Third Party View

Along with Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy there isn’t another series of book that have were read more times by me as a child than The Chronicles of Narnia.  I used to love those books and it probably accounts for both my nerdiness and my sense of humor.  My love for The Chronicles of Narnia pretty much ensures that no matter what, I’m going to be sitting in the theater watching each and every one of those films.  With that being said, just because I will always have a fondness for the C.S. Lewis series, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to give it a pass and Prince Caspian is the first to find no such quarter.

A year after returning home from their first adventures the Pevensie children, Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Lucy (Georgie Henley),  and Edmund (Skandar Keynes) find themselves pulled from a railway station back into Narnia.  When they arrive they find that not only has much changed, but that one thousand years have passed leaving their exploits with Aslan against the White Witch all but a myth.  The blame for this can be place squarely on the invasion of a group of men know as the Telmarines, who upon their arrival all but wiped out all of Narnia’s magical creatures.  Their King, Miraz (Sergio Castellitto), has little fear of the country’s original inhabitants and is more worried with the capture and death of his nephew and rightful heir to the throne, Caspian (Ben Barnes).  It’s entirely up to what’s left of the fauns, dwarves, centaurs, minotaurs, talking animals, and the children to overthrow Miraz and return Narnia to the way it was. 

I am by no means going to sit here and pretend that the kids from the Harry Potter films are good actors, but compared to the Narnia kids they come of like the cast of The Godfather.  I’m not saying that necessarily every one of them are bad, it’s just that they’re bringing nothing to the table.  The actors playing the main children, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, for the most part play things up in more of a theatrical fashion.  Ben Barnes on the other hand just isn’t particularly that talented.  I’m not sure if it’s the accent that he’s been saddled with, but he just never gets a handle on it or anything else.  Even as much of a fan of his comedy as I am, I found Eddi Izzard as the mouse, Reepicheep, far too cartoony in both appearance and demeanor.  And as Trumpkin the dwarf, Peter Dinklage has got to come up with another move other than furrowing his brow and looking away.  It’s that or angry.  That’s all he’s got.  Surprisingly as much as I didn’t like the overall depiction of the Telmarines in the film, the best performances came from the actors portraying them.  Sergio Castellitto makes King Miraz quite a menacing figure, and Damian Alcazar as his dubious countryman made a great scheming force within the ranks.

Fans of Prince Caspian will definitely notice some changes, and up until the last hour you may find yourself a little wary of how much is actually changed.  There are differences, but most of the broad strokes and important scenes have been kept in, but much of the early part of the film is spent fleshing out Miraz and the other Telmarines.  One of my main complaints of the Narnia series is that as an adult, I’ve realized how little detail there is in the books and the attempt to make a more complete picture of how Narnia has changed is actually handled pretty well.  With that said I’m not sure that making the Telmarines the swarthiest group of Spaniards ever captured on film was necessarily the best choice.  At some points the accents seem a little silly and unnecessary and Ben Barnes seems to barely have control of his.  Every now and then I would chuckle to myself, because I wanted him to blurt out “Hello.  My name is Prince Caspian.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die.”

Even with director/writer Andrew Adamson trying to fill in the gaps that the book leaves, the whole thing come off, not necessarily half-assed, but it definitely feels routine.  The costumes have a very theatrical look to them, while some whole scenes feel like a set and others just have a very stagey vibe in general.  On top of that, there are some pieces of CGI that look pretty bad and characters, such as Reepicheep that are never fully integrated into the environment.  We’re not talking Who Framed Roger Rabbit? here, but it’s closer to that than it is to Gollum.  Add to that scenes where creatures like Minotaurs are standing around, the ones that aren’t right up front look more like a guy in big hairy suit than anything else.  And as a personal complaint, where were all the animal?  Basically all that were in the movie were main characters that were integral to the book and a couple big cats.  Instead of having animals what they’ve done is made Narnia populated almost entire my centaurs and minotaurs.  It’s pretty obvious they got wind that people thought they were cool in the first film so they just crammed as many as they possibly could into every shot.  Consequently, the menagerie of talking animals is cut out and even the some of the important creature are relegated to one obligatory line or forced to stand in the background just to appease the fans.  It probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the things that replaced them had looked better.

Like everyone else going in, I expected there to be several fight scenes in Prince Caspian, but I become worried early on when a one on one fight between Edmund and Trumpkin looked silly.  I know it’s a fight between a full sized man and a dwarf, but it was just silly looking especially with dramatic music laid on top of it.  Granted the fight scenes weren’t as good as they were in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and they did have a far more staged feel.  It’s as though instead of coming up with an interesting fight, they just decided to drop some frames and randomly show things in slow motion. 

However, it turns out that wouldn’t be my main problem. My main problem was with the film’s violence.  I am by no means an anti-violence guy, my problems is when you have gruesome violence that is taken light heartedly and without any repercussions. For example, while storming the castle the mouse Reepicheep, drops down from the ceiling tells his one joke (that isn’t funny and gets old) then slashes the throat of the Telmarine guard, who then falls to the ground.  I expect there to be fight scenes with people getting distantly slashed or getting hit by arrows that send them falling to the ground. There’s something perverse to me about having what looks like a cartoon character spout his catchphrase then murder someone to the cheers of a theater full of children.  Particularly if that character is supposed to be smack dab in the middle of a Christian allegory.  When an adorable little mouse opens a man’s jugular, leaving him to bleed out on the floor, it may be a little too gruesome whether there is actual blood shown or not.  This is precisely the reason C.S. Lewis left the battles so vaguely described in the books.

For the most part, the things that have been changed seem have been done so pointlessly, while at the same time fleshing out other aspects of the story that needed it.  I feel as though if we had the scenes of Caspian and his relationship with his teacher, he may have been more of a relatable character.  As it is, he isn’t relatable and the teacher is entirely superfluous as anything other than a plot point.  Also,  cutting scenes where the other children and Trumpkin doubt Lucy’s having seen Aslan, set up the allegory for this whole film. By cutting them out, you are forced to heavy handedly cram them in later on for the audience members who expect them in a far less skillful way. 

Prince Caspian, in general, feels as though it expects you to have read the book so it doesn’t have to worry about explaining everything. In that regard, people who are fans of the Chronicles of Narnia series should probably check it out. Otherwise, unless you just loved the first one, with this being summer blockbuster season and Indiana Jones just around the corner, this isn’t necessarily something I’d suggest you pay ten bucks to see.

C