Comments on: Prince Caspian, a Review

By: Adam Greenwood

Adam Greenwood — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:46:05 +0000

Patrick,
you’ll enjoy the movie more if you leave the book alone until after.

By: patrick

patrick — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:41:59 +0000

haven\’t seen Prince Caspian yet but definitely looking forward to it… i\’ll have to look over the book one more time just to remind myself how the original story goes

By: James

James — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:15:07 +0000

I\’m not sure what happened to the writers from The Lion, but I was completely disappointed by this movie adaption of Prince Caspian. It eviscerated the original storyline for no apparent good reason – contra several posts above, the changes were not improvements.
It wouldn\’t be so bad if the script writers had substituted thoughtful drama for their deletions of book material. But time and again they turn to tired cliche – a hero (Caspian) escapes just minutes ahead of death (unlike the book), a heroine (Susan) nearly falls off the ramparts and is barely saved by an outstretched hand, a battle plan (at the castle, which isn\’t even in the book) goes badly awry, a prince finds a love interest and rescues her from peril (not in the book), and on and on.
And what they took out was some of the most meaningful scenes of the book. No Pan, no schoolchildren morphing into pigs, no request of the river for freedom from a long-standing stone bridge, no choice by the children to have to trusty Lucy step by step and slowly begin to see Aslan. And to have Aslan respond to Lucy with \”Oh child, no one will ever know\” rather than \”Oh child, no one is ever told that\” utterly changes the implicit theology of the scene.

Save your money. Read the book – it\’s a much better story and doesn\’t take much longer to read than this travesty of a movie.

PS – for Dawn Treader, please meaningfully involve someone who is actually familiar with C.S. Lewis\’ thought. Not only were the changes to Prince Caspian insipid, but they would have been anathema to Lewis himself.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:18:51 +0000

Well, I’ve become a committed “don’t change the material from the book unless you absolutely have to” kind of purist crank, but I understand why they made nearly every change they did. The romance subplot was unnecessary, and my sister and I were snickering lines like “get over it, you’re going to marry the daughter of a star soon enough!” for at least an hour afterwards. Probably because Caspian was supposed to be young enough to make the separation from his tutor a tad more traumatic, the idea of his uncle wanting to kill him seem completely improbable (to Caspian himself at least, and any romance with Susan a total non-starter from her POV. Though Ben Barnes is cute, and will be able to do Older And Sadder, two more movies hence. So long as all future romance is confined to the said celestial chick, I’ll be okay.

I’m very glad the film let me keep my favorite character rankings intact — Peter was always too much of the vaguely obnoxious/somewhat bland older brother in my mind, and Susan always liked boys too much. Edmund and Lucy are where it’s at: one of the best pay-offs in Dawn Treader was Eustace starting to act so much like them, and then in The Silver Chair, he manages to rub that same quality off onto Jill. It makes up for not getting to see Edmund and Lucy till the last bit of The Last Battle, and you hardly even care about the one appearance of Peter and non-appearance of Susan in that same book. Though I am sort of hoping they’ll do The Horse and His Boy with a cameo by Anna Popplewell rather than her old folks heading back home past the lamppost counterpart.

Oh, and both Reepicheep and the Dwarves were perfect. They even made the Mice the right size (bigger than non-talking mice, but NOT played by Warwick Davis, thank you very much.)

Note: I judge everything Narnia in part off of the BBC miniseries… we watched them so much when I was a kid, we actually destroyed the tapes. During the years after my dad confiscated my paperback Prince Caspian for reading it at 3am on a schoolnight, that was my only way to experience this story. So I may be a bit more generous in my analysis than someone whose main focus has always been the books.

By: Geoff B

Geoff B — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:34:37 +0000

Well, Adam, I ended up writing my “non-Mormon Mormon movie” review at M*.

Here is the link:

http://www.millennialstar.org/2008/05/20/non-mormon-mormon-movie-prince-caspian/

By: Adam Greenwood

Adam Greenwood — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:41:05 +0000

A good review:

http://vox-nova.com/2008/05/17/vox-nova-at-the-movies-prince-caspian/#more-2493

By: Joseph D. Walch

Joseph D. Walch — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:02:08 +0000

very good movie I thought. Very enjoyable.

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:24:51 +0000

I saw the film yesterday and agree Edmund was played beautifully by Skandar Keynes. He should hopefully get more screen time in the next film. I did find the pacing in the film at times wasnt right and the end battle went on too long. We had too many FOR NARNIA moments.

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:20:32 +0000

Interesting, Long Tom. My wife and I both thought Prince Caspian was more like LOTR than the first film was.

I saw Prince Caspian Friday and really enjoyed it, even more than the first film. There is a moment near the end of the film when Lucy gives Aslan a look that says, “I never want to leave you”. It really moved me, and made me wonder how much I feel that way about the Savior.

By: Long Tom

Long Tom — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:46:36 +0000

We saw the movie as a family. I thought it was excellent. Much better than the first one which seemed to be trying to be the Lord of the Rings. I agree that Edmund was very good. Caspian was good enough that I have good hopes for the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but that one will be much trickier to turn into a movie. I liked the kiss with Susan.

Miraz was absolutely perfect, the best villain I have seen in quite a while. He was both true to the book and and improvement. Wow!

I was very disappointed with Reepicheep. The mice should have acted like the Three Musketeers and sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Aslan was referenced a lot, but didn\’t show up until near the very end and then didn\’t do much more than send the Huorns into battle. I missed Him.

This movie was clearly made by someone who loved the books and has some talent at movie making. I can\’t wait for the rest.