The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: Tomatometer 66%

[aTOMiC]

www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chronicles_of_ ... e_caspian/

Well. I find myself once again in a place that is probably pretty unique. I never read any Narnia stories and have only the first motion picture (and a parody) to go on. Based solely on the first film I have to say I'm hoping the sequel will be less yawn inspiring. I don't have a lens of nostalgia to filter my perspective through like many of you who read the books as kids and still love them. The first Narnia film didn't capture my imagination for a number of reasons. Firstly I found the over use of cgi irritating, Aslan in particular. Secondly I'm never going to have a lot of confidence in a scenario where children ascend to greatness through battle with larger, more experienced, more powerful adversaries. Through brute strength alone a teenager would stand little chance against one trained soldier let alone an army. Reminds me of Ewoks fighting Storm Troopers and that is not a good thing to be reminded of.
However Prince Caspian, from the trailers, seems to have a bit more appeal to me except that once again I'm going to be assaulted with the obviously cg lion. Other aspects of the film point to a more adult adventure and I'm all for that. I guess we'll see.

[Cameraman Jenn]

I can tell you that there is very little Aslan in this book so that should be a plus. I will also say that is is probably one of my more favoured books in this series.

[danlo]

Alot of people I know like Caspian best-you should have read the books Tom I like LWW quite a lot, so pooh on thou! Trailer looks awesome. My fav is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

[Cameraman Jenn]

I think the Silver Chair is my fave. or maybe it's the Magician's Nephew or The Horse and his Boy. Gah.

[danlo]

Good call on The Silver Chair Jenn! You could always come over to the Hangar to discuss the series...

[Cameraman Jenn]

They are still in storage, hopefully this week I'll dig em out and then watch out hangar!

[Mortice Root]

danlo wrote

My fav is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Yup. Mine too. Something about the sea....

aTOMiC wrote

Secondly I'm never going to have a lot of confidence in a scenario where children ascend to greatness through battle with larger, more experienced, more powerful adversaries. Through brute strength alone a teenager would stand little chance against one trained soldier let alone an army. Reminds me of Ewoks fighting Storm Troopers and that is not a good thing to be reminded of.

I totally see where you're coming from with regards to the movie. In the book, though, I thought it was implied that the Pevensie (?sp) children weren't really children any more by the time of the battle - that they had matured consinderably. It's been a while since I've read them, so I may be wrong, though....

[Cameraman Jenn]

You are right. They became full adults. That would have been a bit difficult to do in the movie.

[aTOMiC]

You are right. They became full adults. That would have been a bit difficult to do in the movie.

Well that certainly would have made a difference to me.

[Mortice Root]

Ok, so I saw Caspian last night. I wasn't impressed. And that's too bad, 'cause I did like the first one, so had high hopes. But Caspian just seemed to drag, and I never really felt any connection with the characters.

I recognize that any adaptaion is going to involve change from the book, and I'm generally ok with that, but in this case, so much of the changes made just seemed like change for change's sake. They didn't really add anything to the story, and when certain scenes were left out at the expense of new (and IMO, useless) stuff......

For example:

Spoiler

the mystery of where the kids are when they appear in Narnia takes all of 30 seconds to solve; the scence where the four children proove themselves to Trumpkin is severly truncated; and the scene where they finally decide to follow Lucy and her vision of Aslan through the woods - where each of the kids gradually sees Aslan revealed....totally gone. Instead we get some worthless raid on Miraz's castle and a whole lot of Telmarine politics....

But the worst part was:

Spoiler

the romance between Caspian and Susan! There wasn't much of it, but it was totally unnecessary.

I'd suggest a rental for this one. I wish I had.

[Menolly]

Just got back from it myself, as Beorn insisted we see it in the theater. Should have stuck with root's advice...

[rusmeister]

I was forced to watch it in Russian. Sure, I understand it, but...

There has been a LOT of intelligent discussion on this one over at the "Into the Wardrobe" website forum (probably the most serious Lewis site/forum out there).

One of the real problems of converting the book to the film is that the director (Adamson) doesn't really accept Lewis's basic premises - little things like faith, skepticism, traditions, etc - and like Peter Jackson, wound up reinventing the story altogether.

The main theme of PC is the restoration of faith after a long period of skepticism/cynicism - you don't get much of that in the movie. Things like the attitudes of Trumpkin and the other Narnians towards faith in Aslan are just erased in favor of a formulaic Hollywood battle film, so I totally sympathize with aTOMiC's reaction. If you haven't a) read the book and b) gotten Lewis's deeper themes, based on his faith, at lot of things just won't make sense to you, especially after Adamson's makeover, which just completely misses the point.
He openly said that he didn't like some things that Lewis believed (such as the idea that women should not, in general, be combatant soldiers), and 'didn't want to send that message to his daughters', so he changed them. That's only one example, but to that I will say that both Lewis and Tolkien fought in the trenches. I don't believe Adamson has. (Don't want to start debating this issue here - just point out how much Adamson changed the story.)

[Mortice Root]

rusmeister wrote

The main theme of PC is the restoration of faith after a long period of skepticism/cynicism - you don't get much of that in the movie. Things like the attitudes of Trumpkin and the other Narnians towards faith in Aslan are just erased in favor of a formulaic Hollywood battle film

That was nicely said, rusmeister. I totally agree with you.

[aTOMiC]

As I've said before, not having read any of the books and only basing my opinions on the films, the news that Disney has opted out of the third Narnia film is not surprising to me. Mainly because the first film bored me and the second's trailers gave me no indication that I would be further entertained. The box office results seem to reflect the lackluster aspects of the film's production. I found the first film to be bland on many levels but my biggest criticisms lie with the direction and choice of lead actors. (I think I've mentioned before that I felt that Aslan, though a valiant effort of cgi, was unconvincing and that bothered me every time the character was on screen.) Perhaps if FOX, who appears to be interested in picking up where Disney left off, insists on a new approach to the film making process, my opinion of whether a third film is required may change.

[Zarathustra]

I think the problem is the books.

I haven't seen any of the movies, but I read all the books when I was little. I can't believe they have made a movie of this series, and not any of SRD's.

[rusmeister]

As I've said before, not having read any of the books and only basing my opinions on the films, the news that Disney has opted out of the third Narnia film is not surprising to me. Mainly because the first film bored me and the second's trailers gave me no indication that I would be further entertained. The box office results seem to reflect the lackluster aspects of the film's production. I found the first film to be bland on many levels but my biggest criticisms lie with the direction and choice of lead actors. (I think I've mentioned before that I felt that Aslan, though a valiant effort of cgi, was unconvincing and that bothered me every time the character was on screen.) Perhaps if FOX, who appears to be interested in picking up where Disney left off, insists on a new approach to the film making process, my opinion of whether a third film is required may change.

For what my perspective is worth here, a central problem is that the direction of the films was handled largely by non-Christians (incl. Adamson), who either miss or reject the philosophy the books are imbued with. This created a kind of schizophrenia between the central ideas of the books and what was presented on-screen, resulting in a bland product (esp. the 2nd film) which didn't make sense to anyone. They alienated the Christians and confused the non-Christians.

It was telling for me that Adamson specifically rejected Lewis's express idea that of the two sexes, women should not be involved in battle (generally speaking). Of course that is "unpopular" today in public ideology, but it's a symptomatic example of the problem in miniature - misunderstanding, willful or otherwise, of the worldview that spawned the books.

Either stick to the books' ideas regardless of their perceived popularity, or don't make movies at all. But changing them to please people today who are now incapable of understanding traditional views or of seeing them only as "ignorance" and "backwardness"... that just produces ...what happened.

[stonemaybe]

I enjoyed the film. PC is one of my favourite books in the series, and can lay claim to being the first novel I ever read (I got tired waiting for my sister to finish reading it to me so picked it up and finished it myself).

I was however HUGELY disappointed by the first film, so I really wasn't expecting much from this one! There were a couple of bits where I thought they could have done better, but also a few bits where they exceeded my expectations (eg I was worried how they would portray Reepacheep - but I thought they handled the mice really well)

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

I think the problem is the books.

I haven't seen any of the movies, but I read all the books when I was little. I can't believe they have made a movie of this series, and not any of SRD's.

Okay, let's be a little realistic. Narnia is a classic on a megalithic scale, Covenant is a classic within a much smaller circle. Russel Crowe wouldn't take the part, reportedly because it would be to mentaly/emotionaly draining to play, the rape, incestual urges, LOTR copying issues, etc.

Narnia was destined to become a film.

[Rigel]

Where did you hear that about Russel Crowe? That's too bad if true, because I think he'd play the part well.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

Where did you hear that about Russel Crowe? That's too bad if true, because I think he'd play the part well.

Through his name in the Search function and read on...yah, he would have been good as Cov...