Fantasy movies generally tend to suck,

SUCK.

The characters in LotR all had their motivations set, and there were reasons for the ring being entrusted to hobbits rather than any of the other races. Narnia had a bunch of brats who wandered into it and were automatically given command over a prepared army. It makes no sense. Narnia was crafted around the children. Middle Earth is a world independent of the characters - their actions make sense within the context of their setting. Narnia only makes sense with respect to the children, regardless of how many pretty colors they used to paint it.

I read the Narnia series shortly before I read the LotR series way back when, so it’s not merely nostalgia coloring my opinion. Narnia the movie was just not put together well. If it hadn’t been riding the fantasy wave, it would not have amounted to anything.

Dude, if any movie based on a fantasy book has the right to be cliched, it’s LotR. :stuck_out_tongue:

As for Narnia, I read the book, and I have to say the movie didn’t impress me. Sure, it followed the book fairly well, but it felt rather, well, hollow.

Narnia strikes me as the prototypical “wish-fulfilment” fantasy. It takes four pansy upper-middle class kids, who continually make pre-adolescent jokes and have pre-adolescent arguments, who never actually deal or have dealt with real-life struggles, and don’t even <i>grow</i> as individuals. Rather, they learn that by following the morals their parents taught them, all problems will be solved. Narnia is C.S. Lewis’s attempt to reinforce the remnants of Christian beliefs and values in England. I mean, for God’s sake, <i>Santa</i> gives the children magical weapons.

Not that Narnia does a bad job of it. As far as wish-fulfilment fantasies go, it’s well-written and effectively allegorical – more than, say, Harry Potter. But I certainly wouldn’t put it on a level with LotR, where characters interact like real, mature people, the “little people” aren’t wiser and more powerful than the “big people”, and characters are forced to develop and make sacrifices to accomplish things.

I’d like to point out, the only reason the elves of middle earth suck is because of a doom placed on them for rebelling! Well, not all of them rebelled, but they all fell under the doom, so now they become weary of the world.

As for elves who didn’t suck.

Fingolfin.

I agree and for what it is, I gotta say, its well done. I wanted to clarify my bias. I like LOTR because it deals with a lot of themes and concepts and despite what Hades might think, its not directed at children. Everyone has to learn from what LOTR has to say. To say LOTR is just a couple hobbits throwing a ring in a volcano is very wrong.

Yeah, i like the new testament too.

I might be making some wild assumptions here, but those elements weren’t cliché when Tolkien wrote the books in the late 1930s and 40s. You’re blaming a movie for being cliché when there’s a good chance those elements originated from the freaking books.
Whether or not something is cliché is independent of where it originated. I don’t care if it was original when the books were written. This isn’t when the books were written. It’s decades later. You also have to keep in mind that most of LotR’s cliché elements weren’t taken from the novels, and a lot of the ones that were were already cliché when the books were written.

I don’t think it’s directed at children. No need to invent things people never said just to state your opinion.

Not to mention the writers’ only job in that movie was figuring out how much stuff to take out while still keeping the story sensical. How do you “saturate” a film that follows a seventy-something-year-old book practically to the letter?
Why do you ask so many loaded questions? The film doesn’t follow the book practically to the letter. It doesn’t even come close. Interpretations of such a film would still be very flexible and easily influenced by ideas that came after the books.

That was the point.

I guess I can’t like it then, since I only watched it yesterday and I obviously love LotR. If only the fantasy wave didn’t influence me, then maybe I could give a more accurate review. Oh well, can’t win em all.

I wouldn’t put it on a level with a LotR that did those things either. I’m talking about the recent movies though, sorry.

The RPGs / Narnia are made that way because they are directed at children. Connect the dots.

Like what?

The films were obviously shortened and many scenes were purged (Thankfully in some cases, I fucking hated Bombadil), but barring some reorganizations of events, the only “major” relevant unjustified change was basically axing Faramir’s character. The rest of the films keep all their essential elements intact.

Where are these so very important differences?

Maybe, it’s because the author was British.
Maybe.

I like LotR a lot, and was sort of disappointed by the movies. The thing is, one cannot expect movies to be the same as books. They are different art forms. It’s like expecting to be able to read a painting based on a poem as you would the poem. That’s just inane, isn’t it, you can’t read things that aren’t words! Yeah, well, the same goes for film.
As far as the new movies go, I thought they kept a lot of what was essential; the characters still did have to make sacrifices and confront ethical problems, the hobbits were still just as important as all the others, wisdom and courage were independant of race, birthright, or power. That was all still there. Maybe not so explicitly expressed as it was in the verbal narrative of hte novel, but it persisted in the films, as well.
The Ents decision was changed, et ceteras, but the important, central concepts were still there.

EDIT: As for the 500-page novel, that’s a little misleading. It’s about 300 typed, double-spaced 8.5 by 11 inch pages. Add to that the fact that Eragon is perhaps the single most padded work I’ve ever read (it was like he was giving it length to impress people; a “five-hundred” page story with about “two hundred” pages of actual storyline.), so I’d say I could’ve done it when I was fifteen. The novel I finished when I was fifteen was about that long (280 pages in the same conditions that Eragon would amount to about 320), only with much less padding. The one I’m writing now will end up much longer with a similar amount of description/padding. Fucking “Victorian style,” what was I thinking?
He has a knack for pretty descriptions and occasionally elegant turn-of-phrase, but he’s really not that impressive a writer, even for a fifteen-year-old. Most of the kids in my creative writing class (aside from the few dedicated poets who write prose only with extreme, haughty distaste and only when they absolutely must) could pull it off, and in a better, or at least equally good, novel as Eragon.

That certainly would have been a scene…

Treebeard: …
Ent 1: …
Ent 2: …
Ent 3: …




Pippin: ?


Merry: * Checks watch *



[Twenty Minutes go by]



Merry & Pippin: ?


Audience: WTF?

I loved both Narnia and LotR. Then again, I rarely see any movies, and I tend to love anything as long as it’s sufficiently cinematic and the script isn’t complete drivel. I have to say I judged Narnia based on my own memories of the books (which I must have read a dozen times) rather than any independent impressions of the characters or plot.

Why do people argue with Hades? The arguments never get anywhere.

I dunno. Maybe they like arguring to a deaf wall.

But to the topic at hand, were there not supposed to be words about a Wheel of Time movie or something? I probably hallusinated that one, thought. I wouldn’t be surprised.

I was chill enough with Narnia. I didn’t like at well as LotR, but it was pretty good.

Man I hated Narnia. But I gotta say the soundtrack deserves a thumbs-up.

I’m not saying it wasn’t good because it rode the fantasy wave. It wasn’t good because it wasn’t put together well for reasons including the other things I’ve mentioned. I’m also not saying you only like it because it rode that wave, I’m saying you have bad taste. And you’re a Communist.

Wasn’t that Castro fellow a communist? Castro contains both a C and S; from whence do you believe C. S. Lewis’ non-existant first names came from. His real first name, you dirty pinko commie, you’re watching Castro’s film.

Actually, they originally decided to CRUSH SARUMAN! But in the film, they only decided that.

Also, their were those weird, moving tree…things.