Film Review: The Chronicles of Narnia; The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe
Narnia in my humble opinion was... underwhelming.
So much hype has been surrounding it from the multipart making-of teasers online by Weta Workshop, to its glorious, full color trailer, to the media bandwagon harping about it in the print media and on TV .
Yet it somehow manages to disappoint.
If you were expecting another Lord of the Rings…you’re wrong.
If you were expecting something akin to Harry Potter…close, but no cigar.
I won’t go into the full story since I’m sure you’ve read about it all through the media hoopla for the past few weeks. Instead I’ll go over why I think it’s not up to par with the other fantasy greats of recent memory.
The weapons and creature design are flawless; I have to credit Weta Workshop (of LotR fame) full marks for that. The CGI on the other hand was dodgy in a few places especially when rendering the kids against a green screen environment.
C’mon man….this isn’t your Grandma’s Panavision!
Cough up some money Disney Corp for fcuk’s sake. The CGI scenes where the kids were standing on the mountaintop watching the rest of Narnia before them was SO dodgy it looked like it came from those old 1980s movies. The CGI rendering was so different in colour from the actors that you have the “pop-up effect” where you subconciously KNOW they are actually just standing in front of the green screen while the animators would add in the background later. (which didn’t look too good, hence the pop-up or tacked on feeling)
The kids acting were passable, yet not as powerful as the kids from Harry Potter. When you see Ron, Hermione or Harry on screen for example, you believe that you’re actually seeing Ron, Hermione or Harry. The child actors from the HP films owned their characters; made it theirs; and added new dimensions to them. For the Narnia kids however, it just feels as though the kids were going through the motions and filling up tired stereotypes. The older brother acted like a leader, the third child actor the spoilt brat; big sister is the feminine matriach, and lil’ kid is the mischievous, adventurous one. The operative word here being ‘acted’.
I never felt at any moment as though these kids believed in what they were acting and making their characters come to life. Nowt.
Even the war scenes had NO danger to it. It just felt (again) as though everyone was just going through the motions…swinging the sword left and right, cutting through air (where the creatures will be CGI’d later into frame). There was no grand sweeping arc of the battlefield ala Kingdom of Heaven. No frenetic cuts of action as we jump from one character to the other and see how they were each handling the tide of the battle ala LotR.
So much hype has been surrounding it from the multipart making-of teasers online by Weta Workshop, to its glorious, full color trailer, to the media bandwagon harping about it in the print media and on TV .
Yet it somehow manages to disappoint.
If you were expecting another Lord of the Rings…you’re wrong.
If you were expecting something akin to Harry Potter…close, but no cigar.
I won’t go into the full story since I’m sure you’ve read about it all through the media hoopla for the past few weeks. Instead I’ll go over why I think it’s not up to par with the other fantasy greats of recent memory.
The weapons and creature design are flawless; I have to credit Weta Workshop (of LotR fame) full marks for that. The CGI on the other hand was dodgy in a few places especially when rendering the kids against a green screen environment.
C’mon man….this isn’t your Grandma’s Panavision!
Cough up some money Disney Corp for fcuk’s sake. The CGI scenes where the kids were standing on the mountaintop watching the rest of Narnia before them was SO dodgy it looked like it came from those old 1980s movies. The CGI rendering was so different in colour from the actors that you have the “pop-up effect” where you subconciously KNOW they are actually just standing in front of the green screen while the animators would add in the background later. (which didn’t look too good, hence the pop-up or tacked on feeling)
The kids acting were passable, yet not as powerful as the kids from Harry Potter. When you see Ron, Hermione or Harry on screen for example, you believe that you’re actually seeing Ron, Hermione or Harry. The child actors from the HP films owned their characters; made it theirs; and added new dimensions to them. For the Narnia kids however, it just feels as though the kids were going through the motions and filling up tired stereotypes. The older brother acted like a leader, the third child actor the spoilt brat; big sister is the feminine matriach, and lil’ kid is the mischievous, adventurous one. The operative word here being ‘acted’.
I never felt at any moment as though these kids believed in what they were acting and making their characters come to life. Nowt.
Even the war scenes had NO danger to it. It just felt (again) as though everyone was just going through the motions…swinging the sword left and right, cutting through air (where the creatures will be CGI’d later into frame). There was no grand sweeping arc of the battlefield ala Kingdom of Heaven. No frenetic cuts of action as we jump from one character to the other and see how they were each handling the tide of the battle ala LotR.
This being a Disney movie, of course there was no sight of blood or gore. But even besides that, I think the battle scenes could have been structured and paced better to elicit much more emotion out of the audience.
I reckon the main problem with Narnia is it has no heart. The story has no heart.
Yep. Kinda weird comment to make for a movie adapted from a series of books, I know. But it just felt empty to me. The newbie director, Andrew Adamson (of Shrek 1 & 2 fame) couldn’t manage to create a great spectacle of the whole affair ala Peter Jackson, even with the Weta guys at his disposal. He didn’t manage to evoke much emotion out of the kids to make us believe that they were actually in any danger.
Tilda Swinton, as the Witch Queen also looked hammy in her role and stiff when delivering her lines. After her superb turn in last year’s Constantine, I expected this movie to put her more in the Hollywood spotlight…but to no avail.
In closing, Narnia falters as the end-of-the–year-extravaganza it has been much hyped to be…but it makes a nice kid’s tale to bring the children along to during the school holidays on a boring Sunday evening.
I reckon the main problem with Narnia is it has no heart. The story has no heart.
Yep. Kinda weird comment to make for a movie adapted from a series of books, I know. But it just felt empty to me. The newbie director, Andrew Adamson (of Shrek 1 & 2 fame) couldn’t manage to create a great spectacle of the whole affair ala Peter Jackson, even with the Weta guys at his disposal. He didn’t manage to evoke much emotion out of the kids to make us believe that they were actually in any danger.
Tilda Swinton, as the Witch Queen also looked hammy in her role and stiff when delivering her lines. After her superb turn in last year’s Constantine, I expected this movie to put her more in the Hollywood spotlight…but to no avail.
In closing, Narnia falters as the end-of-the–year-extravaganza it has been much hyped to be…but it makes a nice kid’s tale to bring the children along to during the school holidays on a boring Sunday evening.
posted by NiK! at
4:11 PM
