"Prince Caspian" Reviews!

From SciFi.com:

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

It's been a year since the Pevensie children returned to wartime England after their adventures in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As the four siblings are growing up, they're having a tough time acclimating to their "normal" lives, where nothing special happens outside of school and air raids.

... one of the rare sequels that actually improves upon the original ...

Yet back in Narnia, 1,300 years have passed and the land of dancing trees and talking animals is now a mere shell of its former glory. The human Telmarine race has spent centuries exterminating the Narnians. Those wily enough to survive, like Trumpkin the dwarf (Dinklage) and Trufflehunter the badger, are hiding in the depths of the forest waiting for the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve (the Pevensie children) to return and save them.

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

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is one of the rare sequels that actually improves upon the original, not because of a superior storyline, but rather because the maturity of this production gives this film more resonance. Director Andrew Adamson wisely moves away from the gleam of the overly CG'd first film and instead uses the grandeur of actual location shooting from all over the globe to ground Narnia in reality. The kingdom feels real now, and that does wonders in connecting the audience to Narnia's peril. Plus the production design is jaw-dropping, with massive sets, including castles and Aslan's rock-faced fortress, which set the stage for impressively choreographed battle sequences.

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.

Prince Caspian gets the epic sequel right by raising the action stakes without forgetting that the characters are what drive the story's emotional heart. —Tara

From Christianity Today:

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Review by Peter T. Chattaway | 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)

Critics' Grades and Average

EW.com Readers	--
The Denver Post Lisa Kennedy	A-
Toronto Globe and Mail Liam Lacey	D+
The Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey	B
USA Today Mike Clark	--
Variety Todd McCarthy	C+
Boston Globe Ty Burr	B
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman	B-
Critics' Average	B-

BROKEN SPELL Prince Caspian (with Ben Barnes, pictured, in the title role) is a darker, battle-heavy sequel that just can't match the charm of its Narnia predecessor

Credits

Release Date: May 16, 2008; Rated: PG; Length: 132 Minutes; Genre: Fantasy; With: William Moseley

B-

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for EW

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

The first film based on The Chronicles of Narnia book saga—The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe—did little to inspire hope for the second. A rote adaptation realized with bland execution, about the best thing that could be said of it was, “Well, at least they didn’t screw it up.” Though faithful to the book’s narrative, the tone was flat, characters lacked distinction, and the aesthetic—while impressive—was generic.

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.

Andrew Adamson Chronicles "Narnia" Again - Interview

Director Andrew Adamson is in the business of chronicling `Narnia,' this time in `Prince Caspian'

by Clint O'Connor / Plain Dealer Film Critic

Wednesday May 14, 2008, 7:48 AM

AP Photo/Peter Kramer

Andrew Adamson is Mr. Blockbuster. He's had a hand in four of the top 35 grossing films of all time. None of his movies has earned less than $260 million.

That's Lucas-Spielberg territory.

The 41-year-old New Zealander directed "Shrek 2" (No. 3 on the all-time list, and the most successful animated film ever), was a producer on "Shrek the Third" (No. 18), directed and co-wrote "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" (No. 29), and directed one of the most entertaining films of the 21st century, the original "Shrek" (No. 35).

Apparently the guy likes the pressures of spitting out sequels. He's back with the second Narnia film, "Prince Caspian," which opens nationwide today. This time, the four Pevensie children return to Narnia where more than 1,300 years have passed, and must help Caspian defeat an army of Telmarines. The second film from C.S. Lewis' seven-book series is lengthy (140 minutes), darker, and more battle-heavy than the first.

We caught up with Adamson on the phone from London to ask about his Narnia redux.

You've become Mr. Epic. Do you ever long for a small budget, a hand-held camera, and a crew of three?

That's where I wanted to go in the beginning and ended up being steered in this direction by accident and incident. I'm actually stepping back from the next one of these. Michael Apted will direct ["The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"]. I'm planning to go off to New Zealand and develop some smaller projects.

The first time around you took a beloved book to the screen, now you have to top the first film. How do you deal with that pressure?

You can't think about that too much because you start second-guessing your own decisions. I can't really make a film for somebody else. I can only make it for myself and hope that other people approve of my taste. Once you try to guess what's cool for a 13-year-old boy, you can pretty much guarantee you'll miss. And they'll know that you're false.

With "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" a lot of attention was paid to the Christian aspects of the story -- Aslan dying willingly and being resurrected. Did that affect your approach to those themes this time?

Not really. A lot of people, particularly in the U.S., made a big issue with the allegorical lion. Certainly it's something C.S. Lewis would have been irate about, because he never intended him to be allegorical, though he certainly wrote from his own belief system. The last film had a resurrection story, obviously a very strong representation of the resurrection story of Christ. But it also exists in a lot of other cultures and a lot of other religions. I think that's why the book has been so accepted across the world, and why the movie was as well.

The film is rated PG. With all of the sword fighting and battling I assumed it would be PG-13. Were you surprised by the rating?

There's a lot more action in it, it's a bit more of a boys' film, and a bit more intense. But in the last film, with Aslan being killed, I don't think there's anything darker than that. That was very terrifying for children. The thing I learned was it's okay to go there and it's okay for kids to be sacred, as long as you don't leave them in that state, and as long as you're not gratuitous.

How old were you when you first read the books?

I was between the ages of about 8 and 10. I read them a couple of times over. I do feel comfortable with that age group seeing the film. I would say for younger kids, parents should definitely go with them. You want somebody who can hold their hand during the scary bits.

SciFi.com Interviews Andrew, Ben, Peter, Georgie, William, and Anna!

Go behind the scenes with the cast and crew of the latest Narnia installment, Prince Caspian


By Tara DiLullo Bennett

With the massive success of Andrew Adamson's cinematic adaptation of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 2005, it was really only a matter of time before the next novel in the beloved fantasy series would get its chance to shine on the big screen. Three years later, Adamson and almost the entire original creative team from the first movie are back with their interpretation of the much-less-read story of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

A year after the Pevensie children's inaugural adventure in Narnia and their unexpected return to 1940s wartime England, their former realm beckons them to return once more. Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) are all magically transported back to a Narnia that has now aged 1300 years. Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage) the dwarf reveals to them that the land of Minotaur and fauns, dwarves and talking animals is but a pale shadow of itself, with the magic spirited out of most of the inhabitants that still exist. Narnia's whole existence is under threat of siege and extinction by the evil King Miraz of Telmarine and his massive army of humans. More mature and more resolved than ever to save their former home, the Pevensie children unite what is left of Narnia's creatures and, along with the help of the Telmarine outcast and ally Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), they align to fight once more.

Adamson's Prince Caspian is even more epic than the first film, with jaw-dropping sets, more impressive visual effects and a timeless story that revolves around the power of faith and redemption. SCI FI Weekly recently ventured to New York City to catch up with Adamson, Moseley, Popplewell, Henley, Dinklage and Barnes.

Andrew, with the original film successfully under your belt, was Prince Caspian easier to create?

Adamson: It should have been easier! You always think "I have done it before, so it will be easier," but because of that there is the natural tendency to put more challenges in front of you. Then there are the expectations that "the last film was this big, so the audience is going to expect at least that," and then it expands from there. It became logistically a very challenging film. There is a lot more action. We have a lot more extras, with the whole Telmarine army. There are a lot more locations, which was very deliberate, so all those things added up.

Unlike The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, you created a very different script structure for Prince Caspian compared to the book. Were you concerned fans would get upset?

Adamson: The first book was very cinematic, in an almost five-act structure that was quite linear. In this book a lot is actually told in retrospect by Trumpkin, who is telling the kids what happened after they left. And there are scenes like them following Aslan through the gorge in the book that don't work cinematically. We did have to come up with a very different structure, and getting the story and script right was the hardest part.

There always is concern about fans, although one of the Narnia Web site fans was [at the screening], and he was speechless with enthusiasm, so I take that as a good sign! And I actually read the book again on the plane on the way over here, because after you work on something for two and half years you can't remember what was there and what you made up. I was really pleased that in reading the book, even though the structure is very different, it felt like I was reading the same story. What I set out to do with both of these was "if this really happened and C.S. Lewis wrote a book for small children about the events and then I make a movie of the real event, I need to stick to the key points."

Do you prefer directing animated films or live-action films more?

Adamson: This is like doing both. You do the live-action part and then you have to do the animated part with all animated characters. It's largely like the difference between a sprint and a marathon. The intensity is the same, but the duration is different. In animation you get a lot more chances at things. You can refine over and over again. In live action, when you have 500 people looking over your shoulder you don't have as many opportunities to do things over. The nice thing about doing it combined is that you don't necessarily have to reshoot stuff; you can give lines to animated characters six months down the track. In both films, I repurposed scenes and added lines later on with animated characters that make the live-action parts work better.

How did you find Ben Barnes, who plays Caspian?

Adamson: The net was cast around the world. I wanted to make the Telmarines of Mediterranean descent, with the whole thing about them coming from pirates. I started casting in Italy, Spain, France and Central America. Ben came as a surprise when Gail sent us his tape. He got the nuance in the script in one of the scenes he decided to audition that I hadn't seen any of the other actors get. By this time it was very late in the game, as I was already prepping in New Zealand. I arranged for him to fly to L.A., and I met him there. He's charming, and he looked the part. I wanted someone who looked very different from William. He was a very accomplished young man who still looked like he was 16 years old.

Ben, what kind of man is Prince Caspian?

Barnes: Caspian is an earnest character. He's a bit of a lost soul. He hasn't been parented and has been brought up by someone [Miraz] who essentially doesn't care about him at all and is just waiting to have his own heir so he can get rid of him. That's not a very loving environment to be brought up in. The closest thing he has is his professor, and that was probably only a couple of years. He's an interesting character, and I'm excited to see how he develops. But in the next film [Voyage of the Dawn Treader], he won't suddenly become this macho, musing, quipping king.

How was it assimilating into this tight-knit clan of actors?

Barnes: When I got the part I got [The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe] DVD and watched all the DVD extras and listened to Georgie [Henley] say, "Oh, Will is like my brother, and Andrew [Adamson] is like the dad when my dad's not there, and it's all lovely." I just thought "Give me a bucket. I don't believe you." Then I walked into the production office on the first day and they were playing table tennis with each other and sitting on each other's laps and sharing ice cream. It was like something out of a Disney film ... boom, boom. [Laughs.] It really was like that, and it was a very family atmosphere on set.

Peter, did Warwick Davis [Nikabrik] give you any tips on how to act with the makeup for your character, Trumpkin?

Dinklage: Ah, Warwick is an old pro on these fantasy films. Even if you don't know it's Warwick, it's probably Warwick underneath a lot of makeup. I had done one film for Disney the year before, Underdog, where I was in some makeup but not anything like what he has done or what I did with this movie. It's a whole other level of craziness. I was in the makeup chair for three hours. But when you are complaining or you have a bad day and you are hot with the yak hair and everything, you just look at him, and he's such an old pro it makes you mellow out. Warwick had more makeup than I did. It's funny, because on a movie like this with the Narnians, you see people more in makeup than you see them out of makeup, so it was always almost a shock seeing him sometimes at the end of the day and he was 500 years younger!

Georgie, the Pevensie siblings have such a genuine rapport on screen. Why do you think that is?

Henley: I think the reason we have this bond is because in my family I am the youngest. I have two older sisters, so I am the baby. In Will's family, he is the big brother. It's like in all of our families we just swap in. I love it, because I have two sisters and no big brother. Having Skandar [Keynes] and Will around is like having two big brothers. Especially Will is always there if you want a cuddle on set, which is lovely because whenever you are feeling down, Will is always there and happy. Why we all have this chemistry and bond is because we've basically grown up together, almost. We've spent years together.

William, you really outdid yourself with the stunts and impressive fighting in the various battle scenes. Was it more fun this time around?

Moseley: Yeah. The physical aspect I completely immersed myself in and embraced. On the first one, the battle armor was quite rigid and I felt like I was a robot. In this one, they really freed it up and made it more agile for me so I could do these crazy stunts. I worked really hard on a one-to-one level with stunt coordinator Allan Poppleton. I was running eight miles every other day and working out in the gym for a couple hours on top of that. I was just thinking my body was in such good shape last year!

Anna, was this film easier to do that the first one?

Popplewell: It wasn't necessarily easier or harder, it was just different. This one was bigger. When you're dealing with a Telmarine army and a Narnia army, suddenly there are 300 extras training in one area and a huge prosthetics tent in another and you are catering for a thousand people. Even having experience with the huge scale of the first movie, I was surprised by how big everything was. I wasn't involved in any of battle stuff last time around, so to be the only one on the battlefield in a skirt is interesting. I made sure I did twice as much horse-riding training before I got to New Zealand as the boy, because I didn't want to get left behind. Of course, I pretended I had no training whatsoever, so I just looked like a seamless professional.

How was it adding new cast, like Ben Barnes and Peter Dinklage, to the mix?

Popplewell: Ben is really lovely. From the other perspective, because the four of us are so close, we were nervous about the new characters in the movie and who we were going to be spending this amount of time with. You want to have a good time. I was completely delighted when I met Ben and Peter. They are such fun people to be around, and they have amazing senses of humor.

At the end of Prince Caspian, Aslan tells Peter and Susan that they won't be returning to Narnia again—which means this is the last film where you will all be together. Was it hard saying goodbye?

Henley: It's weird, because I finished filming a bit earlier, as I wasn't in some of the battle. My last shot was one of the last scenes in the movie, when we are actually saying goodbye. It was quite hard for me. But I knew it wasn't goodbye forever. I did have a bit of a cry, but I wasn't that sad because I knew because we had grown up together. You can't break that bond as easily as just saying goodbye to someone.

Moseley: It was a really emotional moment, and it was the very last shot that we did. It was a battle scene where all the Narnians are running, and it was a really empowering moment. It sounds weird, but the sun was setting with this beautiful sunset in the Czech Republic, and the whole cast was running down the hill, and it just felt like we were bound for this very last moment, and it immortalized our experience together. It was sad, but it felt like I was ready to move on.

Popplewell: It's bittersweet, the fact that Will and I won't be involved next time. I had my first audition for this when I was 13, and I'm 19 now, so it's been a big chunk of my life. I don't want to play the same character seven times. I think people would probably get bored of it. I don't know if I could spend seven times seven months doing it, so it's been wonderful, but it will be nice to move on, too.

Christianity Today interviews Douglas Gresham about "PC"

'A Poorer Story, but a Better Movie'
So says Douglas Gresham, C. S. Lewis's stepson and producer of the upcoming Prince Caspian, in comparing it to The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
by Mark Moring posted 04/08/08

In late 2005, Douglas Gresham was nervously looking forward to the theatrical release of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the film adaptation of the first book in the beloved Chronicles of Narnia.

Gresham had a dual interest in the film's success. Not only was he one of the movie's producers, but he's also the stepson of the books' author—C. S. Lewis.

Gresham needn't have worried. LWW would go on to be a box office smash, earning $745 million at the box office worldwide—a figure that has soared well past $1 billion with DVD sales.

Now he looks forward to the May 16 release of Prince Caspian, the second film in the series, in which the four Pevensie children—Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy—return to Narnia and find quite a different place than they'd left behind. They encounter a helpful dwarf, a corrupt king, and a young prince looking to take his rightful place on the throne—and to restore order, justice, truth, goodness and joy to the magical land.

We recently chatted with Gresham, 62, who had just seen a rough cut of the film—which he says might be better than LWW, even though it's adapted from what Gresham calls a "poorer" book. Gresham spoke to us by phone from his home in Malta.

What has kept you busy since The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe?

Douglas Gresham: We started thinking about Prince Caspian the day of the premiere of Lion/Witch. We had a short respite, and then really got into Prince Caspian. And we're already in preproduction on Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I understand you recently saw a rough cut of Caspian. Your thoughts?

Gresham: It's a fabulous film. I'm very, very pleased. It's a film that portrays probably even more strongly than the book the essential message of Prince Caspian, which is a return to truth and faith and honor and justice after a millennium of corruption in Narnia. I almost hate to say it, but I think it's a better movie than The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Prince Caspian started with a poorer story than Lion/Witch, but has worked out probably to be a better movie.

Why do you think Caspian is a poorer story?

Gresham: The book doesn't have the power of the story The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, which is based on the greatest story ever told. You can't really top that. Prince Caspian, when you look at it from a filmmaker's viewpoint, is a story basically about a long walk in the woods with a battle at the end. As a movie that doesn't really work.

We had some difficulty figuring out how to make Caspian work as a film. In the book, the children arrive in Narnia, and they all sit down around the campfire and Trumpkin tells them the story of Prince Caspian—which means that the four Pevensie children vanish for half of the book. If you made it into a movie that way, your protagonists wouldn't be in half of the film. And that just doesn't work as a movie.

But Trumpkin's story makes for a thrilling flashback. Are you saying you didn't want to leave the Pevensie children while telling Caspian's backstory?

Gresham: The problem would be that you would have two entirely separate storylines going on, in separate timescales. You'd wind up with half a movie that's Prince Caspian's story, and all of a sudden you've got the Pevensie kids crashing back into the film. We had to find some way of integrating the Pevensies and Caspian together in a way that works for the story, and I think our scriptwriters did a wonderful job managing to do that.

So do they actually meet up with Caspian earlier in the movie than in the book?

I'm not going to give too much away at this stage.

I understand. But would it be accurate to say …

Gresham: I tell you what to do. Go see the movie when it comes out. Take all your friends and take your friends' friends. Take your enemies as well, because you're supposed to love your enemies. Take your enemies' friends. And then you can tell me if you think we've done a good job with it.

Many fans thought Lion/Witch was nice to look at, but that it was too much spectacle and missed some of the story's subtleties. Many also felt the film didn't capture the awe and majesty of Aslan—that he was far too "safe" of a lion.

Gresham: I haven't heard those criticisms. All of the people who talk to me about Aslan were awestruck by him in the movie. I don't know how I'd react to that criticism, because for me he's an immensely powerful figure in the movie—and I'm probably the severest critic in the world.

When the team first started looking ahead to Caspian, what was discussed?

Gresham: We were on a bit of a high after the success of Lion/Witch. So the big danger was that we might get the slightest bit complacent, and we had to make sure we didn't. We were all conscious of having raised the bar pretty high, and we knew we had to do better next time around. I'm glad to say that I think we've done that.

In the book, Caspian is a young teen, but Ben Barnes will be almost twenty-seven when this film comes out. Why wasn't a teenager cast for the role?

Gresham: We didn't think Caspian should be too young in this movie. Although Ben is older, he plays about 17 and does it very well. But we also need Caspian to be a bit older for the next movie because he becomes the master of The Dawn Treader, and to do that at the age of 17 or 18, with a crew of soldiers and sailors unto you, is not very believable. So I think he needs to be a bit older than he is in the book for the next movie. It was hard to find the very best Caspian, and we decided on Ben largely because of his amazing talent.

In the trailer, he looks so confident and in charge, and I think of a terrified kid running for his life from King Miraz. Does Ben capture that side of Caspian, too?

Gresham: There is a scene in which he flees for his life and he goes through some rather frightening experiences, but I'm not going to give too much away.

I'm not asking for the details. I'm just saying that the trailer depicts this sexy, handsome stud who has it all together. And I think of Caspian, at least at first, as a scared kid, and I wonder if that's conveyed in the film.

Gresham: He does go through that kind of experience, yes. But he does grow emotionally, intellectually, and, to some extent, physically very quickly during the course of the story and the movie. But of course that's what this movie is all about, the change in Caspian's personality.

When NarniaFans interviewed you, they asked about the fate of Miraz's son in the film. You replied, "There's global warming, worldwide recession, dental cavities and facial blemishes and all sorts of things more meritorious of anxiety than the fate of Miraz's son." They asked you why another change was supposedly made from the book, and you replied, "Why not?" Your answers sounded a bit flippant to people who really love these books …

Gresham: They are a little bit flippant. People do take these things sometimes too seriously. This is, after all, when all is said and done, only a movie. But I know that when the fans see the scenes, they will understand immediately why we've done what we done, and they will also love it. So I'm not going to go into lengthy descriptions of why we made the decisions we made. I'm going to let the fans make up their own minds.

I understand. But I think the fear is …

Gresham: What do you do in a circumstance like that? All you can do is come up with something as amusing as you can, I suppose.

You said, "After all, it's only a movie." But if you said, "It's only a book," you would get a lot of hackles up because to a lot of people, including me, these are not "only books." I guess I'm trying to give you the opportunity to say, "Hey, I'm not really being as flippant as I might come across."

Gresham: I think anyone who knows my history will know that I've spent the last almost thirty years dreaming, hoping, striving, working and fighting to get these movies made. To suggest for a second that I don't take it seriously would really be rather ludicrous. But when you're backed into a corner and someone asks you a question you don't want to answer for their own sake, I think the best way to approach it is to be as amusing as you can. Not to say, "Mind your own damn business," which would just be rude and insensitive. You must be aware of the fact that I probably take the Narnian books more seriously than any other human being in the world.

Are you surprised that people ask you all these nitpicking questions?

Gresham: Not at all. I expect them to. But I'd also expect them to understand why sometimes I'm a little bit reluctant to answer. I just say, well you know, worry about global warming instead. I don't want to give away spoilers, but I don't want people to think I'm being nasty about it. As I say, it's for the fans' own sake when I refuse to answer a question. Instead, I answer it rather humorously rather than straightforward.

How has your role changed from Lion/Witch to this film?

Gresham: I'm playing pretty much the same role. I'm getting more involved as time goes by, and I understand more of how to do things. I hope sincerely that I'm becoming of more use to the production team rather than just being someone who sort of stands and watches and says, "Oh, we can't do this and we can't do that" or whatever.

What is your official title?

Gresham: Co-producer. But there isn't really any particular title that describes what I do, because I'm in a unique circumstance of being involved in all facets of the film and everything ancillary to it. I'm involved in the scriptwriting, the merchandise, the marketing—all facets. I think [producer] Mark Johnson put it well when we were filming in Prague, and I was introduced to the American ambassador. The ambassador said, "What does Mr. Gresham do for the project?" And Mark said, "Oh, he's to blame."

That's funny, but seriously, that must also mean you must be feeling enormous weight and responsibility to get it right.

Gresham: That's true. I do feel it's a huge responsibility. I feel that I've inherited almost a sacred trust, and it's up to me to do the very best I can with it. But I have been carrying this particular task for the better part of 25 or 30 years in the C. S. Lewis Company, with the books themselves, trying to ensure everything Jack wrote is constantly kept available to the public.

As the representative of Jack and the Lewis estate, how often do you find yourself on the set or in the editing room asking, "What would Jack do?"

Gresham: That's not a question I ever ask. The question I ask is, "What would Jack have me do?" And, "What would the Holy Spirit have me do?" Jack, of course, is not alive today, but I sincerely hope he would be thrilled with what I've done with his Narnian stories in film. But I can't put myself in Jack's mind and say, "What would Jack do now?" It's "What would Jack have me do under these circumstances?" And more important—and Jack would agree—is, "What would the Holy Spirit have me do?"

When we talked before Lion/Witch, you were reluctant to use the word "veto power" in your role as a producer …

Gresham: I would still be reluctant to say that. We work very cooperatively; it's almost always a consensus decision. In both movies, there have been things I have disagreed with. So we've all sat around the table and talked until we come up with a decision. I am fairly powerful in personality and I put my point strongly, and I think people honor that. But we try to come up not with any one person's particular viewpoint, but with the very best solution for the sake of the film, the book, and the audience.

So it wouldn't be a matter of you saying, "No, we're not going to do that," but more of, "Let's try to reach some sort of compromise."

Gresham: It's not exactly a compromise. If there is something which I know simply cannot be in the movie, I will say so and I will say why.

Can you give an example?

Gresham: I can't remember one. I don't think there was one in Lion/Witch. And I can't remember one on Prince Caspian either, but that's what would happen if it came up. I'm dealing with people who know the material and who know the background to it. Everybody gets the impression that the Hollywood filmmaker's an ignorant kind of no-nothing individual. This isn't the case in my experience. The people I deal with on these films are extremely sensitive to the material and knowledgeable about it.

What about the transition from Andrew Adamson, who directed the first two Narnia films, to Michael Apted, who'll direct Voyage of the Dawn Treader (due in 2010)?

Gresham: I think I'm going to enjoy enormously working with Michael. Of course I'll miss Andrew, but I understand exactly why he's doing it. So while I'm losing someone I've worked with for six or seven years, I'm going onto another director who's going to be equally great. And I have high hopes that we'll have an even better film—though Andrew would probably hit me over the head for saying it—with Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

What's your understanding of why Andrew is leaving?

Gresham: For one thing, he's tired. Andrew has been working for us for a long time, and he has been working exceptionally hard. These aren't simple productions to make. These are hugely complex, extremely detailed, and demand absolutely everything a director has to give. When Andrew first joined us he was a young, newly married man with no children. Now he has two growing daughters, and he wants to spend more time with his family.

When I interviewed you in 2005, you said you used to be an Edmund but that you were working on being a Lucy. Does that still apply?

Gresham: Yes, I think it does—certainly spiritually. Lucy is the character I always have most admired, but Edmund was the character I was for a long time. I'm still working at trying to get to the stage of faith that Lucy has.

I read somewhere that you "completely surrendered" your life to Christ in 1990. How would you describe your journey? Had you walked away from the faith and then come back to it?

Gresham: The problem is you have to define what you mean about "faith." We use that term

much too loosely. I always believed in God and in Jesus Christ, but so does the Devil himself. Faith in that sense is not sufficient to make you a Christian. I think the faithful Christian is the one who lives out his or her duty to God and to Christ, and demands a certain submission to the will of God.

My problem for many years was that although I believed in God and Jesus, I didn't want to submit my life to the authority of anyone but myself. And therefore, in a sense, I was worshiping myself and, therefore, had a fool for a deity.

What changed that in 1990?

Gresham: I tried to help someone, but because I was living my life based in my own intellect, I got it very badly wrong and a lot of people were hurt. I was forced to take a good, long, careful look at myself. And I realized that what I was really doing was living my life in arrogance, conceit and pride, and that I wasn't qualified to run a human life. So I realized I'd better hand it over to someone who is. And who better qualified to run a human life than the Person who designed it in the first place?

Movie images from Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media

Sneak Peek Review of "PC"

Feb. 26, 2008

After its predecessor, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," surprised industry experts by grossing more than $290 million in the United States alone, you'd think the media would be taking "Prince Caspian" far more seriously. But the potential blockbuster seems amazingly under the radar compared with May's other openers. Therefore, it's not surprising that Disney sat your intrepid columnist down with director Andrew Adamson and producer Mark Johnson to watch a good 45 minutes of the upcoming flick. And, not surprisingly, there is a lot about the new movie for audiences to get excited about.

Trivia game: Test your knowledge of award-winning films

Caspian is pretty cool: It's hard to introduce a new main character in the second installment of a franchise, but Adamson may have pulled it off with Caspian. The movie begins with the prince's life on the line after the birth of a younger male cousin. Caspian's evil uncle is king, and with the new heir his dashing nephew is expendable. The chase scene that follows is far more dramatic than most of "Wardrobe" and makes Caspian immediately sympathetic. The fact that newcomer Ben Barnes has some genuine charisma doesn't hurt either.

There really is more action: One major scene finds Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edmund (who have returned to Narnia) attempting to overtake the Telmarine castle with a reunited band of Narnia creatures. The fact that the operation occurs at night helps matters, but Adamson has learned to increase the tension and make you believe these kids were great warriors when they ruled the land (well, more than you'd expect at least). As Adamson says, "It is more intense, but it's not bloody or gory. It is a balance between keeping everything real so the emotions are there."

No surprise, this is the last of Peter and Susan: One dramatic plotline Adamson has played up is the tension between Peter, the oldest of the children, and Caspian. Peter hasn't adjusted to living back in the real world after ruling a kingdom and is eager to prove he's the rightful ruler of the land. This could come across a little too heavy-handedly, but in the scenes I previewed it seemed subtler than most moviegoers would expect. Adamson says it all ties into why Peter and Susan realize this will be their last visit to Narnia. Edmund and Lucy return in the next film, "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader."

New influences for classic enemies: C.S. Lewis conceived the Telmarines as the descendants of pirates, but Adamson has taken it a step further by clearly portraying them with Spanish influences. He says he was looking to differentiate them from the British characteristics of the Pevensie children, but it was a little too obvious for this columnist.

Hardcore fans are a tough crowd: Adamson has had to change a number of things from the original book, including certain plot points, in order to make the story more cinematic, and he expects to hear grumbles from some of the hard-core fans. "There [are] always fanatics who will have that response," Adamson says. "How true to the book does the movie have to be? I think for me it's finding the key points, the key individual characters and the key themes and staying true to those."

Aslan's back: Yes, the golden lion returns. Just as in the book, Lucy is the first to see him and has to convince everyone else he's still alive. Unlike "Wardrobe," though, a majority of his screen time doesn't occur until the final act.

The verdict: "Caspian" looks to be a noticeable improvement over "Wardrobe" and should win over some moviegoers who wanted more "Lord of the Rings"-style scope to the "Narnia" franchise.

"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" opens nationwide May 16.

New Prince Caspian Trailer from the Superbowl!

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Pre-visualizing "Prince Caspian"

The Digital Eye: Prevising Prince Caspian
In this month's edition of "The Digital Eye," Previs Supervisor Rpin Suwannath provides an exclusive sneak peek of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

It was January 2006. I was having lunch with director Andrew Adamson and producer Philip Steuer in Los Angeles when the bill arrived. Andrew looked at me and said, "Since you're the only one officially working on Prince Caspian, shouldn't you be picking this up?"

That was more than 18 months and three continents ago. It's now August 2007, I'm in Prague and we've got about a month left before wrap and the show moves to London for post-production.

After Walt Disney Pictures' successful opening of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (in association with Walden Media), the studio was anxious to get started on its sequel, Prince Caspian. Although he was still in negotiations with the studio, Andrew had some ideas that he wanted to start previsualization work on. There was a particular sequence he called the "Night Raid" that wasn't in the C.S. Lewis book that Andrew wanted to develop as a cut scene in conjunction with the work he and writers Chris Markus and Steve McFeely were doing on the script. After hearing their ideas, I knew this film was going to be a much bigger undertaking than the last one. This sequence alone was more complex than anything what we had done on the last film and it was happening only halfway through the story. I hired veterans from the first film, Mike Makara and Scott Meadows, to start building a digital library of sets and characters. Fortunately, the visual effects work that VFX Supervisor Dean Wright did on the first film was online, including scans of the actors and creatures, so we had much more specific models and textures for our digital stand-ins. This allowed us to "step up" the look of our previs work. On the first movie, we began previs well before casting finished so our models for the Pevensies were somewhat generic. This time, we had scans of Georgie Henley so our Lucy model looks like Lucy.

Starting previs this early gave us an opportunity to develop an improved work pipeline. On the last film, we would ultimately export QuickTimes to editorial for them to then import in their Avid system. Sometimes I would roughly cut sequences internally in our previs department using something like Adobe Premier but these sequences would always have to be reassembled in editorial because of software compatibility. On Caspian, we decided with Editors Sim Evan-Jones and Josh Campbell that I would have an Avid and cut the first pass of the previs before handing the timeline to them for further and final cutting. This system works great. To be able to seamlessly pass an edit back and forth between the departments with no interruption in workflow is fantastic and will hopefully become commonplace in the industry.

As pre-production ramped up, I brought on Kiwi Gerrard Southam, who worked on Lion (a local hire when the production moved to New Zealand) and Andreas "Chop" Hikel, an animator I worked with on Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. It was now June 2006. The "Night Raid" was coming along and the sequence was more or less transcribed into the script per our previs work. We had based our set on a castle in France that worked for the action we were staging with Andrew. Eventually, Production Designer Roger Ford used the previs model as a rough guide for his castle design that would be constructed months later on the Czech Republic backlot. As Roger's designs turned into set drawings, we modified the previs to work with these real sets so we could turn over technical breakdowns to vfx, art department and second unit that were accurate to what Andrew had imagined.

Just when we are getting comfortable with the pace of things, Andrew told me we should "start thinking about the ending," which included a gladiator style duel, an epic battle and a river god sequence. Enter The Third Floor. Realizing that we needed more quality artists quickly, Dean (who is joined on Caspian by VFX Supervisor Wendy Rogers) suggested The Third Floor whose work on the Star Wars prequels impressed us. I contacted Chris Edwards and our team grew with the addition of three Third Floor artists led by Joshua Wassung. Our previs team was seven strong and before we knew it, it was the middle of October and we were ready to head to location in the Czech Republic.
Josh and the Third Floor team stayed behind working as a separate unit in Los Angeles while the rest of us traveled to Prague. There, we hired four local Czech artists, including Jakub Mares and Ondrej Zajic, and "Swiss" Chris Greet, another artist from New Zealand who worked on Lion. Work continued with additional new scenes to previs, but much of the focus remained on the end battle especially once a location was chosen. Pre-production was now in full swing and by the end of the year, we were again preparing to travel to New Zealand where filming was scheduled to begin in February 2007. It had been almost a year now and while we had yet to shoot one foot of film, you could watch the entire movie in storyboard and previs animatic form.

Our three-month tour of New Zealand was quick. Scott and Mike spent the time in working in Los Angeles with Josh and Jakub and Ondrej remained at the Czech office. During any given 24-hour period, it was a pretty safe bet that somewhere, someone in the world was working on previs for Prince Caspian.

And before we knew it, we were back in Prague, about the end of March 2007. By May, the major set pieces that we had worked on (the Night raid followed by the End Battle and Rivergod sequence) were being deconstructed and turning into shooting boards. However, Andrew would continue to refine up to the last minute, sometimes getting as specific as what hand a character was holding their weapon in. It is rewarding, however, when the dailies come in and you can see the previs literally come to life as shots we imagined on a computer months are that closer to the final product.

We're pretty much done with previs now. The remaining crew, Chop, Jakub and Ondrej, have switched gears to post-vis, which entails getting live-action plates that editorial is using in their assembly of the film, tracking the shots and adding our previs elements to those shots so Andrew can watch a scene with temp effects relatively quickly. Basically, he watches an edit of what he shot with our previs elements tracked and composited in. The turn-around is usually about a day on our end.

Post-vis on Caspian will continue, with Chop supervising Jakub and Ondrej as I will wrap with the end of production in the Czech Republic.

Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Rpin Suwannath interned at Industrial Light & Magic while attending the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Suwannath went immediately to work in visual effects on Warner Bros.' Batman Forever. Seeing the powerful workstations as potential art department tools, he moved to pre-production in 1998 and joined the art department, modeling set concepts in the computer for The Haunting. Soon after, he became one of the first independent pioneers of the pre-visualization field and contributed to a number of films, including the X-Men franchise, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and The Matrix sequels. Rather than using previs as primarily a visual effects tool, he created cut scenes with music and sound effects, enabling filmmakers to use the computer-generated animatics as story tools. After a successful relationship with Walden Media on The Chronicles of Narnia films, and directing some second unit, Suwannath is currently in development to direct his first feature with the studio.

Richard Taylor blogs on Armor and Weaponry of Prince Caspian

Weta Workshop on Prince Caspian

For "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," Weta Workshop was excited to have the chance to return to Narnia once again with Andrew Adamson. Having provided design services and armor and weaponry for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the opportunity to revisit and build upon our previous work in this wonderful world was one we looked forward too.

Narnia had changed since both we and the Pevensie children had last visited. While elements of the Narnia we knew were still present, a whole new culture had to be designed and created and even the familiar Narnians had changed and required new work.

Weta Workshop provided new design work in the form of environmental concepts and armor and weaponry designs, working closely with Director Andrew Adamson and the Los Angeles creative team leaders, Production Designer Roger Ford and Costumer Designer Isis Mussenden. The Pevensie children required new elements to compliment their royal gear from the first adventure and the look of the Narnians' armor and weapons had to be evolved in a new direction since we last saw it. In addition the Telmarine culture had to be conceived from scratch and a great deal of work was done in the quest to find their unique design signature.

Weta's armor and weapons departments were kept busy turning these concepts into reality and in sufficient numbers to arm two opposing armies. For the Telmarines Weta made two-hundred polearms in two different styles, two-hundred rapiers of varying design, over a hundred falchions, two-hundred and fifty shields and fifty-five crossbows. The Telmarine cavalry were equipped with soft shields and stunt gear for use with live horses. Weta made stunt-safe horse faceplates for the warhorses and sculpted unusual faceplate helmets for the soldiers.

Befitting rulers of a vast kingdom, Miraz and his lords needed special weaponry. Weta created individual swords, scabbards and sculpted faceplate helmets for the featured lords including Glozelle, who also had a beautiful dagger. Miraz himself had a special shield, sword, scabbard, full plate armor and an ornate faceplate helmet.

Hero Prince Caspian needed a sword, a variant of the Royal guard swords made, while Weta also made prop weapons for specific scenes, including a crossbow for Prunaprismia's room.

Among the children's equipment, which had to be refitted and restored after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Weta made new armor for Edmund and a new vambrace for Susan.

New characters Nikabrik and Trumpkin needed swords and daggers, while the grand Narnian army seen in the first film had to be aged back and re-imagined as a rebel force, gone wild. Familiar armor and weaponry was mixed with new elements to create a more organic, individualized and heavily worn look. New items added included a Minotaur mace and Centaur flail as well as specific weapons for the lead Minotaur, Asterius.

Even Reepicheep, who would be a digital character, required an exquisite little sword to be made by Weta at life size.

In addition, Weta's miniatures department was tapped to provide highly detailed 1/24th and 1/100th scale miniatures of Miraz's great castle and its environment.

Richard Taylor
Weta Workshop

BIO

WETA WORKSHOP (armor/weapon designs and fabrication) is a multi-faceted effects company based in Wellington, New Zealand, which produces effects for television and film. Founded in 1986 by five-time Academy Award® winner Richard Taylor and partner Tania Rodger, Weta has produced creature and makeup effects for all of Peter Jackson's films, including his Oscar-winning "Lord of the Rings" trilogy," "Meet The Feebles," "The Frighteners," "Braindead," "King Kong" and "Heavenly Creatures."

Taylor, along with the firm's innovative co-founder and partner, Rodger, won four Academy Awards® for his contributions to "Lord of the Rings" -- Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup for "Fellowship of the Ring" (in addition to a nomination for Best Costume Design) and Best Costume Design and Best Makeup on "Return of the King." He won British Academy (BAFTA) Awards for Best Costume Design on "The Two Towers" and Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup on "The Fellowship of the Ring," and earned additional nominations for Best Makeup on "The Two Towers" and "Return of the King" and Best Costume Design on "Return of the King." On his most recent collaboration with Jackson, Taylor won his fifth Oscar® and another BAFTA honor for Best Visual Effects on "King Kong," Jackson's epic retelling of the 1933 horror classic.

Taylor grew up in Te Hihi, near Pukekohe, New Zealand. He first attended Wesley College in Pukekohe before winning a spot at the Wellington School of Design. Upon graduation, he first designed board games for a Wellington design studio before joining a local television studio, where he became a model maker for TV spots. His work attracted budding filmmaker Jackson's attention, and they first joined forces on his 1989 debut feature, "Meet the Feebles."

ComingSoon.net "PC" audio interviews!

www.ComingSoon.net interviewed a number of people involved in making "Prince Caspian." Click on the links below to listen to the interviews or read the transcripts of them.

Audio Interview with Mark Johnson, Producer
Transcript of Interview with Mark

Audio Interview with Howard Berger, Creature Supervisor and Dean Wright, Special Effects Supervisor
Transcript of Interview with Howard and Dean

Audio Interview with Isis Mussenden, Costume Designer
Transcript of Interview with Isis

Ben Barnes sounds off as Prince Caspian

Full-Length reports of "PC" at Comic-Con

Read a complete report by a Narnia fan who saw Prince Caspian at Comic-Con in San Diego. It is quite lengthy, in two parts, but thorough:

Read Part 1

Read Part 2

"PC" films in Barrandov Studios in Prague

Jun 26, 2007 11:41 AM Filed under News , Film

Prague Barrandov Studio is busy now to create the perfect requisites for the American film The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. The film is being shot here from April to August and it costs over 100 million USD.

According to the director of Barrandov Studio, this film has been the biggest project there since Roman Polanski’s film Oliver Twist in 2004. The studios now contains a castle with a large courtyard and a big gate, towers and a drawbridge. The main stars of the film, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley and Anna Popplewell will also shot in caves or in a wood with a waterfall and a small lake, all made in Barrandov studios.

About 110 people has been working on the requisites for more than 6 months. The Czech premiere of the film is planned for May 2008.

[See this post also about "PC" filming at Barrandov Studios]

Co-Screenwriters blog on adapting "Prince Caspian"

Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (Co-Screenwriters)

It's rare for a screenwriter to have the opportunity to deal with characters in more than one movie. Actually, let's rephrase that -- it's rare for a screenwriter to have the opportunity to deal with characters in even one movie. The odds against a story making it from screen to camera to multiplex are wildly high. The odds against making that trip two or even three times are frankly just silly. But that's where we find ourselves, in an uncommon position and feeling very lucky to be here.

And that's where again? Oh, yes. Narnia. But hardly the same Narnia the Pevensies left at the end of the last film. Thirteen-hundred years have passed, and they haven't necessarily been pleasant. Prince Caspian sets us down in a torn and troubled land where new villains stalk the battlefield and entire races find themselves on the brink of extinction.

As writers, the biggest challenge we faced was connecting the Pevensies' story to that of Prince Caspian. In C. S. Lewis' book, they're essentially two separate narratives which only come together near the end. While this is perfectly entertaining to read, it makes for a strangely structured movie where your favorite characters are absent for long stretches at a time.

Consequently, we decided to weave the two plots together early, bringing the Pevensies into Narnia near the start and giving them a greater role in Caspian's journey. This not only helped on a structural level, it also allowed us to take advantage of the alliances and antagonisms that would evolve when we tossed three kings and two queens together into the same room -- or underground chamber, as the case may be.

Another intriguing thing for us in revisiting these characters has been exploring the effects their experiences in the first film might've had on them. It's an area Lewis leaves mostly untouched. He memorably examines what it would be like for a 1940's schoolkid to become King of Narnia. However, he doesn't much consider what it would be like for a King of Narnia to return to being a 1940's schoolkid.

That year back in London must have been awkward at best. Imagine going from giving orders...to taking them. From fighting wars and throwing royal balls...to doing homework. Given their different personalities, each Pevensie handles the situation with varying levels of success. Some are resigned, others frustrated, and their sudden return to Narnia should push different buttons in each.

Those are just a few of the things on our mind as we wind down the writing end of things on this film. What's next? It's hard to say. Who can know the future? Perhaps a nice, long ocean voyage...

BIO

CHRISTOPHER MARKUS and STEPHEN McFEELY (co-screenwriters) return to the land of Narnia having co-written the adaptation of the first project, the global box office hit, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Their work on that film earned them nominations for the Saturn, Hugo and Humanitas Awards.

Markus and McFeely, born in Buffalo and San Francisco, respectively, have been writing together since 1995. Chris (Rutgers University) and Steve (University of Notre Dame) met while attending the Graduate Writing Program at UC Davis.

Prior to their success with the C.S. Lewis project, Markus and McFeely penned the original screenplay for the critically acclaimed HBO feature, "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers," starring Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush. Their first produced film premiered in competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and went on to earn numerous honors, including nine Emmy Awards. Markus and McFeely themselves won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special, as well as a Writers Guild Award.

The pair's next feature, IFC Film's "You Kill Me" (their very first screenplay), directed by John Dahl, will be released this year.