I thought you boycotted the movie?

That prohibits me from commenting on the illogicality of the plot?

Aww, I like the impaling line. It sounds so Eustace-y, especially considering the bug collections he had in the book.

"pure evil." haha

Yeah, but I think Drinian's lines were intentionally over-the-top. I think we were supposed to find that line humorous.

The 2nd worst line I thought was the WW, "I exist in your mind" A hallucination would never explain itself that way.

Maybe not a hallucination, but a nightmare certainly could. Haven't you ever had a nightmare where you knew that you were dreaming the whole time? Isn't Dark Island a place where your dreams come true?

Lucy: Thanks, Reep! I knew you'd come!

Aww, I thought it was sweet. Wouldn't you hope Reep would come to rescue you?

I voted with the second fiddle line, but "You've been waiting for this, haven't you?...You doubt my leadership." was a close second. Followed by "You're just a kid." In fact, that entire dialogue was pretty bad.

Aslan said to Lucy, "Don't run from who you are." He didn't say, ""Why don't you try just being yourself?"

The cheesiest line in the movie wasn't so much anything mentioned here. I thought the cheesiest line in the movie was when Prince Caspian is "jousting" with Edmund and Caspian says, "You've gotten stronger my friend," and Edmund replies, in a jolly sort of tone, "Seems I have."

I voted there weren't any cheesy lines in the film. I can't remember any references to cheese, neither gorgonzola nor camembert or even bidgee cheese, which will be as rare as hen's teeth with all these tears over cheese adding to the floods. Now if the film had kept in that line from the book 'Pass the mustard', I might have thought of Welsh rarebit, but no...

Besides, the scriptwriters have to think of something for the characters to say that is relevant to the story. It doesn't mean that everything everyone has to say in the film has to be a portentous meaningful remark that has to be set in stone and analysed down to the nth degree, even if it is only a sneeze.

Eustace was actually funny, and whilst I can see where Making_Sense is at, with his remark about the fencing, the book does mention that on board, Caspian, Edmund, Lucy and Reepicheep did play games, have practice sword fights etc. Since there isn't a beneath-decks on the Dawn Treader itself, just a gimbal, most of the action on the ship itself then had to be on deck, therefore the fencing.

I thought you boycotted the movie?

That prohibits me from commenting on the illogicality of the plot?

Aww, I like the impaling line. It sounds so Eustace-y, especially considering the bug collections he had in the book.

I liked the Eustace-y impaling line, too. (Now where is that devil emoticon when I need it?) And yes, Bookwyrm, you may comment all you like on the illogicality of the plot. Just as long as you also care to comment on the logicality of anyone persisting in doing the series at all, when this particular reviewer seems to think that even the original source material is outdated, old fashioned, and that Walt Disney got out when the going was good.

My thoughts on what that person has to say would break the respect rule. Probably someone that thinks the works of Stephanie Meyer are literature.

Oh I say, Old Cheese! Some of the chaps in the mail room think that Stephanie Meyer is an absolutely spiffing writer! It is jolly unsporting to make beastly jokes about that respected Narnia reviewer, eh what? How could any NarniaWebber be so disrespectful as to even think the reviewer's views 'smell like the rear end of a Minotaur'!

But seriously, the reviewer has a point about the language used in the Narnia books. I'm not saying anything to criticise C.S.Lewis or the books. You only have to watch an old WW2 movie like the Dambusters to realise that commissioned officers in the Royal Air Force, and the other British armed services, really did talk the way that Peter, in particular, does in the books. I notice that the later books tend to be more modern in language. In 1956, when the Last Battle was published, television came to towns near us, that style of language was so lampooned, so ridiculed in Americanised movies and television content, by English style cads and villains like Dan Dastardly and Terry Thomas, that the Narnia books did lose some popularity because of this sort of speech.

C.S.Lewis died in 1963, the same day as JFK, and that post war era came to a sharp halt on that day. Since then English has changed so much it can't have been easy for the scriptwriters to come up with dialogue that represents the WW2 era, that is easily translatable into other languages, but is still relevant to today's English speakers.

On the other hand, I can see that the swordfight itself did lend itself to some derision, whatever was said. All the more so, coupled with the 'high king' gaffe and when the film failed to keep in Eustace's comment that he was a republican.

"Edmund, I've got a bad feeling." I immediately pictured Lucy with Princess Leia's iconic hair when she said that.

Eustace's Pinochio line. "I'm a boy again!" I almost expected him to follow it up with "A real boy!" It totally threw me out of the moment and made me think of Shrek.

Yeah same here! I laughed so much as this line first time I saw the film! It was just the cheesiest thing ever, so Pinoccio! and yeah, stating the obvious, he could've said soming like "I back, I'm over here!" and that wouldn't have been so bad! I would be cringing so much if I had a line like that!

Do you know, I do have a line which might be called 'cheesy', despite the absolute absence of one of my favourite snacks, bits of cheese with savoury water crackers, right through VDT.

The trouble it isn't so much as a line, as the absence of a line, which I think is a rather cheesy omission. When Eustace is filling out his diary, on the deck of the Dawn Treader, he starts yarning to a seagull, until Tavros the Minotaur and Rynelf start sneering about his talking to the birds. Cut to Lucy's prayer at the end of the movie. There she is praying, along comes a bird of some sort, which calls out. I think we hear what Lucy says when praying, why not, pray, hear also what the bird has to say, which according to the book, should have been 'Courage dear heart'? Why keep the audience guessing? I might have lost my memory of the book, you know.

Why couldn't the film make up its mind about which CGI creation talks and which doesn't? We know that Reepicheep can talk, even if Eustace can't. Reepicheep does a lot of talking in the film, and as one of the characters said, it was difficult to get him to shut up. We also know that Aslan can talk. Although some posters on this thread think that Aslan isn't around enough, that would still be far too much for some reviewers, who openly dreaded another 'lion delivered sermon'.

Now Eustace can't talk as a dragon. That is why he was writing on the sand or on the rock or anywhere else he could. Very educated dragon, our Eustace. Even when being dragonned stopped him talking he found a literary use for a fierily bad breath. Or a claw. And it is obvious that Eustace can understand every word that is spoken, 'cheesy' or not. Now Reepicheep has no problem with Eustace not being able to talk, so why does Aslan?

There is the poor dragon lying on the strand, with a sword sticking out of his shoulder. I presume that the thoughts of Eustace are open to Aslan, if not the poor people in the audience. But why wouldn't Aslan actually tell the dragon to 'undress', so that the audience could hear him? Why when Eustace dragon goes to vaguely scratch at his scales, wouldn't Aslan then add at this ineffectual unscaling, something like 'No, I'll have to undress you?'

It isn't as if there was the problem about lack of clothes you would find in the latest HP film for example. Eustace, as in the book, somehow or other, gets a whole set of new clothes, to replace those that were burned away when he became a dragon. Eustace doesn't even take these clothes off when he swims up to the Dawn Treader afterwards.

Now I don't know about you, but I find those deep and meaningful glances somewhat sickening, especially in romance movies, like Twilight. And I like to know what is going on. Is there some mental telepathy going on? Or is it something the viewer needs to know?

Now I'm no scriptwriter, a good reason for me not to criticize too loudly. But surely the audience of a film need to know what is going on. I keep wondering if just a little commentary at that point, such as those 'undress' lines, might have made a great deal of difference to how VDT is perceived, on NarniaWeb, at any rate, whatever it did to the PG rating. Isn't it a bit 'cheesy' for Aslan to be so squeamish about words like 'Undress'? And isn't it even more 'cheesy' for deep meaningful gazing to take the place of actual verbal interaction, however 'cheesy'?

For me one of the cheesiest lines where 'we have nothing if not belief' I didn't like it, especially since I also heard that line in Russian and the way they translated it sounded so much better (to me)

I voted for "Squirt? I'm a king!"
I can imagine Edmund thinking that, but to actually say that to an Army recruiter? lol. And it just made me think of the beginning of PC when Peter was fighting with the boys, angry because he's not treated as a king, kinda like "Oh, this scenario again.. except in a shorter, weaker scene".

I hate to say it, but so many lines were cheesy in this one. The first two had a few, kinda expect that, but VDT was saturated with them .

And isn't it even more 'cheesy' for deep meaningful gazing to take the place of actual verbal interaction, however 'cheesy'?

Not necessarily. Pixar's movie Wall-e managed to tell a very emotionally deep story for the first 40 minutes of the movie with virtually no dialogue at all and a lot of deep meaningful gazing.

There is the poor dragon lying on the strand, with a sword sticking out of his shoulder. I presume that the thoughts of Eustace are open to Aslan, if not the poor people in the audience. But why wouldn't Aslan actually tell the dragon to 'undress', so that the audience could hear him? Why when Eustace dragon goes to vaguely scratch at his scales, wouldn't Aslan then add at this ineffectual unscaling, something like 'No, I'll have to undress you?'

Because one of the magical things about cinema is the ability to convey things without words. In the book, Eustace has to clumsily say that it looked like Aslan had implied that he would have to undress Eustace himself. In the movie, there is no need for that, since the audience can actually see the faces of Aslan and Eustace.

Now I don't know about you, but I find those deep and meaningful glances somewhat sickening, especially in romance movies, like Twilight. And I like to know what is going on. Is there some mental telepathy going on? Or is it something the viewer needs to know?

I suppose this is one area where we disagree. Although I dislike deep and meaningful glances in romance movies, I actually like them if they are meant to convey a particular emotion. For example, in LWW, in Aslan's camp after everybody is celebrating because the White Witch has denounced her claim on Edmund, Lucy stops celebrating for a moment to gaze back at Aslan. Aslan's face perfectly conveys a mixture of joy in Lucy's celebration and sadness, foreshadowing the moments of sorrow that have yet to come.

But this topic was not meant to be a debate over whether the absent dialogue is more cheesy than the frivolous dialogue. This topic was meant to be a poll/discussion of the lines that were actually there.

I voted for the "Be yourself" line. Disney was still there in spirit, since this is an obvious theme in basically every Disney movie ever created. I did laugh when Eustace said "I'm a boy again!" Because it was such a Pinocchio "I'm a real boy!" line.

Can anyone inform me of where exactly Aslan says this wretched line "Why don't you try just being yourself." Because I really don't recall hearing it, and I feel I would have remembered something that bad. Are you sure that's not a paraphrase?

For some reason the line that always bothers me the most (and perhaps it's more of the delivery than it is the actual line) is Lucy exclaiming "That's pretty" to Reep as he sings. In the first place what Reep is singing is not pretty, and in the second place Lucy sounds really forced and dishonest about it.

I'll always be a,
NL101

I agree with you about Lucys line narnialover101, I think it is the ways its delivered but still...
I can't remember where Aslan says that line as I don't actually have the DVD anymore, but I'm sure its in there somewhere... It really rings a bell... does anyone else know?