I just re-watched it and it does still hold up.
I thought about putting right in the title of this post a declaration that it's "better then the book", but the thing is I haven't actually read the book (all I've read of Narnia are the first few chapters of A Horse and His Boy). I just know that on the old IMDB Boards and other places when I would see people complain about all the ways this movie wasn't like the book, their descriptions of how it was in the book had me going "wow, it sounds like the book sucks". Then I watched the BBC Miniseries where Prince Caspian is adapted more faithfully and I did not find it very engaging at all, the other three were fine in the BBC versions so it can't be blamed on the BBC.
So maybe what Lewis wrote for this book works on paper, but it would not have worked as a film. I think this book was always regarded as the weakest so I don't see why book purists felt the need to even care this time.
It's a fun action/adventure medieval fantasy film. It's the only version of any Narnia story where Susan is treated with respect. And it has pre Game of Thrones Peter Dinklage.
Leaving aside the increase in action and structural narrative changes, what mainly bugged people was making the protagonists more flawed. Lewis and Tolkien didn't exactly share our modern values about the importance of heroes having relatable flaws. But I don't think it's a coincidence that Peter was named Peter, Simon Peter was far from flawless.
Before December of 2017 I consistently felt that if any company can be trusted to handle a beloved franchise they didn't create themselves it was Disney, and the worst option was Fox. And comparing the MCU to the X-Men films was not even my main example for that, it was what happened with this Narnia series. Disney made two pretty darn good films, then Fox got the franchise cause people whined about this one, and turned the generally regarded as best of the books into one of the few Hollywood movies I've seen and have no fondness for. The BBC version of Dawn Treader was more satisfying even though it didn't have the run-time it needed.
I suppose the denigrating Fox part of that rant I can still make, but after a certain film I'm trying not to talk about, I clearly don't trust Disney so blindly anymore. The MCU has done so well because Disney let the people already in charge keep doing what they already started. In the case of the franchise you can probably guess I'm referring to, they did the opposite.
2008 may well have been the best year for movies in my opinion, between having half my candidates for greatest film of all time (The Dark Knight and Speed Racer), the start of the MCU, my personal favorite Indiana Jones film, and in Anime Land most of Kara no Kyoukai, this underrated film being in 2008 is merely icing on the cake.
As someone who's been a type of Evangelical Christian since before this particular film franchise started, I've often thought about how I'd do something like Narnia differently from Lewis well before I started getting into Anime and it's peculiar versions of this genre.
For starters if I made a Christian Isekai series I'd have one of the Lost Tribes of Israel wind up in this parallel world,(in the case of this story the Telmarines could have easily filled that role, instead they're just random Mediterranean pirates). And then I'd have the protagonists from the modern world be young Christians who are actually pretty genre savvy about the Biblicalness of what's going on.
I have become a supporter of Universal Salvation which means there would be no Susan Problem if I'm in charge. In fact the Susan in my stories would probably be the main protagonist. Speaking of Universal Salvation and Isekai, I really need to read George MacDonald's Lilith some day, if only someone would adapt it, it would make a great Anime, it even has a Neko I've heard.
The Prince Caspian film is solid. I quite like the cinematography during the final battle. The castle raid sequence is cool and the SFX is nice. Great music by Harry Gregson-Williams. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm not one of those people who say "it wasn't like the book so it sucks", but I do recognize why people say so. The book was about faith during turbulent times, where the protagonists are challenged to believe in and place their salvation in the hands on a being who no one has seen for thousands of years and everyone is telling him is fake/dead/fled. There is hardly much action in the book and it's mostly the protagonists wandering looking for Narnians. Then the Telmarine army shows up and there's a battle and the end. That wouldn't work for a Hollywood blockbuster, so I see why it was changed. I don't think people are complaining about changing the structure of the story; they're upset that the message of the book seems to have been lost in translation. In the book, there was no power struggle between Peter and Caspian; Peter had already let go of his kingship and just wanted to save Narnia and go home. The film doesn't really touch on the faith aspect; they bring back the White Witch in the film, but we never really see Caspian struggle with turning away from Aslan to find peace so the moment feels hollow.
I'm interested to see what Joe Johnston does with the Silver Chair movie, assuming it ever comes out.
It's way to late to do a Silver Chair movie in this canon, Eustace's actor is nearly a decade older now. I heard there was a Netflix reboot in the works.
DeleteThe main message of the book you described got through, they just added some addition arcs.