Chronicles of Narnia

Beth and I went to see the Chronicles of Narnia last night. It was close to as good as could be expected given the truly hideous story on which it was based. The one real flaw was in the Turkish delight. My wife, who has not read the books, did not understand why Edmund was such a prat. The books make the addictive nature of the substance much clearer. That was too easy to miss in the movie if you didn’t already know the story. The actors were all excellent even if Anna Popplewell doesn’t look anything like my picture of Susan.

The special effects were pretty good overall. The talking animals were better than any I’ve ever seen. Aslan was especially impressive. I doubt he could have been any better. Yes, when he talked the lips didn’t really quite match what he was saying; but that’s pretty much guaranteed given that lion mouths aren’t anatomically correct for making human speech. Tumnus the faun was excellent too. The beavers looked a little cartoony, but that didn’t really detract from the story.

However, there was one obvious flaw that keeps cropping up in movie after movie; and I don’t understand it because it would be so easy to fix; far easier than developing a realistic talking animal or even building a good looking ice castle model. When are directors and cinematographers going to learn that if you shoot somebody in front of a blue screen and then composite in a far background, you have to defocus the background as much as it would be defocused if you’d really shot the scene? Basic physics prevents a single lens from focusing on two different distances at once whether that lens is a camera’s or an eye’s. When the screen shows two widely separated places in simultaneous clear focus, it looks fake, even if you can’t always put your finger on exactly what’s wrong. Why does this mistake keep getting made?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2006 at 7:51 AM and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Atom feed. You can make a comment, Digg this story, or trackback from your own site.