Dawn Treader Mystery - Where’s the Dragon?
The trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has finally appeared. I’ve been waiting for a long time to see what the adaption of my favorite of the Narnia books would be like. It looks exciting but one big mystery: Where are Eustace and the dragon?
If you read the book (and I’ll try to avoid spoiling it if you haven’t), the character of Eustace and his adventures with a monstrous dragon form one of the story’s major (almost) explicit Christian threads. But Eustace barely appears in the trailer. He has a line or two at the beginning, and — I think — a voice-over line later on, but more important there is no CGI dragon in sight. So are the book’s Christian themes once again being censored or dumbed-down for secular audiences? I think Prince Caspian was hurt by this, especially by its muddling the theme of following Aslan even when you can’t see him.
Of course, the trailer might not mean much; after all the movie is six months or so away, and this is the teaser; the advertising is bound to focus on the familiar characters; and the CGI dragon work might not be completed yet.
Also, there are some teasing dragon-hints right at the trailer’s very close. I was tipped off to this by an observant viewer who commented on the American Papist blog (second comment down as of this posting).
You can check it for yourself right here:
1
netspider86
Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 10:08 am
I casually stumbled onto this page, mainly because I’m thinking about starting a blog aimed to readers/writers (full- or part-time :P) and wanted to check which good names were taken….
I read this article and a couple of others as well. I must say this, I really like what you write about fantasy+Christianity, I will be checking your blog every now and again to see what you’ve got to tell!
2
Lori
Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Thanks! I haven’t written about fantasy, myth and Christianity nearly as much as I wanted to, because other things have intervened.
Let me know about your blog if you do set one up - maybe I’ll link to it!
3
Bulgy Bear
Saturday, August 14th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
Its hardly a “mystery”. The dragon constitutes the single most complex piece of CGI rendering in the entire movie - it is therefore perfectly self-evident why he isn’t finished enough to go in a trailer when there is still 6 months to go before release.