Friday, November 21, 2008

Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

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Okay, so I watched the sequel to the movie I didn't see which is the adaptation of the book I've never read. This puts me at a disadvantage, but going into any kind of fantasy saga, all anyone has to understand is this: a bunch of bullshit is going on, and you're supposed to care about it.

I had to blog about it, as opposed to any number of movies I've seen recently, because of the blatant fucking plot-holes. My favourite, and most contrived plot-hole is the duel which takes place for the fate of Narnia. No two military leaders have ever, in history, duelled to the death. Why? Firstly, because it's so stupid. Secondly, they have armies. Thirdly, because they are cowards. Yet, this happens in the movie. Many opposing leaders have never even met face-to-face. Take George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden. It would be the most awesome thing ever if they would actually go at it mono-a-mono. The sheer awesomeness of it would be equivalent to about a million Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks, or one gorilla high-fiving a shark, so obviously a duel to the death makes for entertaining fare. It's also extremely stupid, especially when one of the combatants is a fucking limey kid, and the other is the dude with the abs from 300. This shouldn't be an even fight, but for whatever bullshit logic the movie uses, it is. For whatever reason, the kid has some unexplained property that makes him able to enter a sword fight with the 300 dude and not be immediately decapitated, or crushed by his abs.

Of course, the kid wins, and since it's a Disney movie/children's book/religious propaganda, the kid lets the evil dude live. Of course, since it's contrived, the evil dude tries to backstab him, and gets knocked on his ass again. There's some speeches about the sanctity of life, blah blah blah. About ten seconds after this, the kids giving all these luvy-duvy speeches about how good they are and how murder is wrong, they're fucking decapitating dudes left, right and centre. They kill the hell out of this one dude, without a second thought, the logic being: he's trying to kill them. So was the evil dude, though. In fact, if it wasn't for the evil dude, this other dude wouldn't try to take a swing at them. He's just doing his job, which is working for the evil dude. He's probably got a wife and kids, all more well adjusted than the evil dude's family, but you kill him.

Early in the movie, they try to invade the castle, and they succeed in this. The door out starts to close, however, and they go into, "Oh fuck, we're locked in!" mode. They call a full retreat, because they see their escape route closing. In other words, they see they can't escape, so they try to escape. They don't need to, mind you. They're winning. They've got minotaurs and gryphons and shit. The only reason they fail is because they run. The gate closes,and half of them are left behind to die, and they're all like, "There's nothing you can do!" ...They can go back. They have fucking gryphons that can fly them in and out. GRYPHONS. You know how the giant eagles show up at the end of the Lord of the Rings movies, and rescue Sam and Frodo, and everyone like, "Well why didn't they just do that in the first place?" That's what this moment is like.

Even earlier, they try to kill Prince Caspian in his bed, so they have like twelve dudes in full armour "sneak" into his room and crossbow the hell out of his bed, without bothering to check if he's still in it. He's not, but they go on to tell the court he was abducted.

...People who abduct people typically don't put a hundred crossbow bolts in their beds first.

In the end, the Jesus allegory lion saves everyone, and some giant water monster that isn't explained in any way, shape or form inside the context of the movie shows up and wrecks shit.

So the lion, at any point, could have saved the day. In fact, he was only a few miles away and knew about everything going on, because he's a Jesus allegory, but before he'll help, some little girl has to ride out by herself to go talk to him. Only, he knows she's coming and he knows what she wants. So he could have just saved her the fucking trouble by showing up on his own.

In summation: all of Narnia is thrown into chaos for hundreds of years and thousands of people are killed needlessly, because the fucking lion didn't feel like showing up. It literally takes him five minutes to save the day. Plus it all could have been avoided. They don't even explain why he didn't feel like sticking around and helping the people he's suppose to help, but they're all so grateful, so it's like the ultimate Jesus allegory. Remember: Jesus doesn't do shit to help you, but you must worship him nevertheless.

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