Saturday, May 28, 2011

VDT Film Breakdown - Overall Character Development

One of the best things about fantasy, I do believe, is the fact that a well-written fantasy novel can indeed be more realistic than a book set in the real world.
Why? Well, it's quite simple. The fact that the world in which the novel is set is so surreal means that for the tale to be believeable, each of the characters must be 100% relatable, with the same thought processes as ourselves. Because a fantasy world is so far from our reality, the characters must be especially close to it.
They may be fighting a dragon, or sailing to the end of the world, or running away from a host of nightmarish creatures, yet the fact that the characters act the way we might in the same situation makes us believe every word the story is saying. It intrigues us to see everyday people who are very similar to us face adverseries we will never have to face (such as dragons) and overcome everyday things we all have to face (such as lack of confidence). It is this mixture of the unbelievable and the believable that makes fantasy so entertaining.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons I was not a fan of VDT when I saw it on DVD. All the sets were absolutely gorgeous, many of them depicting Narnia very close to what I had imagined, but the lack of character development throughout the film was pitiful. Shallow character arcs with terrible dialouge made for a film that was visually stunning, but lacked any connection to reality.
Over the next while, I'll be going into detail over each of the characters in VDT and how they fell short of the characters C.S. Lewis wrote about in his novel.
I realise I haven't been around for AGES, and I really do apologise for this. But I've been learning how to be diligent lately, putting church, family, violin and school in  front of my hobbies.
I've also discovered an amazing fantasy series, called 'The Wheel of Time'. I just finished the first book, 'The Eye of the World' this morning. All the elements of a great fantasy book are right there, including... yes, you guessed it, incredibly believable main characters. The series is an exceedingly long one; the first book was almost 800 pages and so far there are 13 in the series (a fourteenth coming out this December, I'm told), but 'The Eye of the World' was very easy to read, and with about 30 minutes of reading each day, I managed to finish it in about a month. I'll be sure to dedicate a whole post to it later.
I hope you all haven't given up on me just yet!
Signing off,
~SON

P.S. If anyone has a preference to which charaver they would prefer to be analysed first, feel free to comment. :)

5 comments:

  1. Who is The Wheel of Time by? And good for you for being diligent!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Barbara from BankworldJune 5, 2011 at 8:32 PM

    nice review - it is good that you are being diligent, i certainly should be more diligent but hey it's a long process (for me)looking forward to these character ?profiles? maybe you could do reepicheep or eustace first

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh yes, please do Eustace first! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. i love your reviews! you must be pretty intelligent, SON, if you are (let me guess) about 16! I loved the Eustace character and edmund was a good actor (cant say the same for lucy). you should be an author! I love books and reading and Im glad you are a Christian.

    ReplyDelete
  5. CAN I PLEASE WRITE A REVIEW ITS ON I AM DAVID I DEAR SON

    JUST DID AN ESSAY FOR IT ON THE EXTENT OF WHICH THE NOVEL DIFFERS FROM THE FILM.

    ITS PRETTY LONG AND I'VE USED BIG WORDS BUT I GUESS I CAN JUST CHANGE IT AND MAKE IT PERSONAL, NOT TOO FORMAL.... SO ILL RUN IT BY YOU FIRST BY EMAIL. EVERYONE WILL LIKE IT (HOPEFULLY) AND THEY WILL KNOW WHETHER THEY SHOULD BUY THE BOOK OR NOT. (SAME FOR FILM). I REALLY THINK THIS COULD HELP YOUR SITE TAKE OFF BECAUSE EVERYONE MAY START TO WRITE REVIEWS, RESULTING IN MORE PEOPLE GOING ON TO A BOOKWORMS OPINION, MAKING IT TOTALLY INTERACTIVE AND FUN FOR YOU AND THE REST OF US.

    P.S: it would also help me improve my english ( through reading your blog i have learnt weird words which i had never heard of before, and i have also been analysing your sentence/paragraph structure

    ReplyDelete