The Rose-Tree Dryad wrote:Skilletdude wrote:And I'm more curious to see how far Johnston's statement goes that he wants to do his own thing for this film. Does that mean not bothering with the name Liliandil? I kind of hope so.
I hope so, too; I never really liked the name much, and I like the fact that she is simply the Queen in SC. Her lack of a name adds to the mythic, "fable"-like quality that David Magee mentioned in his interview on the Talking Beasts podcast.
I wouldn't be surprised if there would be a rights issue with trying to use Liliandil, since it was created by the VDT staff, not Lewis. Which... admittedly, I'd also be happy if they left the name out. I was always on the fence about giving her a name at all (let alone that one, which never felt all that Narnian to me), and I'd rather they just went back to not giving her a name at all than trying to shoe-horn in that one.
While I have to agree with some of the other posts here that the Queen's nature as a Star's Daughter was never explicitly relevant to the plot... I really, really want them to keep it in the movie, and preferably not in some kind of "blink and you'll miss it" way. The idea of living stars is the most intriguing aspect of Narnia to me, and like gP said earlier, the previous movies have already been too quick to throw out things that aren't "necessary" but that rob the movies of their Narnian qualities. Plus, I do kind of like the mystery of whether or not the Queen was murdered because the LotGK feared her heritage for some reason, or if it was for some other reason.
On the flip side, I don't need them exaggerating her nature, either. I didn't care for VDT's assumption (or condensing, whichever it was) that she was a star herself - the books never say that one way or the other, and again, I liked the mystery of not knowing for sure. I don't want the movie makers to give her powers or anything like that.
The glow that was suggested would work for me, though with the same subtlety as the elves from LOTR, and not like Liliandil had in VDT. Anything beyond that, I guess that depends in large part how they're going to establish the backstory - are they going to have a flashback to that scene, or have it told as a story later, or...? Perhaps I'm influenced by the BBC and FotF adaptations, but I feel like it's easier to include reference to her being a Star's Daughter if the story is told rather than having it shown as a flashback, though of course that'll be less interesting visually. But it's hard to speculate on how they're going to do it without any idea of how they're going to frame that.