Narnia!

I was thrilled to accept an invitation to a sneak preview of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (scheduled for release 12/10/10). It turned out to be a day and time that did not work well for a lot of people, but I was able to get there an hour and a half early! I was 10th in line. The folks behind me were church planters of Presbyterian and Baptist origin, and I enjoyed eavesdropping on their conversation for a while, when I wasn't busy watching the small child in front of me who was using his dad as his personal jungle gym. The church planters were not current Redeemerites, but were certainly familiar with the church.

Picking up the tickets went smoothly, and I was able to give my guest ticket to a friend who ended up sprinting across town, racing the clock to get to the movie before the lock-down.*

To my surprise and delight, Kathy Keller introduced the movie. She said that as a child, she'd had the impression that C.S. Lewis was her great discovery, and she'd written letters to C.S. Lewis in hopes of encouraging him as a writer. (This was apparently toward the end of his life, when he and his works had been well-known for decades; they just were not known to her to be well-known.) She speculated that she'd been invited to introduce this screening of Voyage of the Dawn Treader because she had similarly pestered the movie-makers (albeit with a different motive - to help them get the important details right in translating the book into cinematic form).

The movie was a delight from the very opening credits. It starts with an idyllic animated scene which gradually becomes real-life action.

What was right with this film? Where to start? The characters were immensely appealing. I think I liked Lucy better in this film than in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Also liked Reepicheep better than in Prince Caspian (or indeed, in the original books - I'd always found him shrill and annoying, even in print); I think they took care to humanize the rat in significant ways in this film.

And Eustace was absolutely perfect. From the very beginning, he is an unbearable snot; creepy, selfish and vicious. This inner nature is soon revealed externally as well, as he is transformed into a dragon. Over the course of the movie, he is un-dragoned and is eventually revealed as a warm and genuine human being. The actor (and heck, probably the director and screenwriters, credit all round!) did an amazing job at communicating this change in a deeply convincing way.

In the book, Eustace is un-dragoned by Aslan. There is no other way. He tries to peel off the dragon skin himself, and is encouraged by the ease with which he can do it... only to realize in dismay that there are more dragon layers underneath each time. Aslan's claws are needed to perform the necessary surgery -- painful, but thorough -- to strip away the dragon skin. In the movie, Eustace is still un-dragoned by Aslan, in a brief and gorgeous CGI scene, but it does not carry the same focus and emotional resonance. (I have a feeling that we may owe Kathy Keller a debt of gratitude for making sure that Eustace at least explains what happened afterward.) In fact, the movie seems to show two, possibly as many as three, potential causes for the un-dragoning of Eustace. One, the proximate cause, is Aslan's removal of the dragon skin. However a second, and almost equally significant cause, is the courageous and generous friendship of Reepicheep. It is clear in the film that Reepicheep loves and seeks after Aslan; and surely such persons can do Aslan's work in loving and encouraging those whose true Narnian nature is hidden under hideous dragon skin.

Some Christians - perhaps especially Catholics? - might see a third possible "cause" for the un-dragoning, based on the good works that Eustace does as a dragon. This too is a deviation from the book. Eustace spends a lot of time in the movie as a dragon, cajoled on to acts of heroism by Reepicheep. He saves everyone from destruction several times using his dragon powers (he lights a fire on the beach so they don't freeze to death; he pulls the ship when they're stuck; he knocks out a sea monster temporarily with a fire-blast to the face; and he is the one to break the spell on Ramandu's Island). So he has seemingly redeemed himself, in some sense, by saving everyone. There are some advantages and disadvantages of this choice; certainly it makes more for more cinematic excitement to have Eustace banging around as a dragon for an extended period. And there's a great scene where he grabs Edmund and swoops with him over the island so he can see the words "I AM EUSTACE" written in flames on the barren land.

There's more to say on this, maybe after December 10. Some more initial thoughts and impressions, to be fleshed out later:

• I wasn't entirely convinced that Edmund's temptation would still take the form of the White Witch. Surely the evil forces could have come up with something better than that?
• Interesting to replace Lucy's "innocent" magic spell gone wrong (the spell to hear what people "really" think of her, which exposes her to nasty gossip), with a more popular be-yourself message. However, the way the new spell works is very intriguing -- her wish to be as beautiful as her sister results in an alternate reality in which Lucy becomes Susan. I thought this was going in one direction, with the perils of vanity, but we quickly learn that in this alternate reality, Lucy herself does not exist. Her brothers and she are all in America (since she has no sister) and they have never heard of Aslan or Narnia, since it was Lucy who discovered the wardrobe. I'm getting shivers just thinking about it.
• There are a few sops to feminism or modernity (I think) which seemed a little unnecessary. For example, a little girl who has no real reason to be on the boat other than the fact that she is female. And a comment by Caspian to Lucy about how grown up she is, which seemed designed to fend off a rather idiotic but oft-stated theory about why Lucy gets to go to Aslan's world while Susan doesn't.
• The entire dufflepuds scenario was beautifully realized. I love the big reveal when they are finally made visible - some cute and clever choices, visually, that C.S. Lewis probably never dreamed of.

Oh, there's more. This was a good movie, and a lot of fun. Looking forward to watching it again.

FN* And indeed, there was a bit of a lock-down. Even though the preview audience was composed primarily of church groups, they were not taking any chances. Our instructions said not to bring any recording devices, including camera phones. Really? Who can spend a day without their mobile phone? And who can even find a camera-free mobile phone these days? Even the free phones that you get for signing a 2-year contract have cameras in them. So the bottom line is, they confiscated everyone's phones at the entrance to the movie theatre. (If you paused to think about whether you had a mobile device with you, as I did, they went ahead and waved a wand at you and detected that there was such a device in your purse.)

Luckily, they'd thought through the logistics and had a check tag for each person to take, and each phone was wrapped in the matching receipt, secured by a rubber band. They also had ziplock bags -- just in case someone had a multi-part recording device of some kind, I imagine. I didn't see any cameras on the table, just phones. So that speaks well of our collective law-abiding intent. Or at least I know that my phone is incapable of taking a device that could in any way undercut the demand for any movie. Even in good light and focused on nearby unmoving objects, the resulting low-resolution, blurry images could be pretty much anything.