Film Review (Narnia Legend)

The Legend of Narnia has received some bad reviews in China, and many film critics think that the film is too naive and completely treats the audience as children. However, I think "naivety" is exactly what the Narnia legend wants to achieve. From the logic of the film itself, this is both its shortcomings and its characteristics.

The Legend of Narnia is adapted from C.S. Lewis's best-selling children's novel. This series of novels is absolutely different from The Lord of the Rings, and even different from the Harry Potter series. More similar to "classic" children's stories.

The illustrations in this book are by no means realistic fantasy paintings, but lovely stick figures for children's books.

In fact, it is a great challenge to put this "classic" children's story on the big screen, especially under the Hollywood system. This is because this kind of literary works gives people the feeling of "low accuracy" and "jumping". Perhaps a small investment in alternative films or traditional two-dimensional cartoons can better reflect the essence of this kind of works, but what Hollywood blockbusters now require is precisely "high precision" and "coherence". In fact, the elven mouse adapted from this kind of works has lost a lot of its original "elven" power, and Doolittle, the strange doctor, has been criticized. The Legend of Narnia tries to find a balance between the characteristics of Hollywood blockbusters and the characteristics of "classic" children's books. We can see that this film only uses limited narrative, editing and photography skills, and the costumes and artists are also "reserved" and do not deliberately pursue novelty and excitement, which is in sharp contrast with The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. However, the most interesting thing is the logical performance in the film.

The logic of "classic" children's stories is not strict, but it is not without logic, thus achieving the effect of "innocence". For example, the cornerstone of The Legend of Narnia is "The Kingdom of Narnia waits for the arrival of Adam's son", which is why a few "kids" can defeat the powerful white witch. The Legend of Narnia only talks about this truth in the form of dialogue, without giving more background explanation or making much preparation. It seems difficult to convince mature adult audiences.

In contrast, from the "Battle of the Lord of the Rings" to the numerous tortures of Frodo by the Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings made every effort to pave the way for the "Powerful Lord of the Rings", the cornerstone of his story, so that adult audiences could fully accept this setting and integrate into the story. However, the legend of Narnia is not The Lord of the Rings. Mainly for children, children are willing to accept the assumption of simple encouragement-think about it, children will be very happy to see themselves suddenly become saviors! The most interesting example is a detail in the film: several children say that when Adam's children arrive, Narnia will usher in spring. What does spring mean? This means that the ice will melt! As a result, I looked into the river and the ice really melted!

Generally speaking, as a film adapted from a "classic" children's story, The Legend of Narnia has done quite well, which can be said to be the best film to restore children's stories in recent years, and in this respect, it can almost be compared with the classic old Hollywood films The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins in the Wind. It is a pity that the advantages of Hollywood movies themselves were not fully mobilized, and the final war was not enough. This is also the consistent feature of Disney live-action movies: as long as the script has the potential to sell, the stunts can be 70% good, and Pirates of the Caribbean is another vivid example.

But as an adult, a large number of film critics may not like the "naive" film The Legend of Narnia, so what position should they take when commenting? Perhaps allow me to talk about my views on film criticism here.

What kind of film reviews does China need?

From the perspective of taxonomy, literary criticism can be divided into object criticism, subject criticism, technical criticism, ideological criticism, text criticism and so on. Object criticism is to comment on what his creative goal is and whether it has been achieved from the creator's point of view; The main comment begins with the subjective feeling of the reviewer, that is, "Does this work make me feel good?"

China's "academic school" is good at ideological comments and written comments, which is more suitable for academic publications, but it is "acclimatized" to the mainstream media. According to my investigation, the film reviews of mainstream media in developed countries are mostly a combination of object reviews and subject reviews. Film critics will take the initiative to watch a movie from the perspective of the target audience and comment on whether it satisfies them from this perspective. In fact, it is often the author's goal to satisfy the target audience, so that the perfect combination of object comments and subject comments complements the clear and meticulous division of the target audience in developed countries. Judging from the above comments, The Legend of Narnia, which aims at children, is a very good film.

On the other hand, in China's film market, the target audience is gradually forming, and the power of film criticism is also growing. At present, many domestic film reviews focus too much on subjective feelings. I don't think this is a sign of maturity. Only by organically combining the subject film criticism and the object film criticism can film criticism form a good interaction with the film industry. Of course, this is also inseparable from the overall progress of the film industry.