New Narnia Trailer In Glorious Quicktime!

His anti-Christian bias is so blatant in the Amber Spyglass trilogy (think that's what it was called...) that by the time I finished it I figured that the poor guy must have been diddled by a priest or something. It was a good read, but Lewis will be read by our grandchildren's children. Pullman will be forgotten in a decade.

looks like they included a couple of great shots in the trailer - aslan out of the tent, bird on fire.

What does ranting about Philip Pullman have to do with this trailer or film reportage in general? There are plenty of more relevant venues for the topic.

Pullman recently made some harsh comments suggesting that the film shouldn't be made/released. The film is being released, es evidenced by the trailer. Thus, the relevance.

Regardless if you wish to read in the Christian angle or not, this film is shaping up to be THE SPECTACLE film of the season...looking to trump Harry Potter and possibly King Kong as well. Time will tell.

I doupt it will do as well or better than Potter or Kong (I actually think that Kong will not do as well as people think). I also think that there will only be one Narnia film, mainly because most people have no idea what this is.

This just looks more amazing the more I see of it. Although I found Neeson's voice coming out of Aslan's mouth a bit jarring at first, the more I think about it, the more it grows on me. And the visuals just continue to look more amazing, even moreso than - dare I say it? - the LOTR films.

I'm with Phil on this one. Looking forward to the film/series very much, but I'm both interested and pleased to see they're not attempting to make The Last Battle, which is where Lewis tries to reconcile his fantasy world with the Christianity he holds dear... and the result isn't pretty. It's worth digging up some of Pullman's arguments againt Lewis - you don't have to agree with him, but he makes some good, solid, points. Interestingly, a lot of his argument isn't against Christianity per se, but against those who claim to act for a higher authority while actually pursuing their own selfish aims.

Looking forward to the film though - looks damn impressive from the trailers.

The Last Battle - along with That Hideous Strength (the final book of his sci-fi trilogy) - are the two Lewis books that most show the influence of Charles Williams. Williams was another member of the Inklings - along with Tolkein - and was one very odd man. A christian who wrote books of theology, but he also believed very strongly in knowing things through their opposites and so experimented heavily with the occult and you get threads of tarot, kabbalah and good ol' black magic shooting through his own stuff. He drives the conservative Christian set NUTS (those who have heard of him anyway) because he just absolutely refuses to cast things in black and white terms and probably didn't even believe in evil as a category (he sees only power used appropriately and inappropriately) but I adore the guy ... Descent Into Hell, The Greater Trumps and Place of the Lion are all fantastic books that deserve an audience ...

But anyway ... Lewis' Last Battle and Hideous Strength tend to bend a lot of heads in Christian circles as well. I remember growing up in church circles that considered The Last Battle blasphemous because Lewis argued that good done for ANY god - and he specifically included the false one they were fighting against - was a form of worship to the true god. Lewis was a lot farther down the 'all roads lead to heaven' line than most people realize, and was remarkably forward thinking for a man who has been so embraced in conservative circles ... he'd piss a lot of people off in church crowds if they ever bothered to actually read most of his stuff ...

I've studied the guy in college courses and Pullman is absolutely dead wrong if he thinks Lewis was racist. The man was very ecumenical and very respectful of other religious traditions. And considering he was an atheist for most of his life and - in his own words - was dragged to faith kicking and screaming while already well into his academic career at Oxford he's very well thought out in what he believed and why.

But, yeah ... The Last Battle is pretty much unfilmable. I'd love to see them at least get to The Magician's Nephew and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as well, though.

Mmm.. the Edwardian fantasy element of The Magician's Nephew (with little references to Sherlock Holmes being alive and well in Baker Street) could look appropriately fabulous if realised in that hyper-realistic WETA style.

Never heard of Charles Williams before - very interesting...

Cheers Todd

Oh, if you like the Edwardian thing you'd definitely appreciate Williams. He's squarely in that tradition. I've long thought Descent Into Hell would make a great film in the right hands, but it'd be a hard sell ...

One of the things I really love about him is that he typically doesn't cast good vs evil at all, really ... you know people are going to be squaring off against each other but you generally don't know who will end up on which side until at least half way through his books and the things that turn them are always really small little details rather than big, sweeping 'I'm bad, you're good' moments. I don't know how well his little dips into theology would translate for people who don't have a background there but a) they don't happen all that often and b) he's so far outside of orthodoxy that pretty much everybody has to just feel their way through them, background or not ... I could probably steer you to some retailers online if you wanted or we could work out some sort of *cough*DVDs*cough* arrangement if you wanted to check him out ...