Movies

A few words on the two newest movies on my recently watched list. Both of them highly anticipated, not only by the public at large, but also by me, who has been a fan of both series for just about as long as I can remember.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
I'm going to try not to give anything away, since the movie really is quite different from the book and most people who have seen the movie without reading the book enjoyed the movie quite a lot. I have read the book over a dozen times and was not nearly as impressed as I wanted to be. I mean, I never have very high expectations for books turned movies (there are only two, no, three, that I can think of off the top of my head that worked well) but when it's your favorite book that they are working on you can't help but get your hopes up.

Here is what they did to Prince Caspian. In the book, a large portion of the story is told in flashback. That wouldn't work well, to have about a third of the movie in flashback, so they broke it up a bit and reordered it. That's fine. I understand that. What I can't stand is when hollywood people decide they have to add action and romance where there wasn't any before and where there was never any need for it. Grr. And they cut out almost all of Aslan. And I can't decide what I think about Reepicheep.

What they did right? Just about the only character they didn't mess up in this movie was Edmund, and, to a lesser extent, Lucy. Which is good, because Edmund is my favorite character in the series. Or possibly ever. He's kinda tied with Puck, which is saying something :)


Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:
This is a movie that has good things and bad things going for it. On the plus side, it's about one of the most beloved movie icons of all time, is in the same series as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and has Harrison Ford in it. On the down side, it takes place after the golden years of Jones' life, is in the same series as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Harrison Ford is getting kind of old. Still cool of course, but it's a bit weird seeing The Hat (TM) on top of a head of gray hair. What does all that mean for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Well, it's better than Temple of Doom (or at least better connected to Raiders and Last Crusade) and Indiana Jones is still Indiana Jones, just a little bit older. It's not as good as Raiders and Last Crusade, but, let's face it, those two are pretty darn hard to beat. Honestly, I don't think this movie even really tried to beat them. It just tried to be good and do the series justice, and I think it did. I laughed a lot. I enjoyed the little iconic moments when they came. I especially appreciated the quality of the special effects. They were at about the same level as the old movies. Which tells you that Steven Spielberg was directing and not George Lucas. And I'll stop there before this turns into a Star Wars prequel rant.

A small thing I loved: Indy saying "I have a bad feeling about this."