Grasping for the Wind

Movie Review: Prince Caspian

Director Andrew Adamson uses slow motion and close-ups to good effect. Although his actors can be a bit stiff at times, this is downplayed by the constant motion of the camera. He also has coached his stars to give his C. S. Lewis’ characters more depth of emotion than can be found in the sometimes stilted writing style of Lewis.

For instance, William Moseley (King Peter) is no longer the paladin knight that comes across in the original text. Adamson’s Peter is a boy who had once been grand, but now suffers from an inferiority complex. And who wouldn’t after becoming a great king and then returning to the life of a no name boy? The power play between Peter and Caspian, and the vulnerability that goes with it, provides a reasonable explanation for their sometime failures. Peter is much more human than Lewis’ original character.

Another character change is in Susan. No longer the virgin queen who never fights, even though gifted with bow and arrow, Susan is a warrior woman, a new Boadicea. This is an exciting, even necessary change. But this change comes with a price. In order to ramp up Susan the warrior, Adamson needed to also emphasize her femininity. He does this by creating a little crush between Susan and Caspian. Susan thereby becomes a much more sexualized character, something I thing Lewis would have abhorred. That’s not to say that Susan (played by Anna Popplewell) is some slutty character, but the costuming and a few camera shots – especially around a campfire – make sure that the men in the audience are well aware that Susan is a girl about to become a woman. I think this is detrimental to the story, and leads to an action on Susan’s part, as the four are returning home from Narnia, that is grossly out of character if somewhat sweet.

The movie as a whole is a lot darker than its predecessor The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Adamson uses more dark forest scenes, and a night sortie that emphasize how the conquering Telmarines have done damage to Narnia. This also results in more direct, obvious death, and parents wanting to avoid exposing images of violence to their children should steer clear. Still, even those deaths are relatively bloodless, and blood only really appears after battle in a few cuts and scrapes on the primary characters. If violence can be said to be safe for kids, this is probably is close as you can get, while still maintaining the epic nature of the story.

Georgie Henley continues to be a wonderful Lucy, and I will be please to see more of her in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is already in production. Skandar Keynes’ Edmund is a more subtle and background character, Adamson perhaps deciding that because his role in the first movie was so big, he needed to take a backseat to Peter and Susan, who as any reader knows, will not return to Narnia.

There are a few plot points that I could nitpick about, but really those are the fault of the original writer, who often wasn’t sure exactly what it was he was writing. Adamson takes a tale that can often be disconnected at times and weaves it into a seamless whole. If the actions of the Telmarine nobility are suspect near the end of the film, I expect that is more Lewis’ fault that Adamson’s. Perhaps Adamson could have better emphasized the racism of the Telmarines, but perhaps it would have been too much, and would have overruled the real themes of trust, reliance on others, and hope.

Ultimately, Andrew Adamson’s second Narnia story is full of action and adventure. The characterization is clean and crisp, and the actors play their roles well.

Go see this movie! It’s clean, it’s exciting, and it’s full of adventure and heroism. Its wonderful entertainment and its creators (both old and new) deserve your vote for its quality by your ticket purchase at the box office. I think I might just go twice.

Oh, and go take this quiz on C. S. Lewis over at Mental_Floss. It's quite fun, even for a Lewisian? Lewisite? like me.

Posted by John on May 16, 2008 06:44 PM | Posted to Movies, TV, & Film
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