If you didn’t catch the trailer for the upcoming Narnia movie during the ABC broadcast of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets earlier tonight, don’t worry — a French version of the trailer is already online here — oh, wait, now there’s an English version of the trailer here.
I am cautiously optimistic about this film, but I have to say the battle scenes look like they might be a little over-the-top for this particular storybook — and keep in mind that this trailer doesn’t show any clips from the opening bombing of London sequence! I have been concerned about this sort of thing ever since I saw the WETA featurette in which Richard Taylor, who won several Oscars for his work on The Lord of the Rings, went into his standard spiel about how realistic all the weapons will be. That sort of intense detail was perfectly appropriate for The Lord of the Rings, since J.R.R. Tolkien’s book was itself an intensely detailed bit of world creation; but C.S. Lewis’s books were always a lot more casual, with bits of his favorite myths thrown together just because he liked them all, from Greco-Roman deities to Santa Claus. Some people have asked where, say, the printing presses are in Narnia that produced the books on Mr Tumnus’s shelf; Tolkien would have had an answer for such questions, but Lewis just didn’t care, because that wasn’t the point of his stories.
Anyway, getting back to the trailer, some friends of mine have noted that Lucy’s discovery of the wardrobe is given a “precious” treatment that doesn’t quite match the off-handed way in which she discovers the wardrobe in the books; and Jeffrey Overstreet isn’t too impressed with Mrs McCready’s line delivery, either.
Still, there’s always hope. And I note that the French title for this film includes the words “Chapitre 1” — looks like the producers or distributors in some parts of the world are feeling awfully confident about the sequel potential of this film!
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