narnia

The girlfriend and I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe last night. We both liked it and it was a faithful (to the best of my recollection) adaption of the book by C. S. Lewis.

I have a couple of nits with the film that prevent me from giving it my most enthusiastic thumbs up, though. First is the rapidness of events after all the children finally get into Narnia. Everything happens so quickly, it's hard to swallow some of the things that happen. The eldest, Peter, becomes an expert military commander in no time at all and the two girls develop an emotional attachment to Aslan, the lion, that seems inexplicable given that it seems they've only known him for a day or so. I can't remember what they've cut out from the book, but if they had only done something to make it clear that more time had passed between the entrance of the children to the final battle, some of the actions of the characters would make more sense.

The other thing that bothered me is that Aslan is depicted as not much more than a talking lion. In later books, it's revealed that he actually created Narnia himself and has God-like powers, but that makes the whole final battle in this film seem rather senseless. How can the White Witch make a stand at all against such a being?