Thoughts on Narnia

The boys and I have been on a bit of a Narnia binge lately.  I got "Prince Caspian" on Blu-Ray (for $10.00!  It's about time BR prices came down) and we've watched it several times, and we just finished listening to "The Last Battle" in the car.

I literally cried the first time I saw the Walden/Disney version of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", simply because it was so true to the book.  I was stunned.  I wish they had been in charge of the Lord of the Rings movies (yes, yes, they were great, but what were the hobbits doing in Osgilliath?  And Faramir is a completely different person in the movie than in the book.  And they completely screwed up Aragorn's...oh never mind). 

"Prince Caspian" was well done also.  However, I've heard that Caspian did not do as well financially as was projected; I hope that doesn't forestall the making of the rest.

The next book in the series, if I remember correctly, is "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" which I would guess would be the most expensive of the books to adapt.  Most of it is set on water, which makes for a difficult and expensive set, and there is a dragon involved (although I suppose CGI makes that less of a challenge than in the past).  If they can get past that movie, the rest should be relatively easy to make.

Another issue is the stories themselves.  C.S. Lewis made no secret about the books being Christian allegories, and he can sometimes become a bit heavy-handed.  Further, VDT reads a bit like vignettes instead of a whole; they get on the boat and visit a series of islands, each with a separate little adventure.  They movie-makers have done a fabulous job of casting thus far; hopefully that continues, since the part of Eustace can be a bit touchy and if the actor is not careful he's liable to overplay the part.

Thinking of the Narnia books made me wonder if someone would attempt to make Lewis' space trilogy books as well, but then I realized that would not be possible.  Specifically, "Perelandra" would be impossible to make without an R rating since all of the characters are naked throughout (it's a parallel of Adam and Eve, with the part of Eden played by the planet Venus).  The physical movie would be makeable; the quelling of Ransom's sin nature would not be translatable.