Prince Caspian
It's been a very, very long time since I saw a movie that started at 10pm, but last night, after a full day of watching hockey (yay Pittsburgh! too bad 'bout Team Canada though), Graig and I decided we could stay up really late and watch a movie since its a holiday today. We chose Prince Caspian and headed off to Yorkdale.
Let's just say right up front that I had reservations about this movie. I didn't really enjoy The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe all that much, and was expecting much of the same here. I adore the Chronicles of Narnia in book form. I have re-read all seven books pretty much annually since I was nine years old. I have written essays on them in school, so I have read a lot of supplemental material on these books. I know them very, very well.
And so, its because of this knowledge and this love that I usually expect to be disappointed in the movies. This is source material that I hold near and dear to my heart and I just know that the movies are not going to be able to encapsulate everything I love about these books in a movie. And well, I'm right.
The intricacies and details of the novels just aren't there. The themes are basically ignored (I'd say one of the main themes of Prince Caspian is that of faith and its touched upon very lightly) and really, in this case, I'd say maybe 40% of the actual book is up there on the screen, the rest is Disney 'artistic license'. Oh, I understand how things must be truncated and compressed in order to fit into a movie time length, but I really didn't like the entire storming of the castle part as that was nowhere to be seen in the book.
I felt they missed the characterizations of some of the characters (mainly Peter and Trumpkin) and they really expanded on the political situation between Miraz (Caspian's usurper uncle) and his court, which was actually ok, but once again, like with LWW, I felt like there was just so much missing.
I kept inserting bits of dialogue from the book that could have still fit very well in the movie, but for some reason were left out. Those little bits of dialogue would have went very far, for me, in making the film feel more like something that C.S Lewis wrote, and not some big budget Disney special effects bonanza that was loosely based on his books.
Stuff I did like? The got Reepicheep exactly right. The final battle between the Narnians and the Telmarines was well done, as was the dual between Peter and Miraz.
I know they're in pre-production for Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I'm already trying to figure out if I should bother going to see it or not. Because its not that I hated Prince Caspian, I think, more than anything, I'm just left feeling kinda apathetic towards it, which, is probably the most disappointing thing of all.
Let's just say right up front that I had reservations about this movie. I didn't really enjoy The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe all that much, and was expecting much of the same here. I adore the Chronicles of Narnia in book form. I have re-read all seven books pretty much annually since I was nine years old. I have written essays on them in school, so I have read a lot of supplemental material on these books. I know them very, very well.
And so, its because of this knowledge and this love that I usually expect to be disappointed in the movies. This is source material that I hold near and dear to my heart and I just know that the movies are not going to be able to encapsulate everything I love about these books in a movie. And well, I'm right.
The intricacies and details of the novels just aren't there. The themes are basically ignored (I'd say one of the main themes of Prince Caspian is that of faith and its touched upon very lightly) and really, in this case, I'd say maybe 40% of the actual book is up there on the screen, the rest is Disney 'artistic license'. Oh, I understand how things must be truncated and compressed in order to fit into a movie time length, but I really didn't like the entire storming of the castle part as that was nowhere to be seen in the book.
I felt they missed the characterizations of some of the characters (mainly Peter and Trumpkin) and they really expanded on the political situation between Miraz (Caspian's usurper uncle) and his court, which was actually ok, but once again, like with LWW, I felt like there was just so much missing.
I kept inserting bits of dialogue from the book that could have still fit very well in the movie, but for some reason were left out. Those little bits of dialogue would have went very far, for me, in making the film feel more like something that C.S Lewis wrote, and not some big budget Disney special effects bonanza that was loosely based on his books.
Stuff I did like? The got Reepicheep exactly right. The final battle between the Narnians and the Telmarines was well done, as was the dual between Peter and Miraz.
I know they're in pre-production for Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I'm already trying to figure out if I should bother going to see it or not. Because its not that I hated Prince Caspian, I think, more than anything, I'm just left feeling kinda apathetic towards it, which, is probably the most disappointing thing of all.