| Quote: Originally Posted by Homyrrh They had to establish some sort of villainy in a remedial way to easily convey to a child audience that these were hostile foreigners. [...] Good whites versus bad browns. Okay, I gather that you didn't intend for that to sound racist. Be that as it may, I think kids can tell the difference between conflicting groups pretty easily. When I was a kid I could tell the difference between Rebels and Imperials, or between Indian Jones and the Nazis, without their being a racial discrepancy. The bad guys wear scary clothes, are accompanied by scary music, and, most importantly, they try to kill the good guys. Quote: Originally Posted by Homyrrh I think any intelligent person can realize there's no statement being made, and any younger child, for which the film is intended, won't be able to make the correlation. It is dually inevitable and midly unfortunate. Indeed. I'm not about to make a federal case about it, I just noted that it made me mildly uncomfortable. Like I said, they can get away with it now, but the Arab stuff later is going to stir up controversy, especially as it pertains to the Calmoran's religion. Quote: Originally Posted by Homyrrh Out with Mr. Beaver and in with Reepicheep. Now, that I'll agree with. Quote: Originally Posted by Homyrrh As for the Christian themes, I think the lay people that comprise the general public were hardly competent enough to understand the LWW allegory (uh...death...resurrection...triuph over evil...save humanity...etc.) and would have a challenging time comprehending the internal conflicts within the children of accepting the faith, acknowledging, er, Aslan, etc. And you're right, this is the fundamental difference; it couldn't be done in 2 1/2 hours. Well, I think that the bulk of the public is quite capable of understanding the resurrection allegory in THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WADRROBE, as well as, for example, Edmund confessing his sins to Aslan. If anyone missed it, it's probably because they just didn't care. Similarly, PRINCE CASPIAN does reflect some of the Christian elements of Lewis' book (Peter being overcome by pride, the Pensieve children losing faith in Aslan, the temptation of the White Witch, etc). What I note, though, is that the marketing of the movie didn't play these elements up. With the last flick there was a huge amount of emphasis put on the Christian source material (every periodical referred to the movie as a "Christian fantasy epic" more than once), and this was because the studio was quite blatantly trying to draw in the PASSION OF THE CHRIST fundamentalist crowd that spurned Harry Potter and the Hobbits. At the time, I found this quite cynical and disengenuous, because it was a pretty bald-faced attempt to bilk cash from people, as opposed to a serious effort to engage Christians in the material (which, it should be remembered, was somewhat controversial in its day; Lewis' use of pagan figures and myths to teach Christian ideals rubbed certain people the wrong way). I wonder if this has to do with CASPIAN's opening, which, though large, was significantly smaller than the first film. When was the last time a sequel to such a big movie opened at less than its predecessor? A lot of people are calling it public burnout on fantasy, but I think it's more due to the fact that (and I really never tire of saying this), the first Narnia movie was just plain bad. |