It has been some while that I had not watched a Disney film. The reason is that after The Lion King, I decided that Disney had become too commercial and I decided that Pixar had better ideas and was able to develop them in a better structured way.
Yesterday, I watched the Chronicles of Narnia and I have to say that they are recovering some of their ancient spirit. I haven't read the book, so I am not able to judge the quality of the adaptation (you may want to have a look at Laodicea on the subject). However as it is, it looks a good story for children. As usual, it is a maturation plot: growing up in a difficult world. To be more precise: the underlying theme is about discovering that, while you are trying to solve your personal problematics, you are involved in a story that is bigger than you were expecting and you are required to assume a role that, although will be challenging, it will make you discover what you are.
From the technical point of view, the editing, sometimes, is not fluent. Special effects are remarkable, however they had to face a problem that everybody has to face after the Lord of The Rings: how to produce epic battle scenes without the same budget. I think their solution was focusing on the behaviour of specific characters rather than showing collective clashes. The technique should be refined, but it looks to me that the distribution of the special effects in the story is quite balanced. The animals are modeled very well. Sometimes you have the impression that a character is not fully developed.
And then there is the lion. I had not thought to the story of Samson in Christological terms, before. Well, you learn something new every day:
"Out of the eater came what is eaten,Rich in British symbology, Scottish people would be happy to find a unicorn as well as the lion.
and out of the strong came what is sweet." (Judges 14,14)
It reminded me a book that I read many years ago (they are really many, now) by Michael Ende.
