Recently, Douglas Gresham was interviewed for a podcast called “Your Story.” The specific episode title is “Episode 46: Doug. C.S. Lewis, Narnia, Film Making and Christianity.” This particular interview is causing quite a stir in people, as their nerves are already running high that the film is going to be “vastly different” to the book, and this interview appears to confirm that there are “big changes” to the story. I’ve gotta tell you though: regardless of what your worst fears are about the translation of book to screen, we’re still getting The Voyage of the Dawn Treader on the big screen. Period. It’s going to be epic and fun, it’s going to be magical and delightful. Sure, it’s going to have changes, but what adaptation doesn’t?
Here we are with this week’s mailbag! It’s been pretty exciting to see the response that we’ve gotten so far, and I’ve had a great time writing them. Hopefully the e-mails keep coming in each week so that I can continue.
Andrew Skilleter is the artist behind the covers of the BBC radio editions of The Chronicles of Narnia. He asked me to mention that he’s made available, by popular demand, a limited run of 250 of each title as special prints of his artwork. If you missed it, we posted a story about the exhibition that is still going on, along with some of the art work, here: BBC Narnia Cover Art Exhibition UK. The art is available to purchase at the artist’s website, here: Andrew Skelleter’s Narnia BBC Paintings.
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There’s an artist that has become quite well known for his redesigns of book covers. Most notibly, the Harry Potter series. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear that they’ll ever see publication, but that doesn’t mean we cannot hope that some of his designs will one day see print. I had been watching his blog to see if he was ever going to do his take on The Chronicles of Narnia books. Well, last weekend he posted them. I’ve included a glimpse of one of the covers, as it is my favorite book in the series: The Last Battle. You can see his art work on his blog (Narnia Redesign) or at his flickr account.
For this week’s Mailbag, I looked in my inbox and realized a couple of things: first, there was only one e-mail for this week’s mailbag. I could take this to mean that it’s not a good feature to bring back, but that would be ridiculous. I enjoy the chance to answer e-mails and also to put my own voice into the site just a little bit.
On a related note, I share Andrew Adamson’s birthday. Who knew? Andrew, if you’re reading this, that must be the reason we have similar creative minds.
Books Illustrated Ltd is exhibiting at the Salisbury Museum from 4 April to 4 July. ‘The Wonder of Illustration’ features original artwork by Andrew Skilleter for C. S. Lewis’ fantastic tales of Narnia. All pieces of art on display are for sale.
In the late 1980s, the BBC began to adapt for radio The Chronicles of Narnia. Brian Sibley, writer, dramatist and broadcaster was responsible for the acclaimed dramatisation of this classic for BBC Radio 4. Brian had earlier dramatised the epic Radio 4 Lord of the Rings, a brilliant realisation for radio of another great classic.
Amazon.com has today announced the release of their new edition of Kindle. With that announcement comes new additions to the library of books available for Kindle, including many works written by C.S. Lewis.
We’ve just received the sad news that the original illustrator of The Chronicles of Narnia has just passed away:
Wayne Hammond reports the death of Baynes at her home in Surrey. Pauline Baynes was the original illustrator of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series, as well as of Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham (1948), The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962), and Smith of Wootton Major (1967).
Narnia expert Brian Sibley has written a blog entry about Pauline Baynes that you can read here:
Brian Sibley’s Blog on Pauline Baynes: Queen of Narnia and Middle-Earth
And note that obituaries will be appearing in The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent and The Guardian later in the week.
Kind regards,
Brian Sibley
Update 2:
Rem, from the Philippine Order of Narnians, sent us an update with links to the articles posted athe both the Independent and the Guardian:
I thought you’d like to know that, as Mr Sibley said they would, Pauline Baynes’ obituaries have already shown up at the Independent and the Guardian.
Sci-Fi Pulse has finally posted their red carpet interview video for Prince Caspian. In that, Douglas Gresham mentions a bit about what they’re doing with the production order for the Narnia films. From what he says, it looks like the production will continue as the books were published.
This is the smartest way to do it. Narnia purists will tell you that the only way to read the books for the first time is the original publication order. That’s what I tell anyone to do, that has not read them yet to do.
Anyway, on the red carpet in New York, Douglas Gresham says:
We still have five books to do. I’m working right now on pre-production on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I’m already starting discussions on The Silver Chair; and we’re just toying with the idea of doing The Horse and His Boy after that. So we are thinking ahead.
This doesn’t confirm it solidly, but it does show a bit more of what they’re planning. That’ll just leave The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle to close out the series.
Watch the video on Sci-Fi Pulse. There’s a great part where Georgie Henley meets Liam Neeson. Priceless!
Alright, Narnia fans. If you’ve seen Prince Caspian, please go and see it again. Now that you have seen it once, you know what’s been changed from the book to the screen, so there’s no surprise there anymore. You can now sit back and enjoy it as a film, and a great one.
I have seen it four times, and trust me on this, it never lost it’s luster. In fact, it maintained the excitement and I liked it more with each viewing. This is something that is very difficult to achieve, but when there is so much depth to the story, you notice more with each screening.
In all honesty, I am a pretty big movie fan. I have seen close to 700 movies that I know of, and my DVD collection is big enough that my friends constantly ask me if I have this movie or that for movie nights, and I usually do. I’ve seen Iron Man. I’ve also seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull twice. I’ve even seen Speed Racer.
Now, you can’t really compare Iron Man to Prince Caspian any more than you can Indiana Jones. I enjoyed Iron Man well enough. Thought it was good, but I wasn’t all that impressed with the effects. When comparing it to Transformers, Iron Man could have been more realistic looking. Giant transforming robots from another world were more realistic on screen, matching the world much better than some of the shots of Iron Man. Specifically the Mach One suit that Tony Stark built. There were times it looked awesome, and times it looked CG, pulling me out of the story.
Indiana Jones, I wasn’t planning on seeing a second time, but I wasn’t opposed when a few more friends wanted to see it. It was ridiculous fun. Ridiculous and fun, and that’s about all I asked from it, because all of the Indiana Jones movies are like that. I really enjoyed the cheesiness of it. It was part of it’s charm.
That being said, Prince Caspian has many moments that I love. It’s a fun movie to watch with a darkness to the story that aids in the building momentum. Arguably the weakest of the seven Narnia stories, it has become one incredible adventure.
For those that haven’t yet seen the film, you may want to stop reading now.
The castle raid, I thought, was a brilliant addition, and the end of it, when the remaining Narnians are caught by the gate, it heightens the emotional core of the film to a level that would not have been achieved otherwise. King Peter has a failure there, as does Caspian. Sure, it adds some tension between the two that isn’t in the books, but that tension also builds up their relationship with regard for one another. They later realize that they failed together before, and it makes it more important when they start to work together.
Another of those moments happens during the battle at Aslan’s How. The Narnian army is retreating, trying to get back into the How, when one of the trebuchets hits the doorway, blocking them off. Caspian and Peter turn around, watching the battle happening all over. It’s sinking in that it’s do or die time. There’s nothing left to do, now, but fight, because they cannot retreat. The others join them: Susan, Trumpkin and Edmund. And together they regroup and attack with their final push against the Telmarine armies.
Those scenes, I think, are two of my favorite scenes that aren’t necessarily in the book, but are a credit to the filmmakers for developing them, adding to the emotional core of the film.
If you’ve seen the movie and enjoyed it, if you loved it, see it again. If you haven’t seen it because you don’t want to see something different from the book: it’s not terribly different from the book anyway. It does, indeed, capture the spirit and the essence of the book, and even enhances some of the messages of the book that don’t really stand out when you read it.
If you hated the movie because you love the book and are unforgiving of it because it is different: realize that movies can never really be exactly like books. Take The Lord of the Rings. As a film, if they did it as the book was written, it would have been nearly 30 hours long. Perhaps longer. As it stands, it is a 12 hour epic that had to change things and make it their own. And it excels at it. Not only that, but if you want to read the Lord of the Rings, you still can. It’s almost like you’re reading the deleted scenes as well, which are fun to learn about.
Harry Potter is another book series that fans have had outcries about. I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books, and the only movies that I’ve liked in that series are Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix. (I did listen to the seventh book on CD, skipping book six entirely, ha!)
There are also books that make better movies. Big Fish, for example. I saw the movie and then I read the book. The movie is better. The Shawshank Redemption, I feel is better than the novella that it is based on, as well.
Now that you know that Prince Caspian is different from the book, understand that it is what it is. If you want the book to film version identical: watch the BBC version. There’s still that. Plus, you still have the book! Now that there is the movie, perhaps more will read the book, and I suggest that you do. Just understand that the movie is different with good reasons. No decision was made without much thought and consideration on part of the writers. I know this, as I have personally spoken to them about this. Check out my NYC series of articles for the interview with the writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. They’re awesome guys that really know their Narnia.
Plus, we want them to continue making Narnia films, do we not? We know they’re making Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and they’re looking for a director for The Silver Chair. But that’s as far as the BBC took their Narnia series. Let’s help this series go all the way to The Last Battle!
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