Chronicles of Narnia

OK, I missed the first thirty minutes and heard the rest in a blurry Mexican dub.  My question remains: What does scarcity mean in a fantasy film?

If you are a Queen with an ice palace and a magic sword, why do you use (hire?) two lumbering polar bears to pull your chariot?  Especially in the temperate climate of New Zealand.  If a lion can be reincarnated, is the rest of the plot all for show or a test?  Just how do resources get allocated? 

Perhaps it is faith which is scarce in fantasy stories.  As stocks of faith rise and fall, other complementary resources, including the power of your weapons, are reallocated accordingly by the principles of the imaginary world. 

That seems to imply that fantasy films cannot operate under the game-theoretic assumption of "common knowledge."  People must disagree about the true model governing the world, otherwise greater faith yields no relative advantage.

Are fantasy movies what economic models would look more like if we took the absence of common knowledge more seriously?  (Yes there are stylized models of non-common knowledge in the specialized literature but the notion is kept under check; the game-theoretic results we use typically are built on common knowledge assumptions.)  Keep in mind that, above a certain level of subsistence, much of your welfare springs from your inner stories and narratives, not from concrete goods and services.  Your real advantage in life, if you are born sufficiently wealthy, is your ability to tell yourself beneficial stories.

If the lion stands in for Christ, who stands in for Roger Douglas?

Alex once suggested to me that computer games were blurring the differences between models, novels, and films.

In other words, I enjoyed it.

Addendum: If you wish to explore these issues, I will soon put my paper on them on-line.  In the meantime, watch The Princess Bride, one of my favorite movies and a useful source of inspiration.