At least this time Shatner is selling himself for a good cause.
Uncategorized
-
Yeah, so I’m reposting things that showed up on slashdot. At least I’m posting.
Here is an interview with Richard M. Stallman. I don’t always agree with the man, but a couple interesting quotes (he’s talking about Free Software):
“You cannot rely on accidents to defend freedom. Accidents can sometimes help, but you need people who are aware and determined to do this.”“RMS: They recommend a development methodology and claim that the model will produce superior software. If so, to us, it’s a bonus. Freedom often allows one to achieve convenience. I appreciate having more powerful software, and if freedom helps that, good. But for us in the free software movement that is secondary.
JP: And in fact one should be willing to sacrifice some power and convenience of the software for freedom.
RMS: Absolutely.”
Anyway, like I said, he’s talking about Free software specifically, but he does get into freedom, in general, quite a bit. Talks about globalization, fascism, etc. It’s a good read, though a bit long.
-
(copying this from a comment i left on my wife’s blog)
Another point about whether we are being “purists” – I could write
reams about the details that they changed when trying to put Lewis’
story onto the screen. For grins, here is a brief exercise in this:The book doesn’t describe the bombing, it merely mentioned that it was happening.
The book states that the Pevensies are from London, not Finchley (is
Finchely part of London? I’ll admit that I don’t know English
geography.)
The book does not say where the Professor lives.
The professor is not named in LWW. (We do find out later that his name is Kirke.)
In the book Mrs. Macready does not lecture the children upon their arrival.
Mrs. Macready is not recorded as telling the children that they are not to disturb the professor.
Lucy does not find the wardrobe while playing hide-and-seek. All 4 children
find it while they are exploring the house on a rainy day.
Lucy and Mr. Tumnus do not hide from each other behind trees when they first meet.
The dialog between Lucy and Tumnus in the movie was not at all what
appeared in the book. (Lewis’ Tumnus did not say “It’s not everyday
that I meet a new friend.” or whatever was said in the movie.)
In the book, it is only after Lucy has regained consciousness (it’s not
clear in the book that she actually falls asleep) that Tumnus says that
he is not like his father.
When Lucy regains consciousness, the fire was still lit (in the book).I could keep going, but there is no point. These are examples of nits. Changing the motivations of characters is not.
-
Make sure you read the previous two posts before this one, or this won’t make much sense.
My wife just said, “the purpose of stories is to strengthen us.”
What does that mean?
Most simply, it means that we humans have always told stories that were meant to inspire us, to give us good examples, to teach us.
What do we get now?
Stories about people who won’t do their duty until they are forced to.
Here is the degradation. Lewis writes a book about children who fight for people who they don’t know, and a movie is made wherein the principles are forced to take action when surrounded by battle, hoping for a way to run.
Tolkien writes a book about a man who is waiting for the time when he will be able to fulfill his prophecy, claim his throne, and be with the woman he loves. Instead of that, we get a movie where the guy tells the woman to sail away, tells his prospective father-in-law that he isn’t interested in the throne, and the guy is too riddled with self doubt to even consider that the prophecy could be true. It’s even worse than that. In the movie, the father searches out this man and gives him a sword so that he will finally be the man he is (I’m intentionally not using the phrase “meant to be”). What does that teach us about fatherhood? – Just because the man your daughter has fallen in love with is a sissy who won’t do what he should is no reason for them not to marry. In fact, you should make a sword for him, hunt him down, and yell at him until he’ll finally do something to save your daughter’s life.
It seems that the best that 21st century story-telling has to offer us is justifications for our own weaknesses. We can do better.
-
Oh yes. And to those who would say “but it was stunning visually”:
Pure, unadulterated, nonsense.
First, from a technical standpoint, how many times did you notice that the characters had been composited onto fake backgrounds? I remember explicitly noticing this twice. Also, did you notice that Aslan was the only animated character that was more convincing than the hand drawings in the BBC’s production?
Secondly, it is exactly this focus which causes so many problems. I’m coming to grips with the fact that society is not interested in storytelling. They want special effects. Why put in the weird “shot-from-an-arrow-phoenix”? Because it looked cool. Why have that crap with the frozen waterfall and the boogy-boarding on the chunk of ice? Because it looked cool. (Except it didn’t. The lighting and the compositing was terrible. It was obvious that it wasn’t real, just like all of the animals. Heck, they couldn’t even train a wolf to dive into the beaver’s house (yet more “respect” for the source material), so they had to do a bad job of compositing that shot together.)
Again, the evil characters looked better, and they were physical. We know that the minotaurs and those strange bird creatures were hair and glue, but it didn’t matter, they looked real. Not Mr. Beaver. Not those poor reindeer pulling the Witch’s sledge. And not the gryphon. The centaurs were cool, I guess. And the fauns seemed “reasonable” (what was up with the Shrek ears) except for their leg movement, which wasn’t quite smooth enough.
I don’t get how the CG was so obviously fake. WETA did a great job with that for LOTR. Why was Narnia so bad? Were they too busy making dinosaurs and big monkeys?
And if you try to claim the movie was good because, “the battle was awesome,” I have no way to respond. You clearly have a vastly different idea of what storytelling is than I do, and I have no idea how to correct you. You are wrong.
Oh, actually, I do have a thought about that. Do you still require picture books? That is to say, books with no words? Because that is where movies are heading. No dialog. No characters. Just lots of creatures swirling around the screen telling basic stories about how it’s cool to kill stuff.
-
I want to be polite about this, so I will try. I’ve already had one unfortunate outburst of anger which was extremely rude.
Why must Hollywood destroy good stories?
We went and saw a movie tonight which claimed to be based upon a classic novel of the same name. Here are the parts that were done well:
Okay, that isn’t fair. Some things were excellent:
The slaying of Aslan had a feel very much like the book.
The dark forces of the White Witch were frightening.It is a short list. It also raises a question in my mind. Why is that Hollywood can only get ugliness, hatred, and violence correct? A bit unfair. Aslan was almost decently characterized, even if he was pushed to the fringes of the story. But, the question still remains: why is evil the only thing that Hollywood understands? Are we finally broken? I still maintain hope that we are merely extremely bent, but after tonight, I have my doubts.
Why does Hollywood insist upon demonizing characters from classic stories? They did it to Faramir, they did it to Aragorn, and now they’ve done it to Aslan, Peter, Susan, the Beavers, and Mr. Tumnus. Let’s start with the subtle, Mr. Tumnus.
Did anyone else think that he was behaving like a child molester? Granted, he does a vile thing, and it could just be that I’m projecting the tragedy that we hear about far too often today onto the way he acts, but I just couldn’t avoid thinking that he looked like a creepy guy trying to lure a child into his van. And, he kept it up at the end of the movie. At least he continues to fight in that bizarre seen in the Witch’s dungeon that was inserted with such “respect” for the story. And what was with that obviously American “because I believe in a free Narnia” line?
The Beavers. In the book, they are a happily married couple. Mr. Beaver has some frustration with the Mrs. when they are trying to get going, but they clearly love each other. They take care of each other. In this movie, they bicker the entire time. It didn’t seem like they liked each other. There is one brief moment where Mr. Beaver slips and shows love for his wife. When they are walking through the camp, being lead to Aslan’s tent, Mrs. Beaver is fussing over herself. First, Mr. Beaver tells her to stop fussing (the same bickering to which we have subjected this whole time), and then he says, “You look lovely.” It is the only moment where one could see a glimpse of compassion for each other.
Now for Susan. Admittedly, she’s a hard character, since we know that at the end of the series she is not a friend of Narnia. But, at this point, she is fully engaged in what is happening. But, not in this movie. Here, she merely wants to go home, and she doesn’t care. SHE DOESN’T CARE. As far as she is concerned Narnia can burn as long as they get safely home. I think this touches on something I’m just now beginning to feel. My first thought about the casting was that they did an excellent job casting the Pevensies. Now, though, I’m not too sure. It could be that Peter and Susan were too old. More on that later.
Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter. Why did they have to “Aragorn” Peter? You know what I’m talking about, assuming you have the decency to READ WHAT AUTHORS WRITE! Sorry. I understand that it is hard for us plebes to read anymore, and it is certainly hard for us to read books that are 188 pages long and written for children, much less sizable works like LOTR. I don’t believe that it is too hard for people that are claiming to make movies based upon books, especially when they carry the book around on the set and hire consultants to maintain “faithfulness” to the source material. Anyway, I’m digressing. If you have read LOTR, then you know that Aragorn was playing “Strider” until it was time for the prophecy to be fulfilled, for him to take up the reforged Narsil and defeat the Dark Lord. Also, if you’ve read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, then you know that Peter never doubts the prophecy, never questions it, and never tries to run away from it. He takes up his sword (given to him by Father Christmas), and fights for Narnia. Not in this movie. In this movie, we’re treated with the same psychological garble that we got in Jackson’s mistreatment of LOTR. Peter just wants to go home, wants to keep his siblings safe, and certainly doesn’t want to fight in a battle that isn’t his. But, hey, he’s able to stick his sword in a chunk of ice and ride the wave. At this point I was surprised that Lucy survived, given how little respect they had shown for Lewis’ work thus far.
Anyway, back to Peter, there’s something interesting about Peter’s age which also applies to Susan. I’m not interested in the detail of the number of years that Peter had been alive, I’m interested in his mindset. The Pevensie children are supposed to be just that, children. In the movie, Peter and Susan are clearly in their mid-to-late teens. I’m sure this was done for “realism”, but it screws up the characters. There’s a funny thing about kids – they trust people. That’s something that comes out in the Lucy-of-the-movie. But, she’s the only one. Yes, yes, Peter and Susan are cautious when they first enter Narnia in the real story, but they quickly overcome that and trust the creatures that they meet that are clearly good. (Interesting thing, that it would take a little bit of time for them to trust even in Narnia. Clearly they are old enough to have become cynical, but not old enough that they are unable to overcome that.) Anyway, I said earlier that I suspect that the Peter-and-Susan-of-the-movie were too old, and I think that was the case. They don’t trust, and they are extremely self-interested. They desire safety above all. Once they get Edmund back, they’re ready to go back home. Only Lucy is young enough to understand what Good is, and Edmund, who has experienced first hand just how bad Bad is, understand that they need to remain and fight.
And now we get to Aslan. At first, I thought that they had done Aslan well. I hardly noticed that it was Liam Neeson, and he roared pretty well. And, they didn’t change his murder, so I thought that all was well with Aslan. Then, as I was writting this post, I realized something: the movie Aslan WAS a fool. He didn’t prepare Peter for the battle. That’s right, he didn’t prepare the kid who was going to lead the forces of Narnia into battle. The kid with no military training. The kid who had a battle history of happening to kill a wolf when he swung wildly while standing his ground. So, either Aslan didn’t care about Narnia (not a likely explanation, since Aslan refers to the Narnians as his “family”), Aslan was too preoccupied with what was about to happen (could be, but that would make Aslan extremely callous), or Aslan didn’t think that Peter would need help. Again, if you read the book, you learn that Aslan spent the entire day between His council with the Witch and His murder talking to Peter about what HE had planned for the battle. That it was Aslan’s battle plan is a critical point. When we (Christians) go out on our own and devise our own plans, they fail. It is only when we are executing Christ’s plan that we will be victorious.
Now we’re starting to get to some meat. Lewis was clearly writing a story to introduce children to Christ. He says as much in his letters, and in Prince Caspian Peter and Susan are told that they were brought to Narnia because getting to know Aslan there would enable them to get to know Him here. Now, I’d expect Mr. Gresham, Lewis’ stepson, to understand this. But, it doesn’t seem to be the case. From an interview:
“…it’s not a Christian film and the Narnia books aren’t Christian novels.”
and
“‘Jack didn’t intend the Narnia books to be an evangelistic fantasy,’ explains Gresham.”
This is the brains behind the operation. How could he miss this? I don’t want to rail on Mr. Gresham very much. I think he is dead wrong, but he seems to be a decent fellow, and he is a brother. But I just don’t get it.
The Chronicles of Narnia are a special set of books because we get to witness and participate with a family as they encounter God in a very special way. We are there as Aslan chases Susan and Lucy around the stone table. We get to bury our faces in His mane. We feel Aravis’ stripes when Aslan disciplines her. We get to swim up the waterfall and see Aslan coming down as a “living cataract of power and beauty”. These stories are ones that touch the child in all of us. They teach us how to “have faith like a child.” In a way that is not idolatrous, we take them into our hearts.
The people who made this movie have a knife far more sinister than the stone one used to kill Aslan because it is disguised as something we love. They took that knife and drove it into our hearts, killing a bit of that joy that we’ve had because of these books. We must forgive the people, but we can never trust them again. Never again will I see a movie “based upon” a book that I love. I knew going into this that it was much more dangerous than what was done with The Lord of the Rings. Narnia means much more to me than LOTR, and that it why it hurts, as well as makes me angry. Never again.
Recent Comments