I watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch,
and the Wardrobe this morning on DVD—it represents that rare
mega-Blockbuster that I missed during its run in theatres,
likely because I spent hours upon hours shoveling popcorn and
sweeping up auditoriums over the holiday-season in which it was
released—and found myself genuinely captivated by the movie’s
simple command of fantasy. Nevertheless, despite my strong
engagement in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I
never forgot that I was watching it in preparation for its
sequel: Prince Caspian. And, keeping that fact in mind, I
began to contemplate just what director Andrew Adamson would be
able to do with the second film in the series. I had never
gotten around to reading C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian during my
seven years in elementary school, and its existence left me
genuinely perplexed as I considered its potential. After all,
its predecessor features a pretty concrete plot: kids find
fantasy realm called Narnia, kids save Narnia from destruction
by White Witch, kids go back to the real world. What more to the
story could there be?
As it would turn out, Prince
Caspian is a complete retread of the first entry in the
Chronicles of Narnia series. The only real change made is
that the villain now comes in the form of King Miraz (Sergio
Castellitto), who has taken over Narnia during the hundreds of Narnia-years in which the hero Pevensie children (William Mosely,
Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes, and Georgie Henley) have been
whittling away their time on Earth without a clear route back to
the fantasy-realm. When the quartet does return, however, it
finds itself paired alongside Miraz’ threatened nemesis nephew,
Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), in attempts to restore the Kingdom
to the state that they left it in. Bringing “extinct” Narnians
out of hiding to fight Miraz’ dominant army and searching for
Aslan, their powerful lion companion from White Witch days, the
Pevensies once again find themselves partaking in an epic
struggle. Numerous CGI-driven battles ensue.
Once one realizes that Prince
Caspian is, indeed, a near-carbon-copy of its predecessor,
the exercise wears thin in no time. Given that the Pevensie
children will clearly survive all of the harm that they
encounter in Narnia, there is no reason for the viewer to care
about the details of their second adventure. Yes, the detailed
special effects and sweeping landscapes featured are quite
beautiful to stare at and the four young actors once again craft
a sympathetic team of heroes. But there remains no substantive
reason for Prince Caspian to exist other than studio
Disney’s need to sustain high box-office revenues. That the
movie runs for a whopping 144-minutes makes it seem all the more
unnecessary. However, given that future trips to Narnia are on
their way no matter what this film’s final financial take is—the
third entry in the series has already begun production with
accomplished director Michael Apted at the reigns—I can now only
hope that Prince Caspian will simply come to represent a
small bump in the road for a better series on the whole. Common
consensus is that Lewis’ third novel, The Voyage of the Dawn
Treader, offers a much more involving story that Apted should have
no problem being successfully adapted to the silver-screen.
While we filmgoers wait for that motion-picture to surface in
2010, the Pevensie’s current trip to Narnia is best left
ignored.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 5.17.2008
Screened on: 5.17.2008 at the Edwards San Marcos 18 in
San Marcos, CA.