OP: as already stated, harry potter movies follow the arc of the written story. harry grows up and has to deal with more grown up things. this is reflective of the author's and publisher's realization that keeping the target audience buying required it.
narnia, published in the 1950's, parents paid not kids. the books are prob. like 100pgs or so. if you read the first harry potter book when 1st published, and then read the 1st narnia book, you would prob finish in like a day, if not just one afternoon of steady reading. they are light lit for a much younger audience, with the occasional descriptive passage, or perhaps 2-3 that set your imagination going and leave you thinking about the beauty of a place like narnia.
having said that, book #5 (published order) deals outright with child abuse, child labor, slavery, forced or arranged marriages, equality if not superiority of the feminine over the masculine, not to mention real war, blood, and death or the real possibility at the outside. something even from the first book, aslan's lesson to peter after the battle: clean your enemies blood from your sword. wasn't in the movie, but is in the book. so clearly there is room to have some darker elements, but the overall tone is supposed to be bright. narnia is a MAGIC country, not supposed to have the kind of decay we have, it is a better world than ours, that is the appeal.
they also were not able to adequately convey the shock and disappointment of the children in the second film, when they realize the palace they reigned from was a ruin for over 1000 years and everyone they knew was long dead. there is much in the literary exposition of the books that perhaps could have come over to the screen, but in hopes of attracting the 'epic movie' crowd, was glossed over in favor of disappointing action sequences, which naturally were somewhat 'cotton-candy' style for ratings purposes.
karma, you know, do good things, good things happen; do bad things, bad things happen?
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corazonbandido55
9 years ago
They just need to tell a good story. Whether it's lighter or darker is of no consequence. When PC didn't perform up to LWW numbers, fans were polled and the consensus they got was that it was too dark (which I disagree with). Because of that, VDT was a bit over corrected. PC was not too dark. It just gave greater detail to elements that were only glossed over in the book (a particular battle where many losses were suffered, spats where tempered flared etc).
IMO even though these are children's books, the majority of the audience will not be children. Many will be adults that read the books as children. Remember that these books are 60-70 years old. They have readers of all ages. So it would be fitting to tell a sophisticated story.
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