"Prince Caspian" Reviews!
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (B+)
More than a millennium has passed as the latest Narnia adaptation brings a bigger, bolder and darker adventure to the screen
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
- Starring Ben Barnes, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell and Peter Dinklage
- Co-written and directed by Andrew Adamson
- Based on the children's book of the same name by C.S. Lewis
- Walt Disney Pictures
- Rated PG
- Opens May 16
By Tara Bennett
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... one of the rare sequels that actually improves upon the original ... |
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But their initial savior actually turns out to be the exiled heir to Telmarine, Prince Caspian (Barnes). Having just barely escaped the clutches of his power-hungry uncle Miraz (Sergio Castellitto), Caspian ends up in the forest and, in a moment of panic, blows a horn that magically sweeps the Pevensie children back to Narnia.
Devastated by the ruined state of their former home, the Pevensies band together with Caspian and the surviving Narnians to wage what looks like a hopelessly lopsided war against the diabolical King Miraz and his epic army for the ultimate fate of Narnia. Their only hope is that the Pevensies' faith in the wise lion Aslan, their former subjects and themselves can sway the tides of war.
Restoring a fantasyland
And action is most certainly the focus of Prince Caspian, as Adamson tinkers with Lewis' narrative to quickly set up intersecting storylines that allow him to get right to the business of preparing for the war against Miraz and the Telmarines. And while the battles can be overlong in some sections, they are energetic, creative and blissfully void of any gore or blood, which makes the film safe for families.
The other great strength of Prince Caspian is the cast. Barnes, with his Inigo Montoya-inspired accent, is everything an earnest, handsome prince should be, and he has sweet chemistry with the other characters—especially Susan (Popplewell). As for the Pevensie kids, the years between films have been good to young actors Henley, Moseley, Keynes and Popplewell. They all come across more assured this time around, whether they're having heart-to-hearts with CG critters or racing into battle, and the film is stronger because of them. The supporting cast is also winning, including Dinklage's soul-weary Trumpkin and Eddie Izzard's charming voice work for the swashbuckling rodent Reepicheep. While overall the themes are darker and the ending is as bittersweet as the first, Prince Caspian evolves the Narnia mythology without disappointing.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
| posted 05/15/08
For all their talk of staying true to the spirit of C. S. Lewis's novels, the makers of the Narnia films have frequently deviated from the books in ways both big and small, and the liberties they take with Prince Caspian;which echo but go far, far beyond the liberties they took with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe;both help the film and hurt it. They help because you can sense that co-writer and director Andrew Adamson is finally making the big epic fantasy battle movie that he really wanted to make the first time around, and his devotion to that vision holds Prince Caspian together and makes it a more consistent, and consistently entertaining, sort of film than Wardrobe was. But in steering the film closer to his own vision, Adamson steers it away from Lewis's, and so it loses some of the book's core spiritual themes.
 Ben Barnes as Prince Caspian  |
The basic storyline is still there, though it has been re-arranged somewhat. Instead of beginning in England, with the four Pevensie children sitting at a train station, the film begins in Narnia, with a woman giving birth and a man, Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), being woken in the middle of the night and told that he must flee for his life. It turns out the woman in question is Caspian's aunt, and she has just given birth to a son, and this gives her husband, Lord Miraz (Sergio Castellitto), the opportunity he needs to seize the throne that has been vacant ever since Caspian's father died. But first Caspian has to hide;in a wardrobe!;from assassins with crossbows who enter his room only to find that he is not in bed. And then he has to ride, ride, ride into the night while being pursued by several of Miraz's soldiers.
Meanwhile, back in England, the four Pevensie children are getting ready to go back to school. One year has passed since their adventures in Narnia, and they are still getting used to the fact that they are no longer grown-up kings and queens of some far-off magical land but, rather, children who still have to deal with kids their own age. Peter (William Moseley), in particular, resents the fact that he is no longer High King, and he is all too eager to get into fights with other boys; fights that he apparently cannot win until his younger brother Edmund (Skandar Keynes) steps in and bails him out. But then, far away in Narnia, Caspian calls for help by blowing on the magic horn that once belonged to Queen Susan (Anna Popplewell), and suddenly the four Pevensie children find themselves whisked away to their former castle. (It's worth noting that this time, they're whisked from an underground tube station, rather than from an "empty, sleepy, country station," as in the book; a change which Lewis scholar Devin Brown finds problematic.)
 Sergio Castellitto as King Miraz |
However, while only one year has gone by in our world, over a thousand years have passed in Narnia, and so the castle that once belonged to the Pevensies is now in ruins. What's more, it turns out that the humans who now rule Narnia, a race known as the Telmarines, have driven the magical creatures of Narnia so deep into hiding that many people simply assume that the minotaurs, centaurs and other creatures are nothing more than "fairy tales." Even the Narnians themselves have lost their magic. One of the things this movie gets very right is the dismay Lucy (Georgie Henley) feels when she realizes the trees no longer "dance" the way they used to, or the way Susan, who had difficulty believing in talking animals in the first film is now caught off-guard by the sight of a bear that doesn't talk.
Moments like these hint at the themes that Lewis explored in his book. For Lewis, the modern world was a lot like the world that Caspian had grown up in, a world that had cast aside myth and magic and reduced the world to little more than a collection of parts. (In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace declares that stars in our world are nothing more than flaming balls of gas, and he is told that, no, even in our world, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.) Lewis wanted to give his readers—including Christians who had unthinkingly bought into modernity, a taste of the spiritual realm that animates our physical world. And since he believed that the pagan, pre-Christian man had a greater aptitude for the spiritual realm, and was thus easier to convert, than the secular, post-Christian man, Lewis wrote the Narnia books to introduce his readers to a "baptized" form of paganism. Nowhere is this more explicit than in the original book version of Prince Caspian, in which the Christ-figure Aslan literally dances with the Greco-Roman god Bacchus.
 Peter Dinklage as Trumpkin |
But Adamson and his co-writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, show no interest in that particular theme. Gone from this film are any and all references to Bacchus, Silenus or the Maenads, figures as important to this story as Father Christmas was to Wardrobe, and gone too are the scenes in which Aslan and his followers trash the schools that teach Narnian children not to believe in myths and fairy tales. And because those scenes are missing, the divine lion Aslan (voice of Liam Neeson) has very little to do. Indeed, Aslan is almost entirely written out of the movie altogether. His first appearance, an actual encounter with Lucy in the book, is here heavily abbreviated, and quickly revealed to be a dream. It is only in the film's final reels that Aslan indisputably steps onto the stage and takes action.
Because Aslan is so remote from them, the Pevensies are forced to figure things out for themselves, with varying results. Peter's hunger for power and glory leads him to act just as rashly in Narnia as he had been acting in England, but since he is leading armies into battle now, his rashness has lethal, devastating consequences. What's more, he is strongly, strongly tempted to make a deal with the devil, as it were, to achieve his goals. (This may be the biggest, most potentially controversial change to a once-noble character since Faramir felt the lure of the Ring in Peter Jackson's version of The Two Towers.) However, some important and powerful themes do emerge, as Lucy reminds Peter that they need to actually look for Aslan and be faithful to what they already know of him, if they are ever to actually see him.
 Aslan and Lucy (Georgie Henley) |
The supporting characters, including the pessimistic dwarf Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage) and the amusing but lethal warrior mouse Reepicheep (voice of Eddie Izzard), are nicely handled; Reepicheep has one encounter with a cat that is even funnier when you recall that Adamson co-directed Antonio Banderas's Puss in Boots in Shrek 2, and the battle scenes include at least one brilliant tactic that I don't think we have seen in any of the other recent ancient or medieval war movies.
As a director, Adamson is still borrowing from Jackson and other filmmakers: note the flying-arrow shot lifted straight out of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, but his direction is also more assured this time, perhaps because he gives himself greater freedom to change things as he sees fit. It helps that Prince Caspian, as written by Lewis himself, is a more complex story, with political intrigue among the villains and a deeper sense of Narnian history. Some oddities still creep in, though, from the abundance of crossbows, which everyone brandishes as though they were as easy to use as automatic weapons, to a flirtation between Susan and Caspian that seems to come from out of nowhere late in the story. (Popplewell told the fan site NarniaWeb the film did have a romantic subplot at one point, but most of it got left on the cutting-room floor.)
And then there is the swordplay, which is so pervasive that it begins to get a little tiring. (I found myself thinking of The Matrix Reloaded, and how the characters there seemed to get into extended martial-arts scenes simply to say "hello.") But on a summer-popcorn-movie level, it all works. Prince Caspian is a reasonably enjoyable and diverting bit of entertainment, and it may satisfy people who have been waiting for a worthy successor to the movie version of The Lord of the Rings but felt the previous Narnia movie wasn't quite it. And if it lacks Lewis' message, oh well, with any luck, it will turn people on to the book, which is where the real magic lies.
From Entertainment Weekly:The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)
Credits
In The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, one of the rare sequences of untrammeled wit and fun and light arrives when the valiant, shining-eyed Caspian (Ben Barnes), having assembled a motley army out of the scruffy woodland creatures of Narnia, infiltrates the castle of King Miraz (Sergio Castellitto), the evil uncle who has usurped his throne. (We know what a bad guy Miraz is from one look at his ugly, pointed beard. No facial hair should be this sculpted.) The forces of Narnia — spitfire dwarfs, towering centaurs, and other misfits — are the underdogs, but when it comes to sneaking past the royal walls, they have advantages.
The castle itself is impossibly tall — it looks like a collection of mighty elongated chess rooks — and so it helps to have a few griffins soar over the edifice to deposit key fighters. There is also a swashbuckling mouse (blithely voiced by Eddie Izzard), who could almost be a prankish cousin to Puss in Boots from the Shrek films. (Andrew Adamson, director of Prince Caspian, codirected the first two Shreks.) He wriggles up a pole and leaves a castle kitty cat bound in knots. And then there's the hulking humanoid ram: just the thing to give an enemy soldier a start.
As amusing as this can be, the attempt by Caspian to win back his lost kingdom is really about all there is to the film — which is to say, this is a movie that showcases battle. Lots and lots of battle. As the soldiers pick up their broadswords and begin to slash and plunge, Prince Caspian seizes, and holds, your attention, yet it begins to look like any other mystically righteous clang-of-metal war movie. Creatures or no creatures, we’ve seen it before.
Like the C.S. Lewis novel it's based on, Prince Caspian follows a tradition of darkening sequels. In pop-fantasy cinema, the trend was more or less set in motion by The Empire Strikes Back, which ripened the underlying foreboding of Star Wars, and it was then followed by the playfully (some would say perversely) demonic Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It took the Harry Potter films an extra installment or two, but that series got gravitas as well — all to the benefit of its hellzapoppin Victorian toy-shop aesthetic. Prince Caspian, taking on a similar spirit, is a fierce and somber battle epic. It features soldiers in pewter armor lined up in rows like a sinister marching band against the Narnians, who stand there with their bows and arrows, trembling bravely at the odds against them. Yet make no mistake: This is also a Disney film, and so there's nothing too twisted, ignoble, or bloody about it. The real reason Prince Caspian is darker than 2005's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is that it leans so much more heavily on medieval hardware than mysticism. What's changed is the ratio of combat to enchantment.
From the start, you feel a comedown in magic. Instead of the wardrobe they employed before, Peter Pevensie (William Moseley) and his fresh-faced siblings now journey to Narnia through a London subway tunnel, landing on a sunny beach with rock formations that look a lot less wondrous than they're supposed to. Peter, along with Lucy (Georgie Henley), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Susan (Anna Popplewell), has been away for a year, but in Narnia time, 1,300 years have passed, and so has the glorious revolution over which they presided. The creatures of Narnia are now exiled to the woods, and as Miraz, leader of the brutish Telmarines, plots his nasty takeover, Caspian and the Pevensie kids gather the disparate Narnians into that hopeful and collective thing...a fellowship! After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I realize I'm in the minority in finding the gathering of a fellowship to be a rather blah excuse for the plot of an adventure film. In this case, the doubling up of noble young heroes doesn't help. As Caspian, newcomer Ben Barnes has pouty lips, an anonymous European accent, and long hair that glows like something out of a teen-shampoo commercial. He comes off like the second coming of Orlando Bloom.
In total effect, Prince Caspian feels a lot more earthbound than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. At least, that's true until a surprise figure shows up, his giant sculpted liquid face rising out of the waves of an aqua green river. Will viewers agree on what this face is? Or will they debate it the way that certain devout legions do when it is spotted, mysteriously, in the shadowed folds of a potato chip? B–
From Crosswalk Movies:
"Prince Caspian" Is the Narnia We’ve Been Waiting for
Jeffrey Huston
Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer
Release Date: May 16, 2008
Rating: PG (for epic battle action and violence)
Genre: Fantasy-Adventure, Adaptation
Run Time: 147 min
Director: Andrew Adamson
Actors: Ben Barnes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley, Sergio Castellitto, Peter Dinklage, voice of Eddie Izzard
With that as context, this can now be said: in every way that Wardrobe tried (or didn’t) but failed, Prince Caspian succeeds. What was originally slavish adherence to the source has now become inspired cinematic faithfulness. Characters and relationships that lacked emotion and complexity now come to life with camaraderie and depth. And most importantly, the Aslan-as-Christ metaphor that seemed to be drawn merely out of obligation is now fully embraced. Prince Caspian is a major step forward and finally represents the Narnia we’ve truly been waiting for.
Unlike the book, the film opens in Narnia as we see Prince Caspian flee for his life. Long considered the heir to the throne (a seat his father held until his mysterious death), he is now threatened by the power-lust of his uncle Lord Miraz whose wife has now given birth to a son—an heir that Miraz schemes to take Caspian’s place.
Fearful and desperate, Caspian uses a magical Horn to sound an alarm that legend says will call back the ancient kings and queens of Narnia. That royalty (as we know from the first story) is the Pevensie siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy—school-age Londoners who once ruled and brought restoration to Narnia, and the Horn belonged to Susan herself. Through the magic of its call, the Horn’s alarm brings the Pevensies back to Narnia.
Upon their return, the Pevensies soon realize that while only a year has passed in their world, over a millennia has transpired in Narnia. Now in ruins under the rule of Telmarines (invader humans led by Miraz), the kids must reclaim their positions as kings and queens and help Prince Caspian take the throne that is rightfully his.
The prospect of Prince Caspian succeeding seemed dubious as director Andrew Adamson has returned for this second installment. One has to wonder if he spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how Peter Jackson got The Lord of the Rings trilogy right, because many of its successes are true here. Not only is there more visual flair (both in natural production and visual effects), but it also serves as a great example of how to adapt a work of literature to film.
While C.S. Lewis’s book works as a solid basis for an action-adventure, to script it out literally (given its storytelling structure and brief action scenes) would not translate well to the language of film. Adamson and the other writers recognize this by weaving the book’s first two separate acts seamlessly together. The script’s extra-canonical liberties (magnifying the presence of Lord Miraz, staging battles that aren’t even referenced in the book, etc.) all fit squarely into the spirit and tone of the novel rather than feeling like an opportunistic distortion of it.
The same can be said of the characters. When we first see Peter in London, he’s in the middle of a physical fight with a fellow student. Though not in the book, this one moment instantly establishes Peter’s warrior nature more distinctly than any scene from the first film. There is added depth as Peter’s courage is textured with arrogance, giving his character (and all the relationships) an edge that ultimately must be humbled.
Similar gravitas is brought to the other characters—heroes, villains, and comic-relief alike (Reepicheep and his rodent platoon are brilliantly conceived)—at such a level that not only do themes resonate more profoundly, but emotions are felt more deeply. And Aslan, along with his challenging wisdom and air of mystery, is finally depicted in a way that creates legitimate chills.
Early on, the dwarf Trumpkin tells the Pevensies that Narnia may be more savage than they remember it. The same could be said to the viewers of the first film; here the tone is darker, the action more intense, and the substance more demanding. Where Wardrobe pulled punches, Prince Caspian packs, throws and delivers them.
“Lord of the Rings-lite” was a fair characterization of the first Narnia film and the same applies here, but the difference is that before it was a criticism and now it’s a compliment. To put it simply, though one viewing of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is enough, I can’t wait to see Prince Caspian again.
CAUTIONS:
- Drugs/Alcohol: None.
- Language/Profanity: None.
- Sexual Content/Nudity: Innocent romantic chemistry between Prince Caspian and Susan. One brief kiss.
- Violence/Other: Medieval combat violence (swordplay, kills, etc.) with visual allusions to decapitations (but doesn’t actually visualize it), all set in a fantasy world.
Labels: prince caspian, reviews
posted by Lucy_Pevensie at 11:15 PM
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