The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
I had the fortune to attend a free screening last night, so this is the
first time for me to release a review before the movie comes out!
As a fan who read these books when I was a kid, the Narnia movies are a
long time coming. I thought the effects, score, and script were
elegantly executed, and I also appreciated that Disney did not cutesify
it down to patronize the kids. Aside from the cute mice (which the movie
even admitted, "oh, how cute!"), you could take a lot of the Narnian
creatures seriously. Their style was realistic (and even a bit
frightening) instead of dainty; think Pan's Labrynth without the R
rating. It keeps true to the spirit of C.S. Lewis' work, who took
children and a good fairy tale seriously. It's why even though I
didn't like the movie forming a little love interest between Susan
and Prince Caspian, I can live with it since it elaborated
on the reasons why she and Peter were too old to come back to Narnia
again (my sister was positively scandalized at them taking that
liberty, though. Purist, lol). This is a war movie, and the whole
thing is one battle sequence after another. Each battle had
different elements to keep it from getting monotonous, and I really
enjoyed the war maneuvers they added which weren't in the book.
There is one in particular which you can say is omg badass, but I won't say what it is.
Brilliant! Imo, Prince Caspian is the most mundane plot out of all the Narnian Chronicles,
so I'm impressed they managed to make it into a full length movie when the BBC version
combined it with the third book. Nice job, Adamson!
In the End: Narnia's been getting a reputation as being Lord of the
Rings for kids. I think it's an accurate description, since it is that
epic and timeless!
Rating: [8.5/10]