bloodyrosemccoy | Dec. 13th, 2005

Santa Lucia Day (Sweden)

After all my carrying on about it, I should mention that I saw The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe a few days ago. I was duly impressed; Disney actually kept to the story, and raised an interesting question for me to ponder idly in my spare time: if the author had a message that the filmmaker disagrees with (I don't know if they did, but this is hypothetical), who should have the final say in how the movie goes? But it was beautiful overall. CG has really come a long way in a very short time.

I had just one real issue. One of the very few changes they made was to the dynamic with Edmund and Mr. Tumnus, so that before he's taken away by the witch to be stoned* Tumnus finds out that Edmund ratted him out. (Sorry about spoilers.) Which is fine and good, and I thought all the stuff with Tumnus was phenomenally done ~ especially the scene where he wakes up to find Lucy ~ but they didn't have a scene to balance it, where Edmund maybe makes it up to Tumnus, or at least apologizes. I'm sure he did, but the way they changed the first bit rather demanded an onscreen atonement, and it never came.

And I proved my ultimate, irredeemable geekhood. Not just because of the bit when the giant in Aslan's army comes thundering along and a certain familiar voice in the theater was heard squealing, "Rumblebuffin!", but even more so when I saw the queen's henchdwarf and gasped in recognition of the actor. I checked the credits, and it was Kiran Shah. And I goddamn knew the name. From more than one movie. The fact that not even Aspen, who was brought up on Tolkien the way most people around here are brought up on Jesus, recognized him is testament to my superpowers for retaining pointless behind-the-scenes trivia.**

But as for the rest ~ well done, Disney. Now let's do Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader next!

*Har.

**Go on, ask me the names of the four Darth Vaders in the original Return of the Jedi ~ the three in the suit and the one doing the voice. And don't get me started on my opinion of morphing Hayden 'Check Out My Hair' Christensen into the last bit and totally acing out the much more suitable Sebastian Shaw's one good shot, because you'd have to hit me to get me to stop.