Poolside Narnia

You know how I like the unique viewing experiences, right?

Well, I like them enough that I'm even willing to see mediocre 143-minute movies that I've already seen in order to experience them.

Last night was the final movie night of the summer (yes, it's summer here) at our neighborhood pool. They did about six of them, I guess, none of which was significantly more appealing than The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But that one had the advantage not of content, but timing. This was also the only movie night in which my kids' grandparents, who just arrived from America on Thursday, would be in town. It seemed like a fun activity that created an opportunity for a picnic, and I love picnics almost as much as I love unique viewing experiences.

It was a unique viewing experience we'd tried to have once before, two summers ago. The pool was playing Frozen that night, but it never happened. There was thunder and lightning and perhaps the slightest splotches of rain in the leadup to the 8:45 start time. (The sun sets late in summer, you see.) So they preemptively called it off, probably with good reason, though on our walk home we noticed that the rain had stopped, and in fact it did not rain again.

Rain threatened this time as well, but that was before Friday actually arrived. A few angry clouds earlier in the day was all we got, and by dinnertime there were only healthy, fluffy clouds in a blue sky.

The bigger problem was probably the late start time and the length of the movie. Because I couldn't force my kids to wait until 7:30 or 8 to eat their dinner, I had to exclude them from the picnic plans and feed them at home before we left. There would be treats for them in the picnic basket later. In communicating this to my dad and his wife, though, somehow the idea was expressed that none of us would be eating a picnic and they should eat before we picked them up. Which they did. Leaving my ridiculous quantity of picnic foods just for myself, though they did pick at it as well.

Ridiculous quantity? How about this: Ham sandwiches, olives, crackers, boursin cheese, brie, grapes, strawberries, carrots, cucumbers slices, nuts, hummus, and pasta salad. And that's to say nothing of the various other chippy and cookie type things, and about five different options for drinks.

Oh well. It was the thought that counted, and it counted big time with them. Gratitude combined with chagrin = far greater total gratitude.

Probably the best part of the evening for the greatest number of people was getting in about 20 minutes of swimming before we settled in for the movie. My seven-year-old is a regular porpoise now, after being afraid to put his head under water as recently as a year ago. The four-year-old has always been adventurous in the water, and continues to be so. Their grandfather did not go in, but was enjoying watching everyone else, including their grandmother, who I had forgotten was such a big pool swimmer.

When we got out and dried off, and at least I ate my dinner, the wait for the movie to start seemed interminable. As the sky darkened and I thought it was plenty late to start the movie, the DVD start menu just sat their tauntingly on the inflatable screen. I tried to jokingly get a "Start the movie!" chant going, seeing if I could interest my kids in taking up the mantle so it would not seem rude coming from an adult. But the crowds were sparse -- there were only about 15 of us -- so I can imagine they didn't want to make an early start just to get us home at a reasonable time. With two kids under seven and grandparents suffering from jet lag, that seemed highly in my interest, but probably not in anyone else's.

It did eventually start, maybe a few minutes earlier than the projected approximate time, so that's something. And we were on our way.

Thinking this was a fairly bright movie, as that's the way I had remembered all the Narnia scenes, I was a bit dispirited to discover how dark all the pre-Narnia scenes, and even most of the actual Narnia scenes, are. I've found that on the times that I've seen movies projected in this manner, it's always difficult to detect the contrasts between shapes in the dark scenes, so that you have to figure out what's going on by the voices alone. The sound was plenty good, though. At times it felt downright booming.

The kids of course wanted to exhaust their supply of treats within the film's first 15 minutes, so 15 minutes after that they were already begging for ice creams. Which I'd planned to get them, but not until later in the movie. But kids are not adults, and they do not understand apportioning out their gratification. Then again, I don't understand it that much either. I'm the guy who eats his popcorn down at a consistent rate from right when I sit down, even if it means being nearly done with it when the trailers are finished.

Anyway, I couldn't really disguise my annoyance at having to take the kids to get the ice cream so early in the movie because they wouldn't stop bugging me. An annoying experience become even more annoying when my younger son selected a popsicle flavor that was a risk for him -- bubble gum. It probably should have sent off warning flags for me, but didn't. So it took until we got back to our spots on the lawn for him to take one lick of it and declare he didn't like it. I tried to see if my older son would like it and switch flavors with him -- he'd smartly chosen chocolate, as the younger should have -- but he wasn't having any of that. (He did at least take a lick to do his due diligence, but he passed on it.)

I was originally going to force the younger one to stick with his choice, but that attempt ended up in him wandering off by himself in what I expected to be quite a significant disruption. I wasn't worried about him ending up in the pool -- it's pretty easy to hear the splash of a single person in the water, so there's no chance he could do it undetected -- but I also had to demonstrate some model of good parenting to his grandparents. So I took him back to the snack bar to procure the chocolate popsicle, muttering under my breath probably more demonstrably than I should have. (I think the grandparents might have heard me spit out the word "idiot.") I ended up eating the bubblegum popsicle myself, which I actually thought was pretty good.

The rest of the movie was relatively free of disruptions, and miraculously, we stayed for the whole thing. My wife (who couldn't attend because she was taking this opportunity to clear some work off her very busy schedule) predicted we would not, that either sleepy grandparents or sleepy children would force the issue. Since you can kind of bend children to your will, it was the grandparents I was more worried about, especially coming off their first night's sleep in the new country. But that night's sleep actually turned out quite well for them, and every time I looked over, they were awake and engrossed. (By "engrossed" I don't necessarily mean that they loved the movie -- none of us did -- but that they were willing to give it their full attention at least.)

And yeah, it's as mediocre a movie as I'd remembered. Although C.S. Lewis' original story is supposed to be a classic, I wonder if it too is a bit of a disappointment (I've never read it). Certainly, Andrew Adamson delivers the product with enough technical proficiency and post-LOTR majesty, but the story feels a bit inert at times.

And speaking of Adamson ... one thing I noticed this time, which I might have noticed in 2006 when I first watched this but didn't write about because I didn't have a blog then, is how funny it is that this particular director directed the movie. I have to wonder if he was selected just because of this fact, though that would hardly seem like a good basis for gambling $100+ million of the studio's money.

In the movie (and book), human females are referred to as "daughters of Eve" and human males are referred to as "sons of Adam." (Bible much?) The director is, quite literally, a son of Adam -- Adamson.

Now, you might say that this makes some sense, that Adamson was attracted to the material because of his own Christianity, and that may be true. But it's one thing to be a devoted Christian, and it's quite another to have a family name -- a name that extends back generations -- that denotes your devoted Christianity. Any "son of Adamson" could have gone astray over the years and become a total heathen, passing that heathenism on to his offspring.

Just before 11 and wayyyyyy past my squirming kids' bedtime -- kids who had been invited to take a "nap" but couldn't -- the credits finally rolled. We hurriedly shoved half-completed containers of food and dirty dishes into various bags, and had a reasonably quick packup all told, before herding everyone into the car and delivery everyone home. The kids were a little ratty in the process of actually getting into bed, even though they were already in their pajamas, but by 11:30 everyone was asleep.

And I look forward to having this unique experience again next year ... with a shorter (and better) movie.

A Wimpy sequel despite a wimpy box office

I don't know much about the Diary of a Wimpy Kid phenomenon, if it even rises to the level of a phenomenon. I'm too old to read the books, and my child is not yet old enough. (He's not old enough to read anything -- during story time, he just slaps his hand against the pages.)

But I do know that the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie did not light the world on fire when it was released last March. It made a certainly decent $64 million domestically, according to IMDB, including $22 million in its opening weekend -- pretty impressive for March, I guess. And I also acknowledge that the profitability of a film is a function of its budget, not its ticket sales in an absolute sense. Since Diary of a Wimpy Kid cost $15 million to make, it made a healthy 50 million bucks. And that's just here in the U.S., although I doubt a movie like this does gangbuster business overseas.

However, I don't think you can argue that $64 million is enough to call it an unqualified hit. There are certain people out there who take their kids to every single movie that's both available and suitable, just to give them something to do for 90 minutes on a weekend. Considering that, and considering the staggering box office totals of some other brand-name kids franchises, $64 million seems fairly modest.

So I was a little surprised to see a theatrical sequel to Diary of a Wimpy Kid materialize only a year later. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules comes out today, and I guess they're trying to get slightly older demographics involved -- Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" plays during the ads I've seen on TV this week.

Whether or not there should be a Diary of a Wimpy Kid sequel is not really why I'm writing today. I'm actually writing to discuss the phenomenon of committing yourself to a franchise, come hell or high water. Once you've started turning a popular book series into a potential franchise, at what costs do you keep it going?

The most relevant example here is probably the Chronicles of Narnia movies, which I seem to keep coming back to on my blog. There are seven Narnia books, and you better bet Walden Media wanted to make them all into movies when they started out. After all, having what will ultimately be eight Harry Potter movies didn't prove too difficult for Warner Brothers, as people kept on ponying up the money to see those.

But the box office totals have gotten consistently less satisfying with each new installment, ever since The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was considered an unqualified hit, turning an estimated $180 million budget into a $291 million domestic gross. (To say nothing of the overseas grosses, but if you know me you know I like taking a United States-centric view on things like this -- if only because I have historically been interested in domestic gross figures, as something I find easier to comprehend, compare and contrast.)

However, after the third installment, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, earned only $104 million on an estimated $155 million budget (figures from IMDB), it had to give them pause. About as much pause as the fairly unmarketable names of the next two books, The Silver Chair and The Horse and His Boy.

If you lose $50 million on a movie, clearly you stop, right? But it's not that simple. The Chronicles of Narnia is one of the most well-known brand names in all of fantasy literature. Setting out to make seven movies, and ultimately making only three, damages the brand on the whole. It's most likely that financial considerations would take precedence, but still -- I'd argue that Walden Media would be a lot more likely to press onward, despite the uphill battle, just for the purposes of bringing the endeavor in to the finish line, its grace and pride still intact.

Well, here's to writing blog posts in real time rather than planning them out first. I just checked and found that there are plans for a fourth Narnia movie -- but it will be the sixth Narnia novel. Apparently, they're jumping past those two awkwardly named books and going straight to another one with a good marketing hook: The Magician's Nephew. (Let's just hope people don't associate it too closely with last summer's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which didn't light the world on fire either.) In fact, according to wikipedia, this decision was just officially announced on Tuesday.

Seems like a good way to save face. Instead of making seven movies, make five. Because once they make The Magician's Nephew, they'll have to finish off with The Last Battle, right? It's got a marquee-friendly name, and it would conclude the series. It's much harder to stop 80% of the way there than 40%.

Another good movie to discuss in this context is The Golden Compass, the only movie from what was supposed to be a franchise based on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials novels. I liked that movie, but I guess a lot of people didn't -- and not only the religious folks who protested its apparently pagan undertones. (Which only made me root harder for it to succeed.) It was pretty clear there would be no other movies made, and getting out after only one just means that it was a theatrical non-starter, and that was that. It wasn't that famous of a property to begin with.

I think the dilemma faced by Walden Media is a bit more tough. If they had made The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and it had only done okay, they could have just stopped there without it seeming too awkward. Sure, many of us would have guessed that they planned to continue onward and make all the novels, but the story is pretty self-contained, so it could have stood on its own without there being too much egg on anyone's face. I think when you get started with a long project and then you have to stop, that's when the stink of failure starts to attach itself.

So what does all this have to do with a modest sequel to a modest movie about a modest elementary school student?

Let me know if you figure it out.