The Temptation of Lucy and Transformation of Eustace

BarbarianKing

BarbarianKing

Knight of Narnia
Staff member
Knight of the Noble Order
SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!! If you haven't seen the movie, you better not read this if you don't want to know.



Ok, now, I want to discuss the these two aspects from the movie.

First, the Temptation of Lucy.

I think that in this case the movie makers could have done better. The temptation of Lucy, in the book, is a lot more exciting and deeper than portrayed in the film. Sure they included Susan, but in the book, Lucy did not want to be LIKE Susan. She just wanted to be beautiful. And she saw the consequences of that temptation, consequences that were a lot worse than what they showed in the movie. In the book, Lucy sees herself saying the spell, and the beauty beyond the lot of mortals comes to her, but the consequences are much more graver than in the movie, like so:

And now the pictures came crowding on her thick and fast. She saw herself throned on high at a great tournament in Calormen and all the Kings of the world fought because of her beauty. After that it turned from tournaments to real wars, and all Narnia and Archenland, Telmar and Calormen, Galma and Terebinthia, were laid waste with the fury of the kings and dukes and great lords who fought for her favor.

I think that alone could have made for great cinematic scenes. I know budget was a concern. Too bad.

Eustace becoming a dragon.

Although you and me, who have read the books, know exactly why Eustace turned into a dragon:

He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself...

...An appalling loneliness came over him. He began to see that the others had not really been fiends at all. He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed. he long for their voices. he would have been grateful for a kind word even from Reepicheep.
When he thought of this the poor dragon that had been Eustace lifted up his voice and wept. A powerful dragon crying its eye out under the moon in a deserted valley is a sight and a sound hardly to be imagined.

As you can see, these two important scenes in the book should have been captured better in order to make the story more cohesive and exciting. The way they were presented in the movie seemed rushed, confusing, and in the case of the temptation of Lucy, shallow.

Had they developed the scenes closer to how the book describes them, they could have made a really unforgettable blockbuster.
 
***SPOILER WARNING***

I have to disagree. While they did have some changes (which are often necessary when turning a book into a movie for time and budget reasons) I found the end lessons were still meaningful.

Lucy: She still wanted to be beautiful. They didn't lose that. All they did was give the movie fans something to go "Aha..." over by making her want to be beautiful like Susan. Plus, it gave them their spot to include Susan and Peter for a bit. So while the lesson in the book may have been about the dangers of vanity, the lesson in the movie ends up being not only about vanity, but envy as well. Aslan tells her basically that she wished herself away, and she was the one who lead the others to Narnia. Without her, they wouldn't know Aslan.

Eustace: the great thing about a movie is that we don't have to be told what a character is thinking or feeling, but we can see it. I think everything that was described in the passage you quoted came across in the attitude and behavioral changes of Eustace as the dragon.
 
Regardless of which way one feels about the envy-of-beauty subplot, I wish they had ALSO fitted in the part from the book where Lucy used another spell to spy on friends of hers back in England. This would have brought in a different moral message, and one that did NOT all come down to the same old overdone "self-esteem" theme.

But I say this as one who is nonetheless in favor of the movie overall. Please note my new SONNET about the movie.
 
I haven't seen the movie yet, but to read too many spells would have slowed down the movie even more. In the clip I saw, at least we glimpsed some of the other spells (the cure for warts for example), and I think that in a lot of ways, that can be better than Lucy saying another spell.
 
I didn't mind the change with Lucy all that much. It wasn't just like the book, but it was still good. When I read about it in the Plugged In review, I panicked, but in the movie they pretty much pulled it off. Since movies are usually all about wishing upon a star and all that stuff, it was interesting to see them say that you have to be careful what you wish for.

I thought that the change helped it be more cinematic. Personally, I liked it just fine. Sure, it could have been better, but it's no reason to get all upset.

Eustace's turning into a dragon wasn't quite how I would have liked it, but it wasn't all that bad, really. Neither was his undragoning. Peeling his skin off layer by layer would have been really gross and would have earned the movie a PG-13 rating. What they had worked well enough.
 
BarbarianKing said:

Eustace becoming a dragon.

Although you and me, who have read the books, know exactly why Eustace turned into a dragon:

He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself...

...An appalling loneliness came over him. He began to see that the others had not really been fiends at all. He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed. he long for their voices. he would have been grateful for a kind word even from Reepicheep.
When he thought of this the poor dragon that had been Eustace lifted up his voice and wept. A powerful dragon crying its eye out under the moon in a deserted valley is a sight and a sound hardly to be imagined.

As you can see, these two important scenes in the book should have been captured better in order to make the story more cohesive and exciting. The way they were presented in the movie seemed rushed, confusing, and in the case of the temptation of Lucy, shallow.

Had they developed the scenes closer to how the book describes them, they could have made a really unforgettable blockbuster.
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I thought the Lucy aspect was done very well; in fact, having an obvious comparison to Susan made the jealousy aspect of Lucy's desire to be beautiful much more evident than would otherwise have been.

As to the Eustace dragoning, I also felt that it was rushed. I didn't mind how he found the treasure, but how quickly he became a dragon seemed a little unbelievable. One minute, he's a boy greedily grabbing up gold, and then in another minute, he's a huge dragon. But overall, I felt like the entire movie was rushed, not just that one part.
 
***Bit o' the Spoiler***


They gave Lucy three spells including the visibility spell. What I thought was intersting is that the Beauty spell actually allowed Lucy to see what would have happened had she never existed.

I agree that the way it was in the movie was a bit lessened than it was in the book. The beauty spell was supposed to be beyond the beauty of everyone else, but that beauty was a double-edged sword because it brings out the worst in everyone else.

Bob
 
Overall, I was very pleased how they handled Lucy and the beauty spell. Lots of girls are jealous of their sisters beauty or feel that they have to measure up. I think that it was very relateable, and it was interesting how they showed what would have happened if Lucy had never existed. That's more haunting and thought provoking than just how kings would fight over her, although that worked well in the book.
 
MrBob said:
What I thought was intersting is that the Beauty spell actually allowed Lucy to see what would have happened had she never existed.
Click to expand...

*sighs* And this is why I hope and pray that this is the last Narnia film. Because most of the time, it seems like if the filmmakers haven't read the books. Or they have read the books and feel it's lacking and needs improvement or upgrading. The spell had nothing to do with Lucy wanting to be Susan. It had everything to do with Lucy still wanting to exist but with great beauty. It would have been interesting instead of showing a world where there can be only one beautiful Pevensie sister (which is not what we see in the books) but a world where Lucy is not only the beautiful Pevensie sister but the most beautiful woman in the world, bar nobody and play with that.
 
BarbarianKing said:
SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!! If you haven't seen the movie, you better not read this if you don't want to know.

Ok, now, I want to discuss the these two aspects from the movie.
First, the Temptation of Lucy.

And now the pictures came crowding on her thick and fast. She saw herself throned on high at a great tournament in Calormen and all the Kings of the world fought because of her beauty. After that it turned from tournaments to real wars, and all Narnia and Archenland, Telmar and Calormen, Galma and Terebinthia, were laid waste with the fury of the kings and dukes and great lords who fought for her favor.

I think that alone could have made for great cinematic scenes. I know budget was a concern. Too bad.
Click to expand...

That would have been slammed as being too much like Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings. "In place of a dark lord you will have a QUEEN!" "...all shall love me and despair."

SIDEBAR:

moonspinner said:
*sighs* And this is why I hope and pray that this is the last Narnia film. Because most of the time, it seems like if the filmmakers haven't read the books. Or they have read the books and feel it's lacking and needs improvement or upgrading.
Click to expand...

Statements like this, you don't really know what you're saying. Douglas Gresham is the series' protector. He's also a producer on these films. Not only that, but he is the reason that we're getting movies as close to the books as we are. I don't think you really know what you're asking for, because if Douglas Gresham wasn't here to protect the series, Dawn Treader WOULD have become Pirates of the Caribbean. Instead, they merely condensed a few islands and added a few things to make the story flow better. But we also got a very strong line at the end of the film, from Aslan, which was fought for by Mr. Gresham and Mr. Flaherty.

Douglas Gresham stated that, while he is here and able to do so, he would like to create the movies as close as he can to the books while still allowing them to be cinematic. He's in a very tough spot, because he complains every time they movie a comma. But after he is gone, there is no one that we know of that is in the position that he is, that can fight for the things from the book with as much gravity as one that lived in the same house as the man that wrote the books, or had the books read to them by the author. He knows the books better than all of us, and was on the set the entire time.

Believe me when I say, it's for the best that we have ALL of these made while we have Douglas Gresham, because then we'll have versions that actually match the books pretty well. Especially when compared to what we would get without him.​

Anyway, as to the topic, I loved what was done with both Lucy and Eustace. Both scenes are things that I can use with youth group talks. Both are good displays of singular topics that aren't at all convoluted and they both make very strong statements that end with the help of Aslan. The interesting thing is that both sequences have a tender moment with Aslan as well as a very fierce moment with Aslan.
 
Regarding Specter's comment about Lord of the Rings, Narnia is, unfortunately, overshadowed by two things: Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Has nobody noticed that both series bear striking familiarity to Narnia? The problem, then, isn't the story; it's because people think, "Oh, it's just another movie like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings", and they write it off. No matter how good the films are or will be, Narnia will forever be in the shadow of the films that came before it.

And those behind the scenes know that Narnia isn't taken seriously in Hollywood OR the culture. It just isn't. They aren't deviating from the books in the hopes of making money; they're deviating from the books in the hopes of getting away from that shadow.
 
Aravis Kenobi said:
Regarding Specter's comment about Lord of the Rings, Narnia is, unfortunately, overshadowed by two things: Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Has nobody noticed that both series bear striking familiarity to Narnia? The problem, then, isn't the story; it's because people think, "Oh, it's just another movie like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings", and they write it off. No matter how good the films are or will be, Narnia will forever be in the shadow of the films that came before it.

And those behind the scenes know that Narnia isn't taken seriously in Hollywood OR the culture. It just isn't. They aren't deviating from the books in the hopes of making money; they're deviating from the books in the hopes of getting away from that shadow.
Click to expand...
One thing that I liked about VDT was that it didn't try to be like either this time around. Prince Caspian wanted to be LotR so badly that you almost felt sorry for it. But VDT was perfectly happy to be itself, and that's what makes it so much fun. You don't listen to the lines thinking, 'that's just like what so-and-so says at the battle of Helm's Deep.' instead, you just enjoy the movie. :D
 
Actually, my dad asked me later, "It was similar to Lord of the Rings, wasn't it?" And I might add, he's read Dawn Treader and Lord of the Rings.

Lucy swordfighting was one thing I didn't care for. That was a little too reminiscent of Susan.
 
Aravis Kenobi said:
Actually, my dad asked me later, "It was similar to Lord of the Rings, wasn't it?" And I might add, he's read Dawn Treader and Lord of the Rings.

Lucy swordfighting was one thing I didn't care for. That was a little too reminiscent of Susan.
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I was actually HUGELY relieved with how they handled it. Honestly, wouldn't you fight back if slavetraders attacked you?! Like Eowyn says, "Women without swords can still die upon them." It was perfectly acceptable for Lucy to carry a sword along in order to protect herself. She never went out to battle. Rather, it came to her.

She didn't fight overmuch, and when she did fight, she had little choice. When they were fighting the sea serpent, she would probably die anyway, so she might as well die fighting instead of cowering on the ship someplace when she was perfectly able to wield a bow. Remeber, she is Lucy the Valiant. :)

Yes, VDT was kind of like LotR. But that's because Narnia and LotR ARE similar. It didn't seem to me that the filmmakers where trying to make the movie copycat the success of LotR.
 
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