Sunday, May 25, 2008

Prince Caspian

Except for the trailers, I haven’t seen Prince Caspian. In the case of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I waited for it to come out on DVD.

In this case, I don’t know that I’ll bother. To judge by the reviews, it may actually be a better film than LWW, but I have certain reservations:

1. Although it may be a better film than LWW, yet, to judge by the trailers and the reviews, it looks a lot like a typical sword & sandal epic. I don’t say that as a put down. But it makes Prince Caspian less distinctively Narnian than LWW. More like a typical action feature. And as far as sword & sandal epics go, there’s a lot of competition. How many battle scenes and exotic locations have I seen over the years?

2. Another problem is that some things work in a book that don’t work on screen. In a book, it’s left to the imagination of the reader. But in film we’re used to a certain level of realism. It may be illusory, but it’s supposed to seem realistic.

Taking something from a fantasy book and putting it up on the big screen may make something which seemed plausible enough on the printed page implausible when you see it in action.

For example, the actor who plays Edmund is currently 16 years old. And he would have been younger during production. Not only is he young, but he has the slight build of an average teenage boy.

He doesn’t have what it takes for hand-to-hand combatant. You win or lose based on brute strength. Every boy may entertain the private fantasy of being able to win a sword fight with a towering, muscular opponent, but as soon as we actually depict these fantasies, we expose how silly they are.

It isn’t just that the actor is too young. In another sense, he’s too old. There are fantasy novels with heroic young boys. Preteens. Yet they best the villain, not through brute power, but through magical power or by simply outwitting the villain.

3.On a related note, there’s apparently a romantic subplot in the movie version of Prince Caspian. But when you have actors who look like high school students, this is clearly targeting the teenybopper demographic. Nothing wrong with that. But at that point it ceases to be a film for either children or grown-ups. Dawson’s Creek set in Narnia. Speaking for myself, if I want to see a romantic movie, I prefer actors and actresses who look like puberty is more than two years behind them.

Now I want to turn to something more serious:

***QUOTE***

As an adaptation of the novel, however, I was in fact grossly disappointed in the film altogether. I feel that the war, which at best is a background element in Lewis' novel (getting very little "airtime," so to speak), becomes completely foregrounded in the film, to its very great detriment. Prince
Caspian should not be about the battle for Narnia; it is first and foremost the story of the Lion of Judah preserving for himself a remnant (Caspian and the "Old Narnians") among those in exile.

Indeed, the Caspian of the film is but a pale shade of the character in the
novel; because the Caspian in the film had not been brought up by Professor Cornelius (whose inconsequentiality in this movie I found most disappointing) to long for the days of the High King Peter and the lordship of Aslan, I found I could not realistically believe in him as the "heir" to the throne of Cair Paravel. Caspian in Lewis' novels is a good king precisely because he recognizes from the onset his subordination to the High King Peter and to Aslan, the Highest of all Kings. (He is at his worst in The Dawn Treader, for example, when he forgets these, first at the isle of Deathwater and again at the Eastern End of the World.)

Next, I find that what was done to Peter's character bordered on the
criminal--perhaps even the obscene. The Peter in this movie is more of a
petulant child in the beginning than Edmund was in the first of the series,
allowing himself to be goaded into a fistfight because of an act of
impoliteness. He who was High King Peter the Magnificent would not eschew the aid of his brother; he would not view Caspian as an interloper, oppressor, and rival; and he would NEVER for one moment even COUNTENANCE the thought of allying himself with the White Witch. The mark of Peter's greatness in the novel is the moment when he first meets Caspian and welcomes and encourages him, saying, "I have not come to take your place, you know, but to put you in it." At no point in the film does Peter do anything to demonstrate himself as the true High King of Narnia, ruling by the decree and consent of Aslan.

Most regrettably of all the film's failures as an adaptation, however, is the gross minimalization of Aslan. Aslan is central in the novel, but little more than a cameo guest star in the film (his airtime is scarcely more than that of the White Witch herself!); your argument, Joe, has its merits, and I'd actually have no problem with Aslan's paucity of airtime, were it not for the simple fact that even his sparse appearances in the film are crassly and carelessly reductive. It's not only that Aslan doesn't appear as frequently in the film; it's that when he does appear, he's an Aslan who has been minimized almost to the point of inconsequentiality. (And, by the way, the idea that Aslan is the creator and sustainer of all Narnia is only tenable for those of us who have actually read the whole novel series--there's nothing IN THE FILM to suggest that he is the creator at all!)

I was deeply saddened to see the devaluing of the most deeply moving part in all the novel: Lucy's meeting with Aslan while the others are sleeping. It matters INFINITELY that the reason Aslan seems bigger to Lucy is not that he has grown in the long years of her absence of Narnia; it matters because the whole point of the novel as I read it is that the Covenant Lord of Narnia, the Son of the Emperor Over the Sea, is One in Whom "there is no variation, neither any shadow of turning." The Great Lion has not grown bigger over the years, for the Lion of the Tribe of Judah is the same, yesterday, today, and forever, and the more we come to know Him, the more great and glorious and majestic He seems to us whose eyes and minds and hearts are addled and fettered by the limits of our fallen race.

I was also profoundly disappointed in the scene where Aslan restores Reepicheep's tail; one of the great moments in the novel is where Aslan does this not because of Reepicheep's valor or honor, but for the love between he and his people, but MORE STILL for the love that his ancestors showed Aslan, biting away the cords that bound him to the Stone Table. This was a needless deletion from the film!

http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/2008/05/in-reviewprince.html#comments

***END-QUOTE***

There are two basic problems with Scheidler’s analysis:

1.Even on literary grounds, it’s clear that he takes C. S. Lewis far too seriously. Lewis wrote some very enjoyable fiction. But he wasn’t one of the all-time-great fiction writers. Some readers have a textual command of Lewis which you should reserve for a truly great writer.

Lewis does some things very well, but there are mountains and valleys and plains and deserts of human experience which he either skims over gingerly or leaves entirely untouched. He was a man of books and ideas rather than people and places. He lacks the expansive humanity—or inhumanity—to be a great novelist.

2.There are Christians who get their creed straight from C. S. Lewis. Lewis is their Bible. And not just his expository writing. But the fiction. The fantasy novels. They quote this stuff as if it’s divine revelation. There is only one God, and Lewis is his prophet.

For them, the Bible is an inconvenience—especially when it’s full of nasty tales about a nasty, judgmental God. The Space Trilogy, The Great Divorce, the Chronicles of Narnia—this is their functional canon. Their Holy Writ.

They’re so immersed in this parallel universe that it no longer occurs to them that none of this is real. But this is not an alternative route to heaven. None of this exists—at all. It’s the imaginary world of a dead man. You can enjoy it at the same level you enjoy The Martian Chronicles. Nothing more or less.

11 comments:

  1. He doesn’t have what it takes for hand-to-hand combatant. You win or lose based on brute strength. Every boy may entertain the private fantasy of being able to win a sword fight with a towering, muscular opponent, but as soon as we actually depict these fantasies, we expose how silly they are.

    Steve, I know this is rather inconsequential to your post as a whole, but it seemed like it needed to be corrected. As someone who teaches and studies both armed and unarmed martial arts (in the European tradition; specifically Liechtenauer's Kunst des Fechtens), I have to respectfully disagree with your statement. It should be quite possible to choreograph a highly realistic fight between a skilled teenage boy and a less skilled adult opponent, in which the adult gets thoroughly thrashed. In open hand combat, strength is certainly of great importance; but it is not of final importance unless all other things are equal. In combat with a sword, strength is decidedly less important; and indeed, against an opponent relying on "brute strength", as you put it, even a relatively inexperienced fighter who has been well grounded in the principles of biomechanics, distance, timing, and geometry would have little trouble prevailing (somewhat like apologetics, actually).

    Regards,
    Bnonn

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  2. I'll grant your point if Edmund was tutored in mixed martial arts. In that event the movie version might need to include Georges St-Pierre as his personal trainer.

    Or perhaps we could put in a good word with the Director for your services! You might also help the screenwriters improve the theology of the script.

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  3. Fair enough. You do have to wonder how some characters learn to fight. Do they just magically pick it up?

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  4. Perhaps we should recall David vs. Goliath. This is a true case of a small boy besting a man, and not just any man. But it certainly wasn't with a sword. Even if David were skilled, I doubt he'd have a chance against Goliath.

    We should consider that soldiers in the military are all trained to fight. So it's not as if there is a highly trained kid fighting adults who have just picked up the sword. Narnia is set in a middle ages type of warfare. Speaking of those times, Oaskeshott writes that men "were trained to use the sword from the age of seven (and who had to be tough specimens to survive that age) , [the swords were] were by no means too great [of weight] to be practical." (Oakeshott, Sword in Hand, p. 13).

    Also, I give more to brute strength - the kind of a *man* against a boy - then old Dominic seems to want to give.

    I recall wrestling (greco roman) a girl for the varsity slot who had years of experience. For me, it was my first year. I pinned her in about 30 seconds.

    I remember when I was taking MMA classes and my inst. wanted me to learn a Japanese art (besides the Mui Thai and the jit, and my wrestling background). I attended a tournament as a white belt. I went there with some other guys from our school, besides the one-on-one tournament, we signed up for the team tournament. We made it to the finals and fought a team made of two guys and one girl. The girl was a black belt and an assistant instructor at a school. I was the one who had to fight her. I remember hitting her once in the chest (not even that hard) and she went down like a sack of potatoes. It took her a while to continue and I think it rattled her since I beat her 3 - 0.

    Of course a sword equals out things a bit - just like a gun would (or a stone and sling!). So Bnonn has a point here. But I give an adult - a mean and nasty soldier - who is not as skilled with a sword, or in hand-to-hand combat as some boy is, the edge almost any time, simply do to the overwhelming strength. But I'd give more of an edge to a skilled boy fighting someone wearing no armor. All the arteries are exposed.

    Edmund's arms are probably about 8 inches around. And his legs! I think I've seen bigger legs on a chair. Given that the kids were dressed in knights armor, which weighed probably 75 pounds for a whole suit, and Edmund wore it for hours at a time, it seems unlikely he was physically prepared for this kind of fighting.

    So, maybe Steve should have made corrections, but necessarily the ones Bnonn suggested!

    One other thing that we're not taking into account. It seems that simply fighting on the "right side" gives the weaker boy (in these kinds of tales) a massive reserve of strength to pull from. Dominic mentioned apologetics. We could have another similarity here. Often times, those who are the right side theologically, philosophically, apologetically, just make the better arguments than their more highly trained opponents. In cases like these, boys best men frequently.

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  5. Paul, I can't argue with Oakeshott, and in such a situation I agree. Just to clarify, though, my point was that ex hypothesi it is not inconceivable for a boy to best a man in combat. But the phrase I used, "all other things being equal", was important. David would never have had a chance against Goliath because, well, Goliath was huge. He was by no means an average adult. He was also a great warrior.

    As regards armor, you'd be surprised how light it was. A well made suit of gothic plate could weigh as little as 20 kg (45 lb; well under your 75 lb estimate). In the case of armor made for a boy rather than a man, it isn't unreasonable to think that 15 kg is a possibility (even less if you take magic into account, I suppose). Add to that the fact that plate was much better distributed on the body than modern kevlar, and the physical difficulties you mentioned don't seem so bad. Not that Edmund would necessarily be able to fight all day; but if he was fit and energetic, he could have a decent crack at it.

    On the other hand, a boy raised in English public schools would probably not fare terribly well against a soldier raised from childhood in the use of a weapon. It just isn't reasonable. Some kind of supernatural explanation is necessary. But, in my opinion, that is just as evident in text as on a screen. Perhaps that's just because I know more about it than the average reader though.

    As regards your comments about your own martial arts experiences, I should note that I absolutely do not think that a boy who is hit hard by a man will be getting back up to win the fight. I also don't hold out much hope at all for a boy groundfighting against a man. I was assuming that the boy was trained sufficiently to take the "true place" as George Silver calls it, thus never being hit, nor taken to ground. Even that would not be easy for him, though, unless he's lanky; tall people have a great reach advantage.

    Regards,
    Bnonn

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  6. Ah, my wife has just pointed out to me that, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund grew up to a ripe old age, during which time he learned to fight very, very well (it's a thing with royalty; they get great martial training). In Prince Caspian (apparently; I haven't read it for half my lifetime), it is explicitly stated that these skills begin to return. So presumably Edmund would have been more than a match for the average soldier, all other things being equal.

    :)

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  7. Bnonn,

    As far as brute strength goes, watch Rob Roy! That's how to beat a skilled swordsman. :-)

    Perhaps you, Steve, and I should settle this over a dual. But I think you'd beat us given your sword fighting expertise.

    Perhaps I'd have to pull a Indina Jones (Raiders) move on you to win (swordsman scene)?

    (As an aside, I am aware that some armor was light. But in narnia their suits didn't fit them as well because they were grown the last time they wore them. So we have a boy wearing a man's suit. And, this was no gothic plate. This was straight out of Richard the Lionheart! :-) )

    Anyway, I thinkw e can all agree about the apologetic points made. :-)

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  8. Dominic Bnonn Tennant said...
    Ah, my wife has just pointed out to me that, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund grew up to a ripe old age, during which time he learned to fight very, very well (it's a thing with royalty; they get great martial training). In Prince Caspian (apparently; I haven't read it for half my lifetime), it is explicitly stated that these skills begin to return. So presumably Edmund would have been more than a match for the average soldier, all other things being equal.

    :)

    **************

    That was a point I was trying to keep silent. :-)

    But, this does show that Edmund was a scrawny 16 year old (doubt he even had a hair on his chest) wearing a suite of armor made for his "ripe old age" self.

    And, yes, even given his skill, which opposing soldiers would also have had (see Oakeshott), this is where the "brute man strength" comes into play. So, that his skill returned didn't mean much against an almost equally skilled military soldier who was at least 3 times as strong. Most of those men looked like the could rep 245 10 times, Edmund probably put up 105, at best, for 5 reps!

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  9. Prince Caspian is worth seeing on the big screen. The "romance" is a very subdued attraction, at best. The theme is Thomasian doubt versus sightless faith, displayed in martial terms, and the quality is high.

    One of the important elements of the movie is that the Narnians don't have a realistic chance against the Telemar men.

    Definitely worth a look in theater.

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  10. Steve: "There are Christians who get their creed straight from C. S. Lewis. Lewis is their Bible. And not just his expository writing. But the fiction. The fantasy novels. They quote this stuff as if it’s divine revelation. There is only one God, and Lewis is his prophet.


    They’re so immersed in this parallel universe that it no longer occurs to them that none of this is real."


    Yup. Steve is right. There are Christian C.S. Lewis fans who are the equivalent to Trekkies going to Star Trek Conventions.

    I have encountered them on several blogs. And I'm a C.S. Lewis fan myself! I can't honestly say they idolize C.S. Lewis, but they really do adore C.S. Lewis.

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  11. He was a man of books and ideas rather than people and places.

    His fiction is incredibly artificial. You can always map any situation in his fiction to passages in his non fiction (orual/psyche -> 4 loves, mark studdock -> the inner ring, etc.). FWIW I think he's a heretic as well.

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