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edenfallingThis is part 2 of a rambling compare-and-contrast on the BBC miniseries and Disney feature film versions of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with extensive reference to the book (since the book is my only true canon). As of yet, I have no preference for one filmization over the other, since both have elements that make me happy and elements that annoy me to no end.
link to part 1
link to part 2
link to part 3
link to part 4
link to part 5
jump to some thoughts on Prince Caspian
-----
Edmund's betrayal:
The BBC has leisure to reproduce almost all of the book dialogue in the Beavers' house, though they streamline the bit about the second prophecy -- Cair Paravel and the four thrones -- while incidentally removing the explanation about Lilith and the giants and the nasty lines about not trusting things that look human but aren't. They also follow the book when dealing with Edmund's disappearance: Peter, Susan, and Lucy rush outside to search for him, see nothing but snow, and come back inside to discover Mr. and Mrs. Beaver preparing to leave immediately.
Disney inserts a bunch of annoying chitchat between Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (have I mentioned lately that I cannot stand Disney Mr. Beaver?) and skips over most of the metaphysical stuff aside from the rhymed and unrhymed prophecies. Mr. Beaver then says that Aslan has already summoned the Narnian resistance to form an army, which upsets Susan and Peter -- they were sent to the country to get away from a war, not to stumble into a new one, after all. That is an interesting contrast to both the book and the BBC, which have the children accept their role remarkably readily.
Disney has the discovery of Edmund's absence happen when Peter and Susan decide they have to go home to England. Mr. Beaver then makes dire statements and leads the remaining siblings up a hill to see Edmund, far in the distance, vanishing into the Witch's house. That is melodramatic, unnecessary, and blatant butchery of Lewis's geography. The Witch's house is not anything like that close to Beaversdam! Seeing Edmund enter the castle also requires cutting a lot of the Beavers' perfectly logical explanation of why chasing after Edmund is useless but going to Aslan is the only way to save him. That's a pity; I rather like that scene in the book.
The BBC, again playing with the extra running time of a miniseries, dramatizes Edmund's second thoughts during his journey. A phantom Edmund steps out in front of Jonathan Scott and plays the part of his conscience and common sense, but Edmund argues away his doubts and continues on his journey. This is a silly conceit, but it's interesting to see the difference a change of expression and posture makes in Jonathan Scott's appearance -- even if his conscience weren't translucent, there would be no mistaking good Edmund for bad Edmund. They also keep the little character moment where Edmund tells himself that when he's king of Narnia, the first thing he'll do is make some decent roads. (Speaking of which, I wonder if he followed through on that later? It is the sort of thing he'd care about, given that he's the kind of person who cares about railway schedules and so on.)
Disney has no time for any of that. Disney also sends Edmund out into the dark with no coat -- perhaps he's still resentful over being made to wear a woman's coat, or perhaps he simply underestimated the length of the journey or the bitterness of the weather -- but either way, while it heightens the drama, it makes Edmund look awfully stupid. On that note, BBC Edmund is traveling in late afternoon -- presumably in this version, 'dinner' was the midday meal -- whereas Disney Edmund is traveling at night.
-----
In the Witch's house, part 1:
Both versions of Jadis's castle are cold and creepy, but the blue, icy internal light of Disney's feels more magical and otherworldly. On the other hand, the BBC's version seems more like something a sane person might actually build and live in. I like how the BBC keeps Edmund's initial shock at opening the gates and confronting a stone animal (oddly not a lion but a dog) and his subsequent gleeful relief. They continue to dramatize his internal argument with his conscience (though now only by voice, without the phantom double). Disney compresses the entire sequence and lets Skandar Keynes show Edmund's emotions only by face and body language. Disney also keeps the little character moment wherein Edmund scribbles glasses and a moustache on a stone lion.
The BBC is clearly using a stone castle, while Disney has either built a set out of plastic or is using massive amounts of CGI. (I cannot remember offhand what becomes of their built-of-ice conceit after the thaw.) The statuary gardens are also notably different. The BBC has statues in attitudes of fear or repose, placed like deliberately arranged artwork. Disney has status frozen in attitudes of violence, scattered all round the courtyard willy-nilly, as if Jadis had petrified a band of rebels at some point and left them out as a warning. (That actually makes a lot of sense -- if there is enough discontent in Narnia for Aslan to summon an army at the drop of a hat, there ought to have been other attempts to kill and overthrow the Witch. Perhaps Tumnus's father died in one such rebellion?)
The BBC does an interesting morph from a 'stone' wolf to Maugrim as a man in a fur suit. Disney, using CGI, does not need to bother with such tricks. The CGI wolves are slightly more convincing than the CGI beavers, and since they're meant to be sinister and menacing, any hints of Uncanny Valley creepiness are perhaps more useful than not. I am getting very tired of BBC Edmund's dialogue with his conscience by this point -- it's stopped being an interesting character illustration and has become an anvil-heavy way to point out the theme (i.e., that Edmund has betrayed his family).
I like the interior lighting of Disney's castle better than the BBC's, but I continue to have problems seeing it as a place where anyone might actually live, especially since the floor seems paved with ice that is subliming to create an ankle-level freezing mist. The BBC version is more cramped, but it offers tantalizing hints of what Charn's architecture might have looked like (being stone rather than ice). And while I still prefer BBC Jadis's costuming, I cannot get past Barbara Kellerman's abominable acting. It's especially jarring after watching Jonathan Scott do the best anyone could be asked to do when handed such broad, obvious dialogue in the previous scenes. Nonetheless, the action follows the book quite faithfully, and you can see Edmund really starting to realize that he should not have argued so hard with his conscience, because the Witch is going to do terrible things to his family.
Meanwhile, Disney departs utterly from the book. Edmund walks into an empty audience room and experimentally sits on Jadis's throne. After he tells the current location of his family, she throws him into the dungeons instead of setting out in her sledge. In and of itself this is not an illogical development, since she does send the wolves to Beaversdam and Disney has placed Beaversdam close enough to the castle that Jadis has every reason to expect her troops to return with the Beavers and the other Pevensies. But from this point onward, Disney has to do all kinds of contortions to get back to the real plot of the book. And they seem to have made most of the changes only to create extra tension, which was not necessary (and perhaps out of place in what's meant to be an all-ages film).
I admit that having Edmund actually interact with Tumnus is an interesting choice. It plays up the connection Disney previously established with the portraits of their respective fathers, and Tumnus's position as an informer, and it hammers home to Edmund exactly what his dealings with the Witch have wrought, since Jadis only knew about Lucy's encounters with Tumnus because Edmund told her (though at that time he had no way of knowing the consequences). Also, separating Edmund's information about Aslan from his information about Beaversdam makes the second betrayal more painful -- here he is literally buying his life with Narnia's freedom, whereas in the book and the BBC version, he spills all the information at once while he still thinks Jadis may reward him. Book Edmund and BBC Edmund do not get pushed to the breaking point. Disney Edmund does. And he breaks. He's what, ten years old? Eleven? Of course he breaks. But he traded his family's lives and a whole country's freedom for his own selfish desires (first greed -- 'sweeties,' as Jadis says, and power over his siblings -- and then bare survival), and that is going to eat at him like poison later.
But he doesn't tell about the Stone Table. He looks at Tumnus and says he doesn't know anything more. That is how we know he is redeemable. That is when Disney Edmund changes his mind and takes a stand. (Jadis attempts to shame him back into compliance by revealing his treachery to Tumnus, but that will not work in the long run.) It's an interesting character moment, well-staged and well-acted all round; nevertheless, I am extremely dubious about its necessity.
-----
Setting out for the Stone Table:
[NOTE: for the next three sections, I am using the BBC version to arrange the order of scenes and events, since it's generally faithful to the book. Disney is by now playing so fast and loose with the story that a lot of mental hopscotch or cut-and-paste is required to map their version of events onto Lewis's framework. Therefore, the order in which I discuss events is often not the order in which Disney shows them.]
The BBC keeps the moderate pace of the book, though they exaggerate Mrs. Beaver's preparations and reluctance to leave until she comes off as unbelievably silly. (Disney does this too, though their pacing would be reasonable were it not for their love of chase scenes.) Also, BBC Maugrim morphs from man-in-a-fur-suit to an actual wolf as he runs across the castle courtyard; the pair of wolves remains actual wolves (or wolf-like huskies, like as not) during their journey through the woods. Of course, then they botch the transition back to humanoid Maugrim once he reaches the Beavers' house, and instead of howling (like a proper wolf) he just kind of growls. What a waste of an opportunity for creepy atmospherics.
Also, while the BBC has carefully ruled out a chase scene by having Jadis order Maugrim to meet her at the Stone Table if he arrives too late to the Beavers' house, and by having Maugrim declare that there are no tracks and the scent is cold, there is a slight logical lapse. In other words, the only reason there should be no tracks is because the snow is supposed to have started again... but the BBC shows the night as fine and clear. Oops.
Disney, meanwhile, goes for the chase scene. It's well done as these things go, but unnecessary nonetheless. Also, they are required to invent a fox to interact with the wolves and throw Maugrim off the Pevensies' trail. This results in some tense and violent scenes that serve no useful purpose (except maybe to highlight the danger and grimness of the Witch's regime) and which feel out of place to me in a family film. Also, the fox looks fake.
Randomly, the BBC places deer along the path where the Pevensies are walking. I am baffled. Meanwhile, Edmund continues to converse with his conscience -- can we stop this conceit already? Also, BBC Edmund gets to keep his fur coat throughout this sledge ride, whereas both book Edmund and Disney Edmund are cold and wet. While I think Edmund can make himself perfectly miserable from guilt alone, physical discomfort does highlight his suffering and repentance -- subsequent repentance for BBC Edmund, and ongoing repentance for Disney Edmund.
(Ah, I take it back -- it has begun to snow in the BBC version. But while better late than never, it still makes no sense with Maugrim's inability to track them from the house. There is a timing discrepancy, probably caused by the staging of the escape vs. the pursuit. Meanwhile, Disney avoids the whole issue by means of stupid chase scenes. *sigh*)
-----
Father Christmas and his side-effects:
Disney skips right to the next morning, with the Beavers and the Pevensies looking out across the frozen landscape toward the stone table, and then trekking across a wide, snow-covered plain. They are then chased across that plain by a sledge with bells, which turns out to be -- surprise, surprise -- Father Christmas. Once again, we are injecting action where no action is really needed. Disney Father Christmas has a doofy outfit; I'm okay with it being brown leather rather than red cloth (it makes him seem more woodsy and thus more organic to the Narnian world), but the puffy faux-Elizabethan sleeves are dumb. But maybe that's just me.
Moving on! Disney reverses the book's sequence of gifts -- first Lucy, then Susan, then Peter, rather than Peter first and Lucy last. I suppose that's so we finish with a reminder of the upcoming war. And then Peter realizes that if winter is ending, the frozen river they have to cross won't be frozen much longer. Unneeded drama for the lose!
The BBC's Father Christmas scene hews pretty close to the book, though it's very funny watching a man in a giant fur suit attempt to sneak around unseen. Also, they cut directly from Jadis discovering the party to the Beavers' cave, before returning to show the party, thus maintaining suspense about whom the sleigh bells might announce (though, given that Jadis said to use the harness without bells, that should not be a question for viewers who've been paying close attention). Their props are not terribly convincing, especially when compared to Disney's -- too much gilding, mostly, and the cordial vial is awfully small -- but what interests me most is that both versions cut the "battles are ugly when women fight" line. I am not surprised; that is the sort of line you cannot get away with after about 1970, not without someone screaming bloody murder at you (and with reason!).
The BBC dramatization of the feast and the petrifaction of the dinner guests is also pretty much directly from the book. I like the mix of Talking Beasts, fauns, and dwarves -- it gives a good sense of what a free Narnia might be like, and helps counter the evil dwarf who serves as Jadis's driver. Of course, Kellerman's 'acting' rather ruins the drama and pathos, and the baby squirrel is equally unconvincing in losing its head and proclaiming that it was so Father Christmas who gave them the food and drink. Ah well. (You know, the more I watch this version, the more I think Kellerman is the worst thing about it. I am no use whatsoever as an actor, and I could do a better job than she does.)
Disney avoids the feast entirely. Instead, they have Jadis, Edmund, and the Dwarf come to the now-thawed waterfall as the snow is already two-thirds melted from the ground. And the wolf-pack reappears, along with the fake-looking fox, who was out gathering people for Aslan's army. Seriously, what is wrong with following the book? It had a perfectly good plot and perfectly serviceable set-piece scenes. Unlike Prince Caspian, LWW was obviously filmable as-is; the BBC managed just fine on that basic principle. There was no need to muck around like this!
And now Disney Edmund spills his last pieces of information. Okay, he's trying to save someone besides himself -- Tumnus woke that in him, I suppose -- but this drawing out of his betrayal is horribly painful to watch. And it's sort of... at this point, anything he tries to do will be wrong, you know? People are going to die no matter what he chooses. And he's eleven at most. Lewis's sequence of events is bad enough, when dramatized. What is the point of heaping more torture on Edmund's back? Hasn't he hurt enough by this point? (Especially when compared to Disney Peter, who is an utter jerk toward Susan and Edmund and does not get reprimanded for that behavior.) Anyway, I grant you Skandar Keynes and Tilda Swinton knock the scene out of the park, but I really, really do not see why all these changes were made.
Also, perhaps counter-intuitively, I find the BBC's petrifaction effect -- i.e., turning to stone -- much more convincing than Disney's version of the effect. I think it's because the BBC statues look more statue-like -- smoother, and a lighter gray stone -- whereas Disney's statues are slate-colored and very spiky, as if all the hairs on a Talking Beast's body puff out as they petrify. Anyway, Disney's statues look fake to me, and the color is all wrong. I think the color issue is one of the few visual hangovers I have from seeing the BBC version as a child. Most of their visualizations didn't stick -- some I forgot so thoroughly (like the animation) that I was shocked when I rewatched it -- but I remembered the statues and the fur suits. And Disney's statues do not match the BBC's statues, so a little voice in the back of my head is always saying, "That's wrong!"
-----
The thaw:
The BBC shows this mostly via shots of running water and the Witch's sledge traveling through fog, and by introducing normal bird and insect noises. They also have Edmund begin to take off his fur coat, and then stop when Jadis glares at him. Interestingly, while they retain most of the dialogue around the decision to leave the sledge and begin walking, they don't have Jadis order the driver to bind Edmund's hands. It seems an odd omission, especially since the next time we see him his hands are tied.
Because the BBC is following the book, Peter, Susan, Lucy and the Beavers are enjoying the thaw and relaxing by a small stream rather than in any sort of jeopardy. Then we get long shots of flowers and trees with the children's faces superimposed on them, plus leisurely shots of them walking through the suddenly green woods. I like that; it helps me appreciate what Narnia can be without the Witch's influence.
Meanwhile, back with Disney, we come to dramatic cliffs and a frozen waterfall, but the ice at the base of the falls is quickly breaking up. I don't know why they couldn't just hurry a few yards upstream and cross above the falls -- like the damn wolves do -- but let us not bring logic into a scene that is spun of nothing but melodrama. *sour face* They climb down into the gorge instead. Susan is worried; Peter snaps at her in a particularly nasty fashion. You know, I think Disney Peter needs a comeuppance as much as Disney Edmund. (Aside from the betrayal of course.) And he doesn't get one... unless we count the battle aftermath and the temptation scene in Prince Caspian, which I do not, because Peter must first grow up into a noble High King, and I am not at all sure this Peter is up to the task. I don't like what that does to the moral message of the story. Instead of 'be good and noble and true and you will be like a king or queen,' you get 'be rude and belittle your family and you will get to kill people and rule a country as your reward.' Bah.
Suddenly, howls rise from the woods -- the wolves have found their trail! Oh no! And then... No. You know what? I am not going to deal with the rest of this scene. It is just too stupid. The Beavers' characters are butchered some more, there's a confrontation, there's some dialogue, there's some really obvious water-tank effect work, and they get across the river in the end. And everything is just drenched in pointless melodrama and illogical pauses. The End. Henceforth I am going to pretend this whole sequence does not exist. Frozen river, what frozen river? *blinks innocently*
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
More to come soonish. I have finished writing up the BBC version and am perhaps 3/5 of the way through rewatching the Disney version critically and writing down my observations. (I also went back and edited part 1 of this review, to fix some inaccuracies that had crept into my memory of the Disney film version.)
link to part 3
link to part 1
link to part 2
link to part 3
link to part 4
link to part 5
jump to some thoughts on Prince Caspian
-----
Edmund's betrayal:
The BBC has leisure to reproduce almost all of the book dialogue in the Beavers' house, though they streamline the bit about the second prophecy -- Cair Paravel and the four thrones -- while incidentally removing the explanation about Lilith and the giants and the nasty lines about not trusting things that look human but aren't. They also follow the book when dealing with Edmund's disappearance: Peter, Susan, and Lucy rush outside to search for him, see nothing but snow, and come back inside to discover Mr. and Mrs. Beaver preparing to leave immediately.
Disney inserts a bunch of annoying chitchat between Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (have I mentioned lately that I cannot stand Disney Mr. Beaver?) and skips over most of the metaphysical stuff aside from the rhymed and unrhymed prophecies. Mr. Beaver then says that Aslan has already summoned the Narnian resistance to form an army, which upsets Susan and Peter -- they were sent to the country to get away from a war, not to stumble into a new one, after all. That is an interesting contrast to both the book and the BBC, which have the children accept their role remarkably readily.
Disney has the discovery of Edmund's absence happen when Peter and Susan decide they have to go home to England. Mr. Beaver then makes dire statements and leads the remaining siblings up a hill to see Edmund, far in the distance, vanishing into the Witch's house. That is melodramatic, unnecessary, and blatant butchery of Lewis's geography. The Witch's house is not anything like that close to Beaversdam! Seeing Edmund enter the castle also requires cutting a lot of the Beavers' perfectly logical explanation of why chasing after Edmund is useless but going to Aslan is the only way to save him. That's a pity; I rather like that scene in the book.
The BBC, again playing with the extra running time of a miniseries, dramatizes Edmund's second thoughts during his journey. A phantom Edmund steps out in front of Jonathan Scott and plays the part of his conscience and common sense, but Edmund argues away his doubts and continues on his journey. This is a silly conceit, but it's interesting to see the difference a change of expression and posture makes in Jonathan Scott's appearance -- even if his conscience weren't translucent, there would be no mistaking good Edmund for bad Edmund. They also keep the little character moment where Edmund tells himself that when he's king of Narnia, the first thing he'll do is make some decent roads. (Speaking of which, I wonder if he followed through on that later? It is the sort of thing he'd care about, given that he's the kind of person who cares about railway schedules and so on.)
Disney has no time for any of that. Disney also sends Edmund out into the dark with no coat -- perhaps he's still resentful over being made to wear a woman's coat, or perhaps he simply underestimated the length of the journey or the bitterness of the weather -- but either way, while it heightens the drama, it makes Edmund look awfully stupid. On that note, BBC Edmund is traveling in late afternoon -- presumably in this version, 'dinner' was the midday meal -- whereas Disney Edmund is traveling at night.
-----
In the Witch's house, part 1:
Both versions of Jadis's castle are cold and creepy, but the blue, icy internal light of Disney's feels more magical and otherworldly. On the other hand, the BBC's version seems more like something a sane person might actually build and live in. I like how the BBC keeps Edmund's initial shock at opening the gates and confronting a stone animal (oddly not a lion but a dog) and his subsequent gleeful relief. They continue to dramatize his internal argument with his conscience (though now only by voice, without the phantom double). Disney compresses the entire sequence and lets Skandar Keynes show Edmund's emotions only by face and body language. Disney also keeps the little character moment wherein Edmund scribbles glasses and a moustache on a stone lion.
The BBC is clearly using a stone castle, while Disney has either built a set out of plastic or is using massive amounts of CGI. (I cannot remember offhand what becomes of their built-of-ice conceit after the thaw.) The statuary gardens are also notably different. The BBC has statues in attitudes of fear or repose, placed like deliberately arranged artwork. Disney has status frozen in attitudes of violence, scattered all round the courtyard willy-nilly, as if Jadis had petrified a band of rebels at some point and left them out as a warning. (That actually makes a lot of sense -- if there is enough discontent in Narnia for Aslan to summon an army at the drop of a hat, there ought to have been other attempts to kill and overthrow the Witch. Perhaps Tumnus's father died in one such rebellion?)
The BBC does an interesting morph from a 'stone' wolf to Maugrim as a man in a fur suit. Disney, using CGI, does not need to bother with such tricks. The CGI wolves are slightly more convincing than the CGI beavers, and since they're meant to be sinister and menacing, any hints of Uncanny Valley creepiness are perhaps more useful than not. I am getting very tired of BBC Edmund's dialogue with his conscience by this point -- it's stopped being an interesting character illustration and has become an anvil-heavy way to point out the theme (i.e., that Edmund has betrayed his family).
I like the interior lighting of Disney's castle better than the BBC's, but I continue to have problems seeing it as a place where anyone might actually live, especially since the floor seems paved with ice that is subliming to create an ankle-level freezing mist. The BBC version is more cramped, but it offers tantalizing hints of what Charn's architecture might have looked like (being stone rather than ice). And while I still prefer BBC Jadis's costuming, I cannot get past Barbara Kellerman's abominable acting. It's especially jarring after watching Jonathan Scott do the best anyone could be asked to do when handed such broad, obvious dialogue in the previous scenes. Nonetheless, the action follows the book quite faithfully, and you can see Edmund really starting to realize that he should not have argued so hard with his conscience, because the Witch is going to do terrible things to his family.
Meanwhile, Disney departs utterly from the book. Edmund walks into an empty audience room and experimentally sits on Jadis's throne. After he tells the current location of his family, she throws him into the dungeons instead of setting out in her sledge. In and of itself this is not an illogical development, since she does send the wolves to Beaversdam and Disney has placed Beaversdam close enough to the castle that Jadis has every reason to expect her troops to return with the Beavers and the other Pevensies. But from this point onward, Disney has to do all kinds of contortions to get back to the real plot of the book. And they seem to have made most of the changes only to create extra tension, which was not necessary (and perhaps out of place in what's meant to be an all-ages film).
I admit that having Edmund actually interact with Tumnus is an interesting choice. It plays up the connection Disney previously established with the portraits of their respective fathers, and Tumnus's position as an informer, and it hammers home to Edmund exactly what his dealings with the Witch have wrought, since Jadis only knew about Lucy's encounters with Tumnus because Edmund told her (though at that time he had no way of knowing the consequences). Also, separating Edmund's information about Aslan from his information about Beaversdam makes the second betrayal more painful -- here he is literally buying his life with Narnia's freedom, whereas in the book and the BBC version, he spills all the information at once while he still thinks Jadis may reward him. Book Edmund and BBC Edmund do not get pushed to the breaking point. Disney Edmund does. And he breaks. He's what, ten years old? Eleven? Of course he breaks. But he traded his family's lives and a whole country's freedom for his own selfish desires (first greed -- 'sweeties,' as Jadis says, and power over his siblings -- and then bare survival), and that is going to eat at him like poison later.
But he doesn't tell about the Stone Table. He looks at Tumnus and says he doesn't know anything more. That is how we know he is redeemable. That is when Disney Edmund changes his mind and takes a stand. (Jadis attempts to shame him back into compliance by revealing his treachery to Tumnus, but that will not work in the long run.) It's an interesting character moment, well-staged and well-acted all round; nevertheless, I am extremely dubious about its necessity.
-----
Setting out for the Stone Table:
[NOTE: for the next three sections, I am using the BBC version to arrange the order of scenes and events, since it's generally faithful to the book. Disney is by now playing so fast and loose with the story that a lot of mental hopscotch or cut-and-paste is required to map their version of events onto Lewis's framework. Therefore, the order in which I discuss events is often not the order in which Disney shows them.]
The BBC keeps the moderate pace of the book, though they exaggerate Mrs. Beaver's preparations and reluctance to leave until she comes off as unbelievably silly. (Disney does this too, though their pacing would be reasonable were it not for their love of chase scenes.) Also, BBC Maugrim morphs from man-in-a-fur-suit to an actual wolf as he runs across the castle courtyard; the pair of wolves remains actual wolves (or wolf-like huskies, like as not) during their journey through the woods. Of course, then they botch the transition back to humanoid Maugrim once he reaches the Beavers' house, and instead of howling (like a proper wolf) he just kind of growls. What a waste of an opportunity for creepy atmospherics.
Also, while the BBC has carefully ruled out a chase scene by having Jadis order Maugrim to meet her at the Stone Table if he arrives too late to the Beavers' house, and by having Maugrim declare that there are no tracks and the scent is cold, there is a slight logical lapse. In other words, the only reason there should be no tracks is because the snow is supposed to have started again... but the BBC shows the night as fine and clear. Oops.
Disney, meanwhile, goes for the chase scene. It's well done as these things go, but unnecessary nonetheless. Also, they are required to invent a fox to interact with the wolves and throw Maugrim off the Pevensies' trail. This results in some tense and violent scenes that serve no useful purpose (except maybe to highlight the danger and grimness of the Witch's regime) and which feel out of place to me in a family film. Also, the fox looks fake.
Randomly, the BBC places deer along the path where the Pevensies are walking. I am baffled. Meanwhile, Edmund continues to converse with his conscience -- can we stop this conceit already? Also, BBC Edmund gets to keep his fur coat throughout this sledge ride, whereas both book Edmund and Disney Edmund are cold and wet. While I think Edmund can make himself perfectly miserable from guilt alone, physical discomfort does highlight his suffering and repentance -- subsequent repentance for BBC Edmund, and ongoing repentance for Disney Edmund.
(Ah, I take it back -- it has begun to snow in the BBC version. But while better late than never, it still makes no sense with Maugrim's inability to track them from the house. There is a timing discrepancy, probably caused by the staging of the escape vs. the pursuit. Meanwhile, Disney avoids the whole issue by means of stupid chase scenes. *sigh*)
-----
Father Christmas and his side-effects:
Disney skips right to the next morning, with the Beavers and the Pevensies looking out across the frozen landscape toward the stone table, and then trekking across a wide, snow-covered plain. They are then chased across that plain by a sledge with bells, which turns out to be -- surprise, surprise -- Father Christmas. Once again, we are injecting action where no action is really needed. Disney Father Christmas has a doofy outfit; I'm okay with it being brown leather rather than red cloth (it makes him seem more woodsy and thus more organic to the Narnian world), but the puffy faux-Elizabethan sleeves are dumb. But maybe that's just me.
Moving on! Disney reverses the book's sequence of gifts -- first Lucy, then Susan, then Peter, rather than Peter first and Lucy last. I suppose that's so we finish with a reminder of the upcoming war. And then Peter realizes that if winter is ending, the frozen river they have to cross won't be frozen much longer. Unneeded drama for the lose!
The BBC's Father Christmas scene hews pretty close to the book, though it's very funny watching a man in a giant fur suit attempt to sneak around unseen. Also, they cut directly from Jadis discovering the party to the Beavers' cave, before returning to show the party, thus maintaining suspense about whom the sleigh bells might announce (though, given that Jadis said to use the harness without bells, that should not be a question for viewers who've been paying close attention). Their props are not terribly convincing, especially when compared to Disney's -- too much gilding, mostly, and the cordial vial is awfully small -- but what interests me most is that both versions cut the "battles are ugly when women fight" line. I am not surprised; that is the sort of line you cannot get away with after about 1970, not without someone screaming bloody murder at you (and with reason!).
The BBC dramatization of the feast and the petrifaction of the dinner guests is also pretty much directly from the book. I like the mix of Talking Beasts, fauns, and dwarves -- it gives a good sense of what a free Narnia might be like, and helps counter the evil dwarf who serves as Jadis's driver. Of course, Kellerman's 'acting' rather ruins the drama and pathos, and the baby squirrel is equally unconvincing in losing its head and proclaiming that it was so Father Christmas who gave them the food and drink. Ah well. (You know, the more I watch this version, the more I think Kellerman is the worst thing about it. I am no use whatsoever as an actor, and I could do a better job than she does.)
Disney avoids the feast entirely. Instead, they have Jadis, Edmund, and the Dwarf come to the now-thawed waterfall as the snow is already two-thirds melted from the ground. And the wolf-pack reappears, along with the fake-looking fox, who was out gathering people for Aslan's army. Seriously, what is wrong with following the book? It had a perfectly good plot and perfectly serviceable set-piece scenes. Unlike Prince Caspian, LWW was obviously filmable as-is; the BBC managed just fine on that basic principle. There was no need to muck around like this!
And now Disney Edmund spills his last pieces of information. Okay, he's trying to save someone besides himself -- Tumnus woke that in him, I suppose -- but this drawing out of his betrayal is horribly painful to watch. And it's sort of... at this point, anything he tries to do will be wrong, you know? People are going to die no matter what he chooses. And he's eleven at most. Lewis's sequence of events is bad enough, when dramatized. What is the point of heaping more torture on Edmund's back? Hasn't he hurt enough by this point? (Especially when compared to Disney Peter, who is an utter jerk toward Susan and Edmund and does not get reprimanded for that behavior.) Anyway, I grant you Skandar Keynes and Tilda Swinton knock the scene out of the park, but I really, really do not see why all these changes were made.
Also, perhaps counter-intuitively, I find the BBC's petrifaction effect -- i.e., turning to stone -- much more convincing than Disney's version of the effect. I think it's because the BBC statues look more statue-like -- smoother, and a lighter gray stone -- whereas Disney's statues are slate-colored and very spiky, as if all the hairs on a Talking Beast's body puff out as they petrify. Anyway, Disney's statues look fake to me, and the color is all wrong. I think the color issue is one of the few visual hangovers I have from seeing the BBC version as a child. Most of their visualizations didn't stick -- some I forgot so thoroughly (like the animation) that I was shocked when I rewatched it -- but I remembered the statues and the fur suits. And Disney's statues do not match the BBC's statues, so a little voice in the back of my head is always saying, "That's wrong!"
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The thaw:
The BBC shows this mostly via shots of running water and the Witch's sledge traveling through fog, and by introducing normal bird and insect noises. They also have Edmund begin to take off his fur coat, and then stop when Jadis glares at him. Interestingly, while they retain most of the dialogue around the decision to leave the sledge and begin walking, they don't have Jadis order the driver to bind Edmund's hands. It seems an odd omission, especially since the next time we see him his hands are tied.
Because the BBC is following the book, Peter, Susan, Lucy and the Beavers are enjoying the thaw and relaxing by a small stream rather than in any sort of jeopardy. Then we get long shots of flowers and trees with the children's faces superimposed on them, plus leisurely shots of them walking through the suddenly green woods. I like that; it helps me appreciate what Narnia can be without the Witch's influence.
Meanwhile, back with Disney, we come to dramatic cliffs and a frozen waterfall, but the ice at the base of the falls is quickly breaking up. I don't know why they couldn't just hurry a few yards upstream and cross above the falls -- like the damn wolves do -- but let us not bring logic into a scene that is spun of nothing but melodrama. *sour face* They climb down into the gorge instead. Susan is worried; Peter snaps at her in a particularly nasty fashion. You know, I think Disney Peter needs a comeuppance as much as Disney Edmund. (Aside from the betrayal of course.) And he doesn't get one... unless we count the battle aftermath and the temptation scene in Prince Caspian, which I do not, because Peter must first grow up into a noble High King, and I am not at all sure this Peter is up to the task. I don't like what that does to the moral message of the story. Instead of 'be good and noble and true and you will be like a king or queen,' you get 'be rude and belittle your family and you will get to kill people and rule a country as your reward.' Bah.
Suddenly, howls rise from the woods -- the wolves have found their trail! Oh no! And then... No. You know what? I am not going to deal with the rest of this scene. It is just too stupid. The Beavers' characters are butchered some more, there's a confrontation, there's some dialogue, there's some really obvious water-tank effect work, and they get across the river in the end. And everything is just drenched in pointless melodrama and illogical pauses. The End. Henceforth I am going to pretend this whole sequence does not exist. Frozen river, what frozen river? *blinks innocently*
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More to come soonish. I have finished writing up the BBC version and am perhaps 3/5 of the way through rewatching the Disney version critically and writing down my observations. (I also went back and edited part 1 of this review, to fix some inaccuracies that had crept into my memory of the Disney film version.)
link to part 3
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-05 07:18 am (UTC)Oh, and here's a link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRreM7M1aZA) to the first part of the TV cartoon version. I watched this when it first aired . . .
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-05 07:21 pm (UTC)It was an interesting experience to rewatch the BBC version. I had forgotten so much of it (which is not surprising, since I saw it quite young and I'm not a very visually-oriented person), but there were a couple aspects that seem to have lodged much deeper in my mind than I'd realized. And it's especially interesting to lay the BBC version next to the Disney version as close to scene-by-scene as I can manage, and to try to figure out why the people behind each production made the choices they did.