch points out two hills to Edmund, telling him her house is between them. “You’d love it there,” she says as she gently pushes him out of the sleigh, “it has whole rooms simply stuffed with Turkish Delight.” In the book, she also tells him not to tell his siblings about her before he brings them to the house because “If your sister has met one of the Fauns, she may have heard strange stories about me — nasty stories that might make her afraid to come to me. Fauns will say anything, you know.” I wish this could have been kept as it makes the Witch smarter and, while it doesn’t exactly make Edmund smarter, it does show more how he’s able to delude himself into trusting her, helping us to-well, maybe not respect him but understand him. Edmund asks for some more Turkish Delight for the road. “No!” snaps the Witch before recovering her composure and telling him he doesn’t want to ruin his appetite. “Besides, you and I are going to be seeing each other again very soon, aren’t we?” she adds pointedly.^[7]This moment of the Witch losing her cool (sorry about making another obvious ice/snow pun) and then backpedaling is something of a tradition in adaptations of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but … Continue reading “I hope so, Your Majesty,” says Edmund. “Until then, dear one,” says the Witch, “I’m going to miss you.” This whole scene is just as great in its own way as the scene with Lucy and Tumnus was in its. It does a brilliant job of making the Witch seem mysterious and ominous without making her too intimidating just yet. That’s going to come later.^[8]In the book, I’d say the Witch is supposed to be intimidating at this point, but I enjoy what the movie does here in its own right. The music is also perfect. It’s not the sort of thing you’re going to want to listen to outside the context of watching the film, but it really adds to eerie feeling that something is off without yelling at viewers to run away in fear.

The Witch rides away in her sleigh, leaving Edmund staring after it. He hears a familiar voice calling him from behind. It’s Lucy, who runs up and hugs him, delighted to have someone else who’ll back up her story now. Edmund pries her fingers off. “Where have you been?” he grumbles, wiping sugar off his mouth. “With Mr. Tumnus,” explains Lucy. “He’s fine. The White Witch hasn’t found out anything about him meeting me.” Edmund looks wary at this. “She calls herself the queen of Narnia,” Lucy says, “but she really isn’t.” We actually haven’t heard Tumnus mention that little fact about the Witch to Lucy in this movie, unlike in the book, so I guess we can just assume it just came up sometime during her second visit. Lucy also told Edmund a lot more about the Witch at this point in the text and got into more reasons why she was evil, which I think would have made more storytelling sense. I guess her tone though when she says the Witch isn’t really the queen is enough to convey the idea that she’s really bad. Edmund certainly seems to get the idea, judging by his facial expression.

“Are you all right? You do look awful,” says Lucy. “Well, what do you expect?” Edmund snaps. “I mean, it’s freezing! How do we get out of here?” Lucy leads him away. We then cut to her jumping on Peter in his bed in the middle of the night with Edmund and Susan right behind her. (I mean, they’re entering Peter’s bedroom behind her. They’re not following her lead with the jumping thing.)

Lucy: Peter, Peter, wake up! Peter, wake up, it’s there, it’s really there!
Peter: Lucy, what are you talking about?
Lucy: Narnia! It’s all in the wardrobe like I told you!
Susan: Oh, you’ve just been dreaming, Lucy.
Lucy: But I haven’t! I saw Mr. Tumnus again and this time Edmund went too!

At once, everyone’s eyes are on Ed. “You saw the faun?” asks Peter skeptically. Looking like the proverbial deer in the headlights, Edmund shakes his head. “Well, he didn’t actually go there with me,” begins Lucy, “He…” Her voice trails off. “What were you doing, Edmund?” In the book’s words, Edmund “decided all at once to do the meanest and most spiteful thing he could think of. He decided to let Lucy down.”

“I was just playing along,” Edmund says. “I’m sorry for Lucy. I shouldn’t have encouraged her but you know what little children are like these days. They just don’t know when to stop pretending.”

Betrayed, Lucy runs out of the room, crying. Susan and Peter run after her. As he passes Edmund, Peter roughly shoves him onto a bed, which I’m sure everyone watching enjoys.

Lucy runs down the hall and right into…the professor!

Next Week: Lucy Has a Surprising Ally but Can She Convince Peter and Susan of her Honesty?

When we last left our heroes, they were eagerly anticipating exploring the grounds of their temporary home the next day. We cut from that to Lucy staring out the window at the thickly falling rain. Ironic changes of scene aren’t a very original idea, but the book practically giftwrapped that one for the filmmakers. Meanwhile Susan is quizzing her brothers from a huge dictionary while Peter slumps in a chair, bored, and Edmund slumps under a chair, bored.

Susan: Gastrovascular. (Pause) Come on, Peter! Gastrovascular.
Peter: Is it Latin?
Edmund: Is it Latin for worst game ever invented?

In my last post, I described the movie in a somewhat finger-wagging tone as not using much of the book’s dialogue, so it’s only fair to say that I think that conversation works better than the one between Edmund and Susan at this point in the text as it allows the viewers to infer what’s happening for themselves (Edmund is bored and Susan is unsuccessfully trying to help him entertain himself) instead of just spelling it out for them.

Anyway, Susan slams the dictionary shut with a frustrated sigh. Lucy suggests they play hide and seek. Judging by everybody’s reactions, that’s a game that she likes but no one else in her family does. “But we’re already having so much fun,” says Peter sarcastically. “Come on, Peter! Please! Pretty please!” says Lucy, giving him the puppy dog eyes. I feel like William Mosley and Georgie Henley kind of overplay their lines in that exchange. Peter’s line in particular would benefit from a dryer, less elaborately sarcastic reading. Anna Popplewell and Skandar Keynes have better comic timing. Nevertheless, all four actors are great in this movie.^[1]And, incidentally, I have to praise the movie for getting right that some of the Pevensies have dark hair and some golden hair even though it’s supposed to be Lucy with the latter, not Peter.

Despite Lucy being in the minority, the kids play hide and seek with Peter being “It.” This is a change from the book where they explore the house at this point and play hide and seek later (with Susan being “It” by the way.) Part of me regrets that alteration as exploring a huge house like the professor’s was my dream as a kid, but I understand the reasoning behind it. Having Lucy search for a hiding place gives her a more understandable reason for going inside a wardrobe than if she was just exploring.^[2]Though you could also argue that it’s thematically significant that Lucy is the only one of her siblings who thinks it worth looking in something so seemingly plain and ordinary. And, hey, we still get a nice little montage of the house. The set design works great even if it doesn’t use many details from the book at this point.

Susan hides in a window box. Lucy races toward a curtain but Edmund pushes his way in front of her and then claims that he got there first, further establishing himself as a jerk and one who’s less mature than he claims to be. Lucy runs down a hallway and tries two doors unsuccessfully before finding one that opens. In a later scene in the book of circumstances forcing the children to take refuge in the fateful wardrobe, C. S. Lewis describes it as if “some magic in the house had come to life and was chasing them into Narnia.” The other doors being locked here and even Edmund hogging a hiding place have a similar effect though I’m a bit confused about the layout of the house.

This hide and seek montage is accompanied by “Oh, Johnnie,” a song from the 1940s by the Andrews Sisters,^[3]Longtime readers of this blog may have already heard of them. adding to the period feel. As Lucy enters the nearly empty spare room, the song fades away, appropriately as we are now leaving the “period” portion of the story and moving into the fantasy portion. The scene, which has been fast paced thus far, slows down as Lucy walks over to the object at the end of the room and removes the dustcloth, revealing a big wooden wardrobe. It’s obvious that something momentous is going to happen and you could argue that it would be better if the movie were a little more nonchalant about the whole thing and we related more to Lucy’s shock when something magical happens in a minute. But I won’t argue that. As someone who knows what’s going to happen and what a big deal it is, I love this scene as it is. The music is really spinetingling. Uncharacteristically but in keeping with the scene’s slow pace, the movie treats fans to a couple of minor details from the book they wouldn’t expect to be included. There’s a half dead bluebottle on the room’s windowsill and when Lucy opens the wardrobe door, a couple of mothballs roll out. Of course, the bluebottle was entirely dead in the book, and it was only two mothballs, not three, but who’s counting?

Less true to the book is the design of the wardrobe itself. C. S. Lewis described it as “the sort that has a looking glass in the door.” The movie’s wardrobe instead has ornate woodcarvings on the door. In another nod to the fandom, those woodcarvings are images from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe‘s prequel, The Magician’s Nephew. You could argue that having the wardrobe look plainer would be more thematically appropriate, giving the message that It’s What Inside That Counts. But, as a fan for whom The Magician’s Nephew is the best Narnia book^[4]Well, actually, it’s tied with The Horse and his Boy in my personal ranking., I adore this design. (And to be pedantic, Lewis wrote that the wardrobe was “the sort that has a looking glass in the door,” not that it did have one.)

Lucy steps into the wardrobe, which is full of fur coats, leaving the door open a crack.^[5]She also leaves the dustcloth outside, which means Peter could easily guess someone’s hiding in the wardrobe. Rookie mistake, Lu. She feels for the back of the wardrobe-only to prick her hand with a pine branch! She turns around and finds herself in a snowy forest. In the book, it’s also nighttime. I wish that could have been maintained since there are few things that look as magical to me as snow in the moonlight. But the movie’s version of the scene is quite a magical scene as it is.^[6]And it’ll turn out there’s a storytelling reason behind the time change. A lot of the credit for that goes to Georgie Henley.^[7]For this part, the director had her blindfolded on the set until the actual filming so that her character’s reaction to seeing everything for the first time would be as close to the real thing … Continue reading As Lucy, she has to carry many of the movie’s big emotional moments during the first third and at least a couple of big ones during the final third and she pulls them off wonderfully, especially considering how young she was at the time. Of course, credit for the scene’s beauty also belongs to the set design, the cinematography and the music. This is one of the best parts of the film’s soundtrack.

After looking back to make sure she can return to the wardrobe and the professor’s house, Lucy ventures into a clearing where she finds a flickering lamppost of all things. As she looks at it, the silence of the scene grows ominous. And then it’s not so silent as Lucy can hear strange footsteps coming. The scariness of the music gains a slightly over-the-top quality at this point though, which I think clues viewers in that this is the buildup to a funny moment.

Sure enough, around a corner comes a faun (James McAvoy) carrying some parcels and an umbrella.^[8]If you don’t know what a faun is, I’m afraid you’ll have to google it. These posts are slow paced enough without me defining every mythical creature. Both Lucy and the faun scream at the sight of each other and dive for cover. Then they cautiously emerge and approach each other. Well, Lucy does anyway. This faun is one of the most iconic characters, if not really one of the most developed, in Narnia and the movie’s depiction stays pretty true to the book’s description. Goat legs. Curly hair and short pointed beard. Horns on the forehead. Red woolen muffler. Umbrella. Brown paper parcels. The movie also has him carry a couple of bottles, possibly of some kind of ale, which isn’t from the book but fits very well with its description. It also gives the character goatlike ears which I find goofy but thankfully not too distracting. C. S. Lewis also gave his fauns long tails, something not characteristic of traditional depictions of them. The movie ignores this, going for the more typical goat tail. It’s also worth noting that the Narnia books describe fauns as having reddish skin and roughly the height of children. Few adaptations of them keep this and neither do the movies.^[9]The 1979 made-for-TV cartoon of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the only one I can think of that tries to replicate that part of the books’ descriptions. Of course, it also gives the … Continue reading But none of those little nitpicks really bother me when I watch this adaptation, only when I really stop to think about it. On the whole, the movie’s version of this character looks and feels quintessentially Narnian. And the computer-generated faun legs are one of the special effects team’s greatest achievements in that it never occurs to me that they’re CG while I’m watching.

It helps that James McAvoy and Georgie Henley develop a nice friendly chemistry in the ensuing scene which is one of the most well written in the film, especially when it comes to humor.

Lucy: If you don’t mind my asking, what are you?
Faun: Well, I’m-I’m a faun. (defensively) And what are you? You must be some sort of beardless dwarf?
Lucy (indignantly): I’m not a dwarf! I’m a girl! And actually I’m the tallest in my class.
Faun: Do you mean to say that you are a daughter of Eve?
Lucy: My mum’s name is Helen.

Lucy’s failure to pick up on the faun’s awe and fear on learning her species/gender is great. After clarifying that she’s human, he breathlessly asks what she’s doing there. “Well, I was hiding in the wardrobe in the spare room,” Lucy begins. “Spare Oom?” interjects the faun. “Is that in Narnia?” I know I just praised this scene’s humor, but I’ve got to say that little misunderstanding was funnier in the book. (“If only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I should no doubt know all about those strange countries.”) Lucy asks what Narnia is and the faun explains that it’s where the country where they’re standing, “everything from the lamppost all the way to the castle Cair Paravel on the eastern ocean.” Amusingly, as Lucy takes in the landscape, she murmurs, “this is an awfully big wardrobe.” (Lucy says a similar line in the book but that’s before she sees Narnia.)

The faun introduces himself as Tumnus. Lucy tells him her name and holds out her hand for him to shake but he doesn’t know what to do with it. When she tries to explain, she has to admit she really doesn’t understand the custom either and they both laugh. Your guess is as good as mine why Narnians would have so many things in common with English culture but not handshaking. This is still a cute moment. “Well, Lucy Pevensie from the shining city of War Drobe and the wondrous land of Spare Oom, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?” Lucy is charmed but hesitates, remembering her siblings back home who have no idea of her whereabouts. However, Tumnus-or Mr. Tumnus as Lucy politely calls him-convinces her with promises of toast and tea and sardines. “It’s not every day I get to make a new friend,” he says. That line is a bit overly cute for my taste but oh well.^[10]On reflection, given what we soon learn about the land of Narnia, it could be an indication of how sadly isolated it is from the rest of the world. As in the book, the two of them walk off together arm in arm, going from a woody area and to a more mountainous one and Tumnus leads Lucy to his door which is directly in a mountain. Once she’s inside, he looks around the area warily before going in himself and locking the door.

Props to production designer Roger Ford. Tumnus’s cave is charming and looks just like the book describes. When Lucy scans the bookshelf, I was pleased to even see some of the titles C. S. Lewis mentioned.

While Tumnus prepares the tea things, he notices Lucy looking at a painting of an old faun whom he explains was his father. “He looks a lot like you,” says Lucy. “I’m not very much like him at all really,” Tumnus says sadly. When Lucy mentions her father’s fighting in the war, he tells her his also went to war, a detail that’s not from the book but which fits in with what the book implies about Tumnus’s father. “That was a long, long time ago,” he says, “before this dreadful winter.” I like that in this version of the story Lucy counters that winter has its good points like ice-skating, snowball fighting and Christmas. Tumnus sadly tells her that for a century Narnia has been in a state of winter without Christmas, much like North Dakota in April. “But you would have loved Narnia in the summer,” he says as they sit down by the fire and he pours her refreshment. “We fauns danced with the dryads all night and, you know, we never got tired. And the music! Ah, such music! Would you like hear some now?” In the book, Tumnus’s stories about Narnia in the summer are implied to be a lot longer and more detailed than that but I can understand the pacing reasons they had to be trimmed for the film. Anyway, Tumnus takes out a panpipe and plays a lullaby.

According to C. S. Lewis, “the tune he played made Lucy want to cry and laugh and dance and go to sleep all at the same time.” It’s doubtful any music could live up to that specific description but what composer Harry Gregson-Williams does is pretty awesome in its own way. The tune Tumnus plays sounds soothing enough that you can easily understand it working as a lullaby, granting that Lucy probably wouldn’t realistically nod off as soon as she does if there weren’t magic involved, but it also a sinister undertone that intensifies as the scene proceeds and the viewers become more aware of Tumnus’s malign intent. The movie tries to compensate for cutting the faun’s more specific descriptions of Narnian life from the book by having him (apparently) conjure up images of them in the fire. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t read the source material will understand what they’re supposed to be but it’s still pretty cool.

As Lucy falls asleep, Tumnus glances at the flames and suddenly the whole fire takes the shape of a lion’s head that roars angrily at him. Then every fire and therefore every source of light within the cave is extinguished. The movie never gives any explanation for what just happened though we can make educated guesses once we actually meet a lion later in the story. It’s a great moment in any case.

Lucy wakes up to see that it’s dark outside the window. “Oh, I should go,” she says. “Too late for that now,” says a voice. Lucy turns, startled, to see Tumnus curled up in a ball. Apparently, he’s been weeping for some time. In the book, he cries for a comically long time “so that presently Lucy was standing in a damp patch.” I actually think what the movie does works better, feeling creepier and less ridiculous.

Tumnus: I’m such a terrible faun!
Lucy: Oh no, you’re the nicest faun I’ve ever met!
Tumnus: Then I’m afraid you’ve had a very poor sampling.
Lucy (handing him a handkerchief): You can’t have done anything that bad.
Tumnus: It’s not something I have done, Lucy Pevensie. It’s something I am doing.
Lucy (doesn’t like the sound of that): What are you doing?
Tumnus: I’m kidnapping you. It was the White Witch! She’s the one who makes it always winter, always cold. She gave orders if any of us find a human wandering in the woods, we’re supposed to turn it over to her.
Lucy: Mr. Tumnus, you wouldn’t.

Mr. Tumnus’s guilty silence says apparently he would.

“I thought you were my friend,” says Lucy. I feel like she’s a little too cute in that moment. Actually, if I have a criticism with this generally great part of the movie/adaptation, it’s that it feels more like we’re supposed to be looking down at Lucy and going, “aww, how cute,” whereas in the book, we see things from her perspective and regard her as an equal during this scene anyway. That may be an inevitable side effect of the visual medium. Since I’m an adult now and even when the movie was released, I was older than Lucy, there’s no way I’m not going to notice the age gap between us as I watch. In the book, it’s easier to forget about things like that while reading. It’s also probably because Georgie Henley was the only one of the actors playing the Pevensies who was around the same age as her character in the book, the others being all teenagers at the time, so her youth stands out more.

Anyway, Tumnus looks at Lucy, then looks down at her handkerchief, then makes a decision. He takes Lucy by the arm and runs with her back to the lamppost. “The woods are full of her spies,” he warns her, “even some of the trees are on her side!” They reach the lamppost. “Can you find your way back from here?” he asks. “I think so,” says Lucy, “will you be all right?” Tumnus bursts out crying again, and Lucy again tries to comfort him. This is a bit of a change from the book where he goes into some detail about how the White Witch will punish him if she finds out about his disobedience. The book explains all of the Witch’s most terrible powers as soon as she’s introduced^[11]Though not her role of executioner which will be very important towards the end of the story. whereas the movie chooses to slowly build them up. Embarrassed, Tumnus hands Lucy back her crumpled-up handkerchief. “Keep it,” she says, “you need it more than I do.” Tumnus assures Lucy that no matter what happens to him, he’s glad he met her, saying, “you’ve made me feel warmer than I’ve felt in a hundred years.” This clarifies something the book doesn’t, that Tumnus was actually alive before the White Witch’s winter. In the text, it’s possible that the stories he tells Lucy about Narnia before then were passed down through the generations but it’s also possible Tumnus, despite his apparently youthful appearance, was really over a hundred years old.^[12]C. S. Lewis didn’t actually specify that the winter lasted that long until the book’s sequel, Prince Caspian, so it’s possible he didn’t originally intend it when writing The … Continue reading After a final goodbye, Lucy runs off into the thicket from whence she came.

Next Week: Edmund Also Goes to Narnia and Receives Some Refreshment.

This is going to be my longest, most ambitious series on this blog yet. For the first time since I tackled the 2009 A Christmas Carol, I am going to be analyzing a particular movie adaptation scene by scene and in this case, it will be three movies and I’ll be going into much greater detail. I’m not doing this because I love The Chronicles of Narnia book series by C. S. Lewis, or three movies adapted from them by Walden Media in the 2000s more than other books and movies I’ve covered in less detail. I do love the books but not necessarily more than, say, many of Charles Dickens’s novels. But those novels are so long that even having read them multiple times, I can’t remember every little detail when comparing them with their adaptations. The Narnia books, on the other hand, are all fairly thin and tell simple stories but simultaneously have a mythology behind them and enough intriguing details and depth that I can write entire blog posts comparing ten minutes of footage from an adaptation to the relevant sections of the source material and make them interesting (he said hopefully.) The Narnia movie series also strikes me as having an interesting evolution despite only lasting for three installments. Suffice to say, it started out very promisingly and ended up…well, we’ll get to that in time.

I’m now going to do something I’m really not supposed to do at the beginning of a series: Give away my overall opinion on my subject, the 2005 film, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. If you don’t want it spoiled, just skip down to the image of the movie’s opening logo. The reason I’m throwing away any sense of suspense is that I’m scared if I didn’t, I’d give casual readers the wrong impression. Some of these posts are going to make the movie sound like one of my all-time favorites. In others, I will sound completely dismissive of it. That’s because this isn’t one of those adaptations that every fan of the original loves. Really, there are no adaptations like that but there are adaptations that the majority of their original’s fanbase loves. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), on the other hand, captures some aspects of the book beautifully while not even attempting to capture others. Whether you, as a fan of the Narnia books, love it or hate it, is going to depend on which elements of them you regard as the most important, how tolerant you are of certain changes and whether you’re receptive to this style of filmmaking. Me, I love the movie-or at least I love large sections of it. But there are legitimate reasons some fans regard it as a poor adaptation and to accurately analyze it, I have to get into those too.

Let’s begin.

We open in a misty night sky as ominous music plays.

Then we get an even more ominous sight: German aircraft bombers circa 1940 cutting through the mist.

They drop bombs on the city of London below. We get our first look at one of our four main characters, a young boy called Edmund Pevensie (Skandar Keynes.)

His terrified mother (Judy McIntosh) pulls him away from the window and calls to her oldest child, Peter (William Moseley), that they all have to get to the bomb shelter outside their house. The youngest child, Lucy (George Henley), is hiding under her bed covers and crying for her mother. Susan (Anna Popplewell), the second oldest sibling, runs into the room, looking for essentials to save. When she notices Lucy, she angrily grabs her and drags her out.

Eventually these characters will be dubbed Susan the Gentle and Lucy the Valiant, so I like to imagine the director, Andrew Adamson, wanted to introduce them when they’re behaving, respectively, ungently and unvaliantly^[1]Not that I blame either girl under the circumstances. as a demonstration of how far they have to go. But maybe that’s reading too much into this. Anyway, the Pevensies race outside to the shelter as bombs rain down on their neighborhood. Suddenly, Edmund says, “wait! Dad!” and runs back into the house to his mother’s consternation. To her further consternation, Peter goes after him. You may think Edmund’s actions seem pretty reasonable if someone has been left behind in the house, but it turns out it’s not their actual father Edmund is going after but a photo of a man in an RAF uniform, possibly the only thing this family will have to left to remember their patriarch before long.

Peter pulls Edmund to the floor just in time to protect him from a bomb landing across the street.

The picture frame is shattered but Edmund is able to grab the picture itself before Peter drags him to the shelter, throws him on the floor and royally chews him out for his recklessness. We’ll soon see that Edmund is normally quite argumentative and snarky, but in this scene he’s too devastated to respond. “Why can’t you just do as your told?” Peter concludes before slamming the door and ending the scene.

I know that as a fan of the book, I’m supposed to dislike this opening since air raids are only mentioned in one sentence there, though they do set the plot in motion. It’s easy to be cynical and say the filmmakers only created this scene because they wanted there to be more action in the story and the first third or so of the book is particularly lacking in that. But when I actually watch the movie, I can’t care. It’s a gripping beginning that gets me invested in these characters right off the bat.

The next scene, which is much calmer, shows Paddington Station full of young evacuees about to be sent from London, bidding farewell to their parents. Among them, of course, are the four Pevensies.

Edmund resents having to leave and is sulking, even going so far as to tell his mother, “Dad wouldn’t make us go.”^[2]The 1988 miniseries of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe also portrayed Edmund as being annoyed over having to leave London and, in another similarity, also portrayed Lucy as reluctant to leave … Continue reading “You will listen to your brother, won’t you?” she says. Edmund doesn’t answer but his frown tells us everything we need to know. This establishes Edmund’s main flaw, his resistance to authority. He’s so resentful about this he even resists his poor mother’s attempt to kiss him goodbye.

She gives each of her children a last hug. When it’s Peter’s turn, she says to him, “promise me you’ll look after the others.” “I will, Mum,” he replies tearfully. I know as a fan of the book I should disapprove of all this. On paper, I find the scene pretentious, serving mainly to show off how much research the filmmakers did on the time period, and needlessly sappy. The circumstances of the children’s evacuation don’t really connect to the main plot, and we never learn in this movie what happens to their parents, so it doesn’t really go anywhere.^[3]By the way, it’s unlikely their father was a soldier in the book. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which apparently takes place a matter of years after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, … Continue reading But in practice, I love it. The musical score by Harry Gregson-Williams beautifully sells the emotion and all five actors give great performances. I especially love how Anna Popplewell’s Susan quickly hides her sadness behind a forced smile when her mother addresses her.

Judy McIntosh may only have two scenes in this movie, but does she ever make the most of them, helped no doubt by the makeup artists who make her look like she’s been crying regularly.

As the children get prepare to get on the train, Edmund again establishes his main flaw by angrily telling Susan (I think) that he doesn’t need her help and Peter comforts Lucy as she briefly breaks down crying, telling her, “We have to stick together now,” stating the theme of the adaptation. Clearly, subtlety is not going to be a major strength of this movie, but the unsubtlety works here. At the point when Peter is supposed to hand their tickets to the ticket taker, he is distracted by the sight of a young soldier, likely imagining what it must be like to be him. The more practical Susan has to snap him out of his reverie and grab the tickets from him. Interestingly, there was apparently no mention of the soldier in the screenplay where Peter simply fumbled with the papers like an incompetent and Susan rolled her eyes when she took them. Kudos to director Adamson for coming up with a way to make both characters more sympathetic than they were going to be.

As the train departs, children lean out the window to wave goodbye to their mothers, including our principals of course. At first, it looks like Edmund is the only one not doing so, further establishing him as the family’s black sheep. But then we see he actually is waving or at least looking back, but that he was tragically blocked from his mother’s view, indicating he’s not quite as bad as he might be and that the movie is capable of being subtle once in a while.

We then get a beautiful opening credits montage. The contrasts between the grays of the London station and the lush greens of the countryside through which the trains travels foreshadow the transformation from winter to spring that we will see the land of Narnia undergo.

This montage also establishes suspense as the Pevensies witness two other young evacuees get picked up at a trains station by a rather grim unfriendly looking woman.^[4]Cassie Cook who plays the girl is actually the daughter of Sophie Cook who played Susan in the aforementioned miniseries.

Our heroes are dropped off at a country station. (According to the book, the house where they’ll be staying is “ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from
the nearest post office.”) They hear an automobile coming and scramble to meet it but it honks its horn and drives past them. For a moment, they worry they’ve been sent to the wrong place but then a stern looking middle aged woman (Elizabeth Hawthorne) drives up in a horse and buggy. “Mrs. Macready?” asks Peter. “I’m afraid so,” she says.

Here’s something I love about the movie. Every actor is great or at least good in their role including the very minor ones. Elizabeth Hawthorne only has a handful of scenes as Mrs. Macready the housekeeper of the children’s host, maybe less, but she packs so much personality into her every line that she’s a joy to watch.

Another thing I love about is the movie’s production design by Roger Ford and its general art direction. The house of Prof. Kirke, which the book describes in some detail, looks exactly the way it should.

The few things we learn about Mrs. Macready from the book are that she wasn’t fond of children, she loved giving tours of this fancy house and when the Pevensies first arrived, she gave them a long list of instructions.^[5]The book also offhandedly mentions that there also three maids, Ivy, Margaret and Betty, working for the professor. As a fan, I would have loved to have seen them get cameos, but I understand why … Continue reading The movie doesn’t fit in the part about tours, but it does include the instructions. Her outraged response to Susan almost touching one of the professor’s “historical artifacts” is hilarious. It’s not quite hammy, which is good since it wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the acting in the film if it were, but it’s in that neighborhood.

Both the book and the movie build intrigue about the character of the professor at this point but in different ways. In the book, he greets the children and has supper with them, but this is not depicted in detail, and he’s described as “so odd looking that Lucy…was a little afraid of him and Edmund…wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.” In the movie, we don’t see the professor at all, and Mrs. Macready ominously instructs the Pevensies that “there will be no disturbing” of him, but Lucy hears his footsteps from behind a door and sees the shadows of his legs. She quickly hightails it out of there.

That night, Peter stares sadly out Lucy’s bedroom window while listening to a news report about air raids.^[6]The radio announcer, by the way, is voiced by Douglas Gresham, one of the film’s producers and the head of C. S. Lewis’s literary estate. Susan walks briskly over and turns off the radio. Then the two oldest siblings turn their attention to the Lucy who is clearly upset over what she’s heard, though she claims the only things bothering her are scratchy bedsheets.

Then we get this dialogue.

Susan: Wars don’t last forever, Lucy. We’ll be home soon.
Edmund: Yeah, if home’s still there.
Susan: Isn’t it time you were in bed?
Edmund: Yes, Mum.
Peter: Ed! (to Lucy) You saw outside. This place is huge! We can do whatever we want here. Tomorrow’s going to be great. I promise.

Now in the book, Peter and the others are genuinely excited about exploring the professor’s vast country estate.^[7]Though Lucy was portrayed as being creeped out by the big house and Edmund “was tired and pretending not to be tired and that always made him bad-tempered. Here they seem mainly scared about losing their home and their parents and unsure of themselves in a new environment. Presumably, the screenwriters, Ann Peacock, Christopher Marckus, Stephen McFeely and Andrew Adamson, felt this was more believable.^[8]For what its worth, Peter’s first line in the book is “we’ve fallen on our feet,” which implies the characters were worried about falling on their butts before they met the … Continue reading Since C. S. Lewis was actually alive during World War II and actually had young evacuees staying in his house during the air raids, I’m inclined to think he would know better, however unbelievable his depiction of the Pevensies may seem to modern adult readers. That being said, it’s true that C. S. Lewis was not actually a kid during World War II and it’s likely the kids boarding with him had things going on in their heads about which he had no idea.

There’s a larger point to be noted here since it’s at this point that movie catches up with the book, the conversation between the Pevensies on the night they arrive being the first fully described scene there. While it takes liberties with the details, the movie stays quite true to the overarching plot of the book^[9]It’s the only Narnia movie to retain its source’s structure. I kind of hate that that’s an accomplishment. and, for the most part, it stays true to the characters’ personalities too. However, it uses very little of the book’s dialogue.^[10]Though Susan telling Edmund to go to bed and him accusing her of playing mother is from the source material. The film was right to keep that since it establishes their characters very well. In this way, it makes for an interesting foil to the 2003 Peter Pan movie directed by P. J. Hogan, another family action movie from the 2000s adapted from a classic children’s fantasy by a British author.^[11]Though those who haven’t read either should know that there are also big differences between Peter Pan and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The former is much more morally ambiguous than … Continue reading That adaptation made far crazier changes to the plot and characters than this one and arguably put more of its own spin on the message.^[12]Well, you could argue the 2005 Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe highjacks to story to deliver its own message too to an extent, but it’s less noticeable. But it also included plenty of dialogue from the source material and even when it was doing its own thing, you could tell the screenwriters were trying to channel the spirit of J. M. Barrie. The screenwriters for the first Narnia movie seem to have really liked the original book’s story but had no particular respect for or interest in C. S. Lewis’s writing style.

This makes me hesitate to recommend the movie as an introduction to the book, but it doesn’t ruin it for me, mainly because there had been two radio dramas, a miniseries, and a made-for-television animated movie adapted from the material prior to this, and they all tried to use the original dialogue. By 2005, I was interested to see a different version. It made for an interesting experiment to see how the story held up without Lewis’s amazing writing. Actually, I have to rephrase that. While I love the writing in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the book, it’s more because of the descriptions than the dialogue, at least when it comes to the protagonists. (When I get to the characters of the beavers and Aslan, I’m going to take more issues with the script adaptation.) I’d still say the conversations in the literary version were better written than the ones in the cinematic one, but I don’t think changing them destroys the whole appeal of the original.

There’s something else I should admit here. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not my favorite Narnia book. I love it just as I love all the Narnia books, but in a personal ranking, I’d rank it with Prince Caspian, which many people consider the weakest of the lot. I’m probably a little more openminded about aspects of this adaptation than someone for whom The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the best or the only good Narnia book. Had the series gotten around to adapting my personal favorites, The Horse and his Boy and The Magician’s Nephew, I’d likely be a lot harder on them.

Next Week: Lucy Looks Into a Wardrobe