Narnia and beyond

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I just finished the last of the 37 CD’s of all 7 Narnia Chronicles unabridged audio books 🙂 Whew! What an amazing journey the last 2 months have been as I have “re-read” all these wonderful stories.

I read the books as a teenager, but must admit I didn’t remember a word of them. That’s why the old BBC movie versions and now the new Walden versions are great reminders of C.S. Lewis’ masterpiece. I so wish I could dream and write like him. Also, if you haven’t already, I highly recommend watching “Shadowlands”, the movie based on the C.S. Lewis biography.

The Chronicles of Narnia are in this order in case you want to borrow the library’s CD sets:

Magician’s nephew.

Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe.

Horse and his boy.

Prince Caspian.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Silver chair.

Last battle.

None of the books are inferior to another, although some are more captivating as movies and more “doable” as a 2 hour theater feature. The 7 stories are in chronological order, the plots building upon the previous book and really should be read in order. Although every story has a beginning and an end, people and places make more sense when you know their background from previous books. The first book describes the creation/beginning of Narnia and the last book ends with Narnia going under as a country but with a new Narnia beginning.

The old BBC movie productions (of book 2, 4 and 5) have ridiculous special effects and “B” rated actors, which actually makes them much more child friendly. But on the other hand they are VERY true to the books. Even big sections of dialogue are directly taken from the original manuscripts. Absolutely worth seeing.

I wish I could say the same for the new productions. The 2 first movies had very recognizable scripts, characters and wording, although with a very “Hollywoodized” spin to make the stories more flowing and “on the edge”. As if Lewis’ original books aren’t exciting enough…  With spectacular special effects, amazing music, great acting performances, we have been whisked away to Narnia with the Pevensie kids again and again.

I saw the latest movie “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” yesterday and I was half impressed and half sorely disappointed. The producers have taken great liberties in eliminating so much then added a whole lot to the story that isn’t in the book. Trying to rehash the whole movie, my subjective opinion is that this movie is only 30 % true to the book. BUT they still capture much of what the book is about AND did a fairly good job condensing a 7 hour story into a 2 hour movie. This book is very much about the relationships between the characters and that is something the movie completely missed.

Looking ahead: I really hope Walden will make another movie and it better be “The Silver Chair”. None ot the other 4 remaining books would make sense at this time. Going back to previous books will be completely out of context and very confusing. But I believe Walden is already working on the possibility of book # 6, since the last movie ends with the brief introduction of Jill Pope, one of the main characters in “The Silver Chair”.