Yeah, Eustace was very likeable after he stopped being so pompous and "rational" and whiny in the books and in the BBC miniseries. But in the movie, I actually liked him while he was pompous and complaining too. He's just really funny, and the whole movie is better with his voiceover, "Dear Diary, My idiotic cousins have decided to go haring after some idiotic Star, we have been sailing at half rations for days and they refuse to listen to my quite rational objections..."
Edmund was my favorite character in the books, but in the movies, he's kind of reducing to being the dark-haired lesser jock, and I think Lucy is the best actress and most interesting character (of the four Pensieve children).
About religion, maybe it's just a question of managing expectations. I wasn't expecting the first movie to hammer home the religious message quite so hard (as a Jewish kid reading the books, I didn't really get it until The Last Battle), whereas with this movie, I was totally prepared to hear about how Aslan has another name in our world, and he hopes we will learn to know him by it. XD Also the swordfighting improves a lot after the first movie.
The Horse and His Boy would be really questionable today, yeah. Today I read it and The Arabian Nights and think: you admired this enough to copy it, but you had to make the culture that produced it evil at the same time? As a kid I ranked it third, after The Dawn Treader (Voyages of Sinbad) and Prince Caspian (so I guess it's all downhill from here for me, haha).
Now that I think about it, TLTWATW and The Last Battle were my least favorite Narnia bookss. Too much religious moralizing. I wonder if they will include Susan in The Last Battle. They slimmed Eustace, so maybe?
Now that Focus on the Family has latched on to these movies, I am confident that they will continue to make them. No Golden Compass-style disasters. So that's good, at least.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-30 06:00 am (UTC)Edmund was my favorite character in the books, but in the movies, he's kind of reducing to being the dark-haired lesser jock, and I think Lucy is the best actress and most interesting character (of the four Pensieve children).
About religion, maybe it's just a question of managing expectations. I wasn't expecting the first movie to hammer home the religious message quite so hard (as a Jewish kid reading the books, I didn't really get it until The Last Battle), whereas with this movie, I was totally prepared to hear about how Aslan has another name in our world, and he hopes we will learn to know him by it. XD Also the swordfighting improves a lot after the first movie.
The Horse and His Boy would be really questionable today, yeah. Today I read it and The Arabian Nights and think: you admired this enough to copy it, but you had to make the culture that produced it evil at the same time? As a kid I ranked it third, after The Dawn Treader (Voyages of Sinbad) and Prince Caspian (so I guess it's all downhill from here for me, haha).
Now that I think about it, TLTWATW and The Last Battle were my least favorite Narnia bookss. Too much religious moralizing. I wonder if they will include Susan in The Last Battle. They slimmed Eustace, so maybe?
Now that Focus on the Family has latched on to these movies, I am confident that they will continue to make them. No Golden Compass-style disasters. So that's good, at least.