Caught Narnia today with Mom and stepdad. Responding to Guild's comments:
I simply love this series. I love every aspect of the story, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it is a retelling of the oldest and most famous book in history.
Er, there are actually quite a lot of books that predate the New Testament.
Prince Caspian's characterization is spot-on, as is Reepicheep's, my favorite character in all of the books.
I love me some Reepicheep, and Izzard is a good pick for the voice. I'm greatly looking forward to his bigger role in Dawn Treader.
Nitpick: Aslan doesn't acknowledge his debt to the mice when he regrows Reepicheep's tail at the end.
Edmund is the most well-done; he gets his revenge for the events in LWW in a cliche but satisfying way. The dark assembly of the White Witch is creepy and very nicely executed.
Yes, seeing [spoiler]the White Witch actually appear[/spoiler] was an interesting but overall satisfying addition. I expect [spoiler]we'll see Swinton again in The Silver Chair and The Magician's Nephew, since they're all supposed to be the same woman[/spoiler].
(EDIT: Actually, it makes for good foreshadowing of The Silver Chair. [spoiler]Now she has a motive for going after Caspian's son.[/spoiler])
This movie is three hundred percent better than LWW.
Disagree, but that could be because I think LWW has a richer story than Caspian.
The acting is not as contrived (though the director took a few shots of Lucy near-crying that made me cringe), the story is much more action-adventure feeling, and best of all Santa Clause makes no appearance, a character who really busted the fourth wall for some.
Sure, but he was in the book. In fact the first movie took very few liberties; more on that in a bit.
A word of criticism: This movie contains blatant Christian value morality lessons which, if one were familiar with but not a believer in, would be glaring and feel perhaps a bit preachy.
The theme of faith, and IMO blind faith, is much stronger in this one, but the actual allegory is lighter -- we don't actually see Aslan die for Edmund's sins and then come back to life this time around.
Also, if you happen to attend this movie during a Christian school field trip you may find yourself praying for the rapture.
Which unfortunately doesn't happen until the seventh one.
Christian kids are even more annoying when they're in large, obnoxiously loud groups cheering after pseudo-Jesus' every word.
Fortunately, he doesn't say very many in this one.
More thoughts:
As I said earlier, LWW was pretty much a straight-up adaptation, with only a few minor tweaks to the story. By contrast, this one varied quite a bit from its source material, and thank Aslan for that, because spending half the movie with the Pevensies sitting around a campfire while Trumpkin fills in exposition would have made for a very unsatisfying moviegoing experience.
The history of Narnia's war with the Telmarines, and Caspian's relationship with Cornelius, are summed up within a few sentences, and while I grant it's been eight years since I read the books, I didn't notice anything missing. Adamson has a good sense of the medium of film, and delivers the backstory quickly and effectively rather than slavishly adapt the book where it wouldn't work.
The raid on Miraz's castle, original to the movie, doesn't add much to the story, but it fleshes out both Peter and Caspian as flawed characters.
Other than that, the biggest changes in the movie are to Susan, and they're welcome.
I'm not part of the club that objectively hates Lewis for his racism and misogyny, but I have to acknowledge that they exist. He was a product of his time, and the film was wise to clean up Susan's character -- she really gets short shrift compared to the rest of the cast, and her utter dismissal in The Last Battle shocked and upset me even as a five-year-old. (In my older years I choose to interpret her absence in True Narnia to mean that she wasn't on the train and she survived, given the rest of her life to get back on track and find Christ again, rather than the much more literally-damning interpretation of Philip Pullman and others that she went to hell for wearing nylons and lipstick -- and a quick look at
Wikipedia says I read it the way Lewis meant it. But at best it's still a rather sad and backward condemnation of female sexuality from a DWM.)
All this to say, Susan's been fleshed out in the movies in a way she wasn't in the books, and I say it's welcome. I was initially bothered by the romantic subplot between her and Caspian, but it was played in a very low-key and mature fashion and I think it worked well. Part of the ending of Prince Caspian is recognizing that Peter and Susan are growing up and putting aside childish things; where the books cast Susan's maturing into a woman in a very negative light, this movie makes it a positive.
Also, it's a small thing, but Queen Prunaprismia and her baby actually have a role in this movie other than as a McGuffin. She is a sympathetic character, justifiably upset by the revelation that her husband is a fratricide, and in the end we see her moving forward into a new life instead of just disappearing. Plus she knows how to handle a crossbow.
All in all, we see twenty-first-century attitudes toward women creeping into a story that wore its 1950's sensibilities on its sleeve, and it's better for it.
Now, if they get as far as The Horse and His Boy, THAT'S where they'll REALLY have their work cut out for them. I don't think it's coincidence that the 1980's BBC adaptation of the books ended at The Silver Chair (though I suspect the jumping around in the timeline also contributed to the problems with adapting H&HB). H&HB and Last Battle are both openly racist and xenophobic, but the former is the worse of the two, and I think it would have to be amended to the point of being barely recognizable to make an acceptable movie.
Guess we'll see where it goes from here. That ugliness is still quite a ways off; for now, I say bring on the Dawn Treader.
