Dr. Devin Brown, the author of Inside The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, has provided us with five signed copies of the book that we’re going to be giving away in the next few weeks. Last week he was interviewed on Crosswalk.com and gives a very even-handed stance on film adaptation, especially regarding the Narnia films thus far. One thing that is really interesting is how much some of his comments echo those that Michael Apted made in the recent excerpt from the upcoming SFX magazine interview.
Britton: You’ve seen the first two movies and I take it you’re going to be pretty close to the front of the line to see the third, right?
Brown: Yeah, of course. You know I really enjoyed the first two movies and people always love to ask me. … I’ve been really happy with the first two movies. I really think that they were made by people who loved C. S. Lewis’s books and wanted to stay with the books and I think they’ve been very successful.
You can’t make a great film from a great book without making some changes. And you know, instead of turning into one of the Narnia police that nixes things that were changed, you know I try to enjoy the things that are good about the movie. I don’t think you can make a movie just anything you want from a book.
Don’t get me wrong, not any change is acceptable. But at the end of the day, I ask myself is the film saying what the book is saying or have they changed it? In both those cases, they have. And I guess the other thing I look forward to is the movies, when they made LOTR, they took Tolkien’s great big book and had to kind of cram it into three movies. These are pretty small books and it gives the filmmakers a chance to kind of open some doors that Lewis didn’t look behind.
Britton: So what in your mind would make the Dawn Treader a faithful and successful film, seeing how the whole book is really very episodic? What do you think they can’t leave out?
Brown: What connects them I think is the spiritual truths that Lewis wants to cast in his imaginary land to say something about spiritual truth in our own life. And one of the big truths in this book is that the greatest enemy is the enemy within. I’m sure that’s gonna be in this movie, that element, and if you ask me what element needs to be in the movie, that’s the big one. I guess the other one of course is … that Eustace gets transformed into a dragon, which is kind of interesting. The real interesting and more interesting I think as believers is the undragoning. We all act like dragons from time to time. That we have a dragonish nature doesn’t surprise most of us. How do you get rid of it? How do you get undragoned? And I think that story will also be interesting. He gets something that he doesn’t deserve and that’s God’s grace, you know the grace to have his dragonish nature removed when he’s unable to get rid of it himself. The theme of temptation and then the theme of grace, getting something that we don’t deserve.
Thanks to Aslan’s Country for the quotes, and you can read the full transcript there. Click here for the article on Crosswalk and you can watch the interview in video format here.
Good interview. I agree with him. I know lot of Narnia fans get upset at changes or things left out of the movie that was in the book. To me the movies were great and Voyage is going to be great. It’s not the book is based on the book. I think they did good on the first two and will do good on the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I’m looking forward to it.
I completely echo what you said, Daniel. And a big thank-you to Devin for saying what he said, too. 🙂
ditto!! i think we get caught up in all these details and forget: they are finally making narnia movies for real (sorry, bbc doesn’t count :), they have been and are going to be totally awesome, and i for one am so so excited and can’t wait!!!!
sail on! 😀
Wait a second! The BBC DOES count. 🙂
I wouldn’t have ever heard of the Narnian stories nor would I have been interested if I had not “accidently” stumbled upon the BBC version when I was like 9 or 10.
It was a precursor to the higher quality Disney / Walden Media films; however, I think you will see that in the BBC version – fidelity to the theme of Jesus Christ is maintained a little better than has been done in the Disney versions. We have to wait to see how VODT will go. – Peter James
well, ı really thınk that narnıa musnt change. Its so orgınal and they must wrıte the year lewıs had wrıte. I love the book ıt musnt chance
Saying that it mustn’t change proves that most of the die-hard, book purists are unrealistic. What works on paper will not always work on screen. For instance, the narration that Trumpkin provided in Prince Caspian would not have translated well at all to the screen; more than likely, you would have lost and/or bored audiences with simple narration.
If the themes of the book and the main stories are intact, then any other change that they make to the movies should have and must have a point to them. No offense, but people who say “it mustn’t change! it’s original enough on its own” are ones who frankly have no idea about what works on screen and what doesn’t. The books and movies MUST BE SEPARATE. The book will never be like the movie, and the movie will never be the book. That’s just a fact, and it’s something people need to accept and realize. If you had a literal adaptation, I daresay you’d have a big disaster on your hands. It’d be a complete flop. Maybe not for book fans, who are in the large minority of moviegoers, but the majority of people who go to the theater to see a good movie wouldn’t be behind the film because they’d have no reason to be.
Ahh – You need some purists to remind us of how the original was. Personally, I am concerned with how the “7 swords” of Narnia is going to fit into VODT. I’m sure it will be creatively ran through … but I don’t remember that in the books – at least, not Dawn Treader. I have not read Magician’s nephew or horse and his boy, so I’m at a loss to whether or not magic swords appear there.