Some station we were watching in the hotel room had a 45-minute "Making of" special on Narnia, and Robert banged on the bathroom door (I was showering) to tell me "Richard Taylor is on TV!!!"

CNN International did a very offensive piece about how Disney made Narnia to capitalize on the success of "Passion of the Christ." They made it sound like Disney picked the Narnia books because there are a lot of potential sequels, and then put the Christianity in themselves as a marketing ploy.

If anything, they took the most obvious bits of the allegory out. There was no mention of Aslan's father, the Emperor-Over-the-Sea, which I thought of as the most explicit indication that Aslan was Christ.

From the first glimpse of the first trailer, with the opposing armies rushing at each other across Pelennor the plain, my thought was "I know those mountains!"

At the Q&A I was at, the director said that one of his biggest problems in choosing locations was avoiding places used by LotR. (The plains they used for the battle were different plains than PJ used, but only just.)

Johansson joins The Prestige.

Sean, the Fenris Ulf/Maugrim change was bugging me too -- I even remembered, very clearly, Peter being knighted Fenris-bane, not Wolf-bane. And then on Saturday, after seeing the movie Friday, I picked up a (something like 1998-99 edition) copy of the book and read it and got even more confused, because he's called Maugrim throughout the book. Wikipedia, as usual, unravels the mystery.

And, yeah, I liked Fenris better.

IRelatedN, I'm working my way through the Chronicles again -- there are bits of Dawn Treader that make me bristly and gripesome, but oh my does Prince Caspian kick all kinds of ass. Such huge fun. I think I bored Hec to tears all weekend, chasing around after him reading the bits about the talkative squirrel and the weepy giant and Peter dictating his ridiculously florid medieval challenge to Miraz of single combat ending with Professor Cornelius muttering, "Narnia, comma, greetings."

Wikipedia, as usual, unravels the mystery.

Thank the Emperor Over the Sea for Wikipedia.

And, yeah, I liked Fenris better.

It's just such a cool name. It kinda bums me out that it was a creation of some US editor, and not Lewis himself.

They made it sound like Disney picked the Narnia books because there are a lot of potential sequels, and then put the Christianity in themselves as a marketing ploy.

Huh. That's a really stupid story. I mean, doesn't the last book in the series (I've only read the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe) basically recreate the Armageddon of Revelations in Narnia?

Well, it's not really the creation of a US editor. It's taken directly from Norse mythology, 'pparently.

Is The Emperor Over the Sea mentioned in TLTW&TW? I don't remember it being there.

I saw some review show this weekend with an American man and a British chick (I'm blanking on their names) and she kept acting like Americans never would have heard of the books. Oh, and she explained what a wardrobe was (its a closet, apparently -- except it ISN'T, even in England, is it? isn't a wardrobe anywhere an independent piece of furniture as opposed to a door in the wall?). Anyway, she annoyed the crap out of me.

she kept acting like Americans never would have heard of the books

Even though I never read them, I had definitely heard of TLTWaTW, if not the rest of the series, by the time I was in high school. I remember in the movie Shadowlands that Joy first meets CS Lewis because her son was a fan of the books, so I'm thinking that there's been an American fan base since the books were originally published.

Yes, I thought that a wardrobe was an armoire everywhere.