first off, this movie's better than king kong. There. i said it. it really doesnt help that i feel like a traitor (towards peter jackson) for some strange reason..maybe its cos i'm a fangirl. but HONESTLY! its loads better.
the interesting thing is that i went into both movies, not having had the experience of watching previous versions of kong and not having read the entire chronicles of narnia(which is made up of 7 books).so that meant that i would've gone in with an open mind. and narnia turned out to be the better of both (so sorry Peter).
my only prior encounters with the chronicles exists in the book called "The Horse and His Boy" which is book number 3 and as far as i remember, there're no Aslans, Jadises or Mr Tumnuses. only Shasta, bree and aravis.haha. but i DO remember having borrowed the actual "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" when i was an ickle kid in pri school. but strangely enough, the only things i managed to remember from that one reading were the name " Aslan" and the fact that there was a white witch/snow queen character. so you could say i had pretty much no clue what was gonna happen in the movie;what the underlying themes were and i definitely didnt have any expectations pertaining to whether the movie version lived up to the book, which is a pretty refreshing change after having watched quite a number of print-to-screen adaptations. but if you wanna read the book before you watch the movie, go ahead. i still think you'll be mighty impressed.
i was taking an IQ test on my i-mode enabled phone while waiting for at least 15-20 mins of adverts to finish running and i got a sc0re of 119. apparently i'm in the top 15% or something of smart-asses. whatever yaar. i know there're loads of people out there smarter than me. (and the only reason why i included that was for my own memory cos i won't be able to remember this a couple of months from now)
moving along, when the movie actually started, i thought i was in the wrong theatre, cos there was a World War scene with a view from german fighter planes and i was reminded alot of "dulce et decorum est". i so wasn't expecting that in like, a movie about narnia, hel-lo! but it turned out to be the right movie, twas just the intro. sorry lah, jumpy and impatient singaporean side of me kicking in.
from the very beginning i loved mr tumnus the fawn.there was a strange inexpressible connection. haha i remembered him as Jay in the movie "Bollywood Queen" which was a rubbish movie but worth a watch anyways. it came out in the pre bride and prejudice days so its interesting to see how much of a failed attempt it was.
wish there was more of Fox though. dawn french was SO recognisable as mrs beaver. haha..just saw her in the vicar of dibley on bbc prime.
Aslan is the most handsome lion i'm probably ever gonna lay eyes on..and i felt like a mere mortal in his all glorious CGI presence(thats how spectacular the effects are.they were done by WETA, what'd you expect!) and Liam Neeson, my beloved hero Qui Gon Jinn/henry ducard/godfrey of ibelin/oskar schindler... just proved why he was the perfect person to voice Aslan.
tilda swinton is the best thing that happened to cinema since eric bana. yes i know you can't really compare the two, but she's just such a lovely change with actual bloody talent! As the androgynous angel Gabriel(in Constantine), she was one of the characters from the movie world whom actually stands out in my memory bank.
you'll fall in love with lucy pevensie whether you like it or not.
narnia is nothing like middle earth..first of all its not all end-of-the-world and eternally ravaged with just patches of unspoilt land(like the real earth and middle earth is). narnia's sorta, brighter and more child-friendly? but i did recognise the NZ landscape :P i don't blame them for using aoteraoa..NZ is a gajillion microclimates in 2 large bits of land in oceania, inhabited by 4 million of the greatest people on earth(ask anyone who's been to NZ). what's not to love for a film crew?
the actual war scene wasn't as spectacular as i though it'd be..having watched battlescenes like those which happened in the fields of pelennor and at helm's deep. and the real emotionally-charged bits where the real plot points were supposed to be developed weren't handled as skilfully as i would have liked them to be.i mean,there was one particular scene where aslan and the white witch emerge from his tent and he says that edmund will be spared or something. and it sorta ended there. i was like, ïsn't there more? and is aslan gonna let edmund get away with it so easily after he practically jeopardised the good side's plans time and time again? there's just a shot of aslan supposedly giving edmund a pep talk but it really would've been loads better if there was actually some dialogue! maybe it was the sreenplay itself but can't comment too much cos i haven't read the book.
and one additional thing. i was thinking about christianity and catholicism alot these past 2 days and i couldn't help noticing how jesus-like aslan is and how judas-like edmund is.
EDIT: i just read in a website that those really were the representations intended for these 2 characters. whao. THAT was transparent!
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