Wow, it’s funny how a week can get away from you. Especially when you’ve got a talkative painter working on your house, and you’re working from home simultaneously. It’s been a busy week, and people have been informing me about my Harry Potter question from last week. The interesting thing is that they pointed out some very interesting things. See the previous mailbag for more details of that. We’ve also had some very exciting things happening in the way of set photos and things.
Filming on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader should be starting in the next week or so. I had heard rumors pointing this way, instead of having filming start on July 15th. My thoughts? I think the actors had to get there earlier to start training, table reads, and costume fitting and the like. It takes more to make a film than showing up a week before filming. Especially on a film as big as this: you need more time for preparation.
Time to answer some letters from the last week:
Q: I’m curious about a possible contradiction between “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and “A Horse and His Boy.” In the end of the LWW, the Kings and Queens come across the lantern in the forest and try to recall why it seems so familiar. However, in H&HB it mentions Queen Lucy telling the familiar story of how the 4 children originally came into Narnia.
I’m a huge fan of the Chronicles of Narnia, and was curious if anyone had noticed this as well!
ASlan
Paul: Very good question, I believe that this is the passage that you’re talking about:
“And Lucy told again (they had all, except Aravis and Cor, heard it many times but they all wanted it again) the tale of the Wardrobe and how she and King Edmund and Queen Susan and Peter the High King had first come into Narnia.” (The Horse and His Boy)
And it was set the same year as the Hunt for the White Stag. If you take a look at the following dialogue at the Lamp-post, you’ll see something interesting:
And as soon as they had entered it Queen Susan said, “Fair friends, here is a great marvel, for I seem to see a tree of iron.”
“Madam,” said King Edmund, “if you look well upon it you shall see it is a pillar of iron with a lantern set on the top thereof.”
“By the Lion’s Mane, a strange device,” said King Peter, “to set a lantern here where the trees cluster so thick about it and so high above it that if it were lit it should give light to no man!”
“Sir,” said Queen Lucy. “By likelihood when this post and this lamp were set here there were smaller trees in the place, or fewer, or none. For this is a young wood and the iron post is old.” And they stood looking upon it.
Then said King Edmund, “I know not how it is, but this lamp on the post worketh upon me strangely. It runs in my mind that I have seen the like before; as it were in a dream, or in the dream of a dream.”
“Sir,” answered they all, “it is even so with us also.”
“And more,” said Queen Lucy, “for it will not go out of my mind that if we pass this post and lantern either we shall find strange adventures or else some great change of our fortunes.” (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
There are two things that can almost be surmised about this apparent contradiction:
First, that Lucy did remember the lamp-post for her story, though it was not as she remembered when they came upon it in the woods.
Second, that Lucy did not remember the lamp-post part of the story as she re-told it. We, as an audience, do not hear Lucy re-tell the story, and can only make our own assumptions of the story that she told. It could, or it could not, include the lamp-post.
But that’s only my own quick analysis of it. Does anyone else have some thoughts that I can add to this? You can either comment below or use the contact form and I’ll add it to the answers here.
Q: Did they start filming VTD on the 15th? Also, is it certain that the film “Invisible Army” is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader?
-Arvan
Paul: Personally, there is little evidence to suggest that filming did, in fact, start on the 15th. The actors did show up prior to that date, but, as I said above, they had a lot to do, and later schedules that I’ve heard had filming start toward the end of July or early August. Either way, shooting is happening, if not now then soon, and it’s very exciting.
And yes, Invisible Army is certainly The Voyage of the Dawn Treader‘s filming pseudonym, created by the temporary filming company called Dragons Prow.
And that’s it for this week. I’ll try to be on time next week, but I’m going to have company from Florida, so we’ll see!
I, too noticed the difference between HB and LWW! Interesting answers, Paul. Thank you.
There’s no getting around the fact that this is just a mistake on Lewis’ part, and one that always bothered me. He admitted that there were contradictions in the chronicles and had intended to set about revising them (of course, we pre-1994 Americans could argue that he partially DID, but that’s a whole nother rant…)
Lewis simply gets too cute for his own good in not having them remember the lamp-post. Not only did Tumnus refer to it by that name, indicating that it was well-known as such to Narnians, but (before you can say that it was quaint local knowledge), in the same breath he makes it clear that it was a *major Narnian landmark*, the western border of Narnia. Any king worth his crown would know it like the back of his hand. Short of severe cognitive dissonance on their part (eg, they really, really didn’t want to go home), there’s really no getting around this one.
You can argue that Lilith bred with giants and their kids colonized Charn, you can argue that the Witch put up a force-field to keep Archenlanders, Galmians, and Terebinthians out of Narnia, you can argue that Caspian’s sea-hating Telmarines recruited a crew from Galma, but this one is simply a mistake.
By the way, am I the only one who always felt that a myth probably grew up that the kings and queens had deserted them (as in the movie version)? They go hunting for a stag that can grant wishes. They vanish out of Narnia at the spot they first arrived. It seems to me that those left behind ought to have put two and two together.
Another one that comes to mind: Tumnus waxes nostalgic for the days before the “Hundred Year Winter” (as it’s called at least in later books), clearly remembering them, but by the time the kids grow up he’s become a “middle aged faun.” Those fauns really, really do not age gracefully.