Oh, what the harsh light of reason hath wrought:

[elfs]

Harsh, but true:

Hollywood has done something even more depressing: It's revealed the "Chronicles of Narnia" books to be what they actually are: a rather lean slice of delightfully wrought but fairly simpleminded, largely hobbled fantasy for the imagination-deprived single-digit set.

You want to have bad dreams? Read Lewis's The Great Divorce and Ted Chiang's Hell is the Absence of God back to back and realize that both Lewis and Chiang are telling the exact same story.

Really.

Comments

[scyllacat.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're right. I didn't get as much out of the movie as I expected, but my going-on-8 niece thinks it's the bomb. I got her the "real" book for Christmas. I couldn't believe her parents bought her one of those dumbed-down picture books. We should have a bedtime reading.

On the other hand, children need such things, too. I remember being a baby-geek (and didn't even know I was, therefore, nearly complete alienation from my peer group) and how those books excited my imagination, and made me wonder about motivations, and understand consequences, and that sort of thing.

Lewis himself says in the introduction that they're written for children. And, as for the movie, I'm waiting for the sequels.