dufflepuds
I’m really angry right now. I just finished watching the trailers to the upcoming Narnia movie, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I’m beyond incensed at what they’ve done to the story in adapting it to the film. From the Wikipedia synopsis:
On their quest to find the Seven Lost Lords of Narnia the crew of the Dawn Treader come across several strange and exotic places. With the help of Lilliandil, the half-star, and Aslan, the great lion, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Caspian find themselves on their greatest adventure yet in order to save Narnia from a threatening green mist that has taken the form of the White Witch.
“Threatening green mist?” “Lilliandil?” What the heck? The first is nowhere to be found anywhere in the book, and Ramandu’s daughter (the half-star) doesn’t come onto the scene until the last chapter, and then only as a minor character (Caspian’s eventual bride). What the heck have they done to my story? VotDT is my favorite of the books (The Silver Chair and The Last Battle a close second and third) and this kind of plot alteration, nay, dumbing-down, is completely inexcusable. Of course I know why they have to do it; they have to shoehorn some kind of “doomsday” plot arc into a story that essentially amounts to a loose series of vignettes that illustrate various aspects of Lewis’ theology, but even so, it’s supremely disappointing. Do they not think people would sit through a more faithful adaptation of the book’s plot? Are we that stupid? Easily bored? I would hope not…
At this point I don’t even know if I’ll go see it. I mean, I will, but it’s got a heck of a deficit of anticipation to overcome at this point.