Prince Caspian

Well, the day has arrived and Prince Caspian has hit the big screen in all his sultry, smoldering glory. Most everyone I've spoken with has seen it already, with the conspicuous exception of Paxa. I'll be nice and not put any major spoilers here, but click 'read more' to get my thoughts.

I've actually posted my more....emotional response, shall we say... to my Livejournal, so I won't really go into great detail here. I will simply say that I went into the movie utterly unprepared for just how much the production team chose to deviate from the book. I wish they'd dropped some more hints about that so I could go in better prepared and could come away less disappointed..

But then again, when the first movie came out, I was following every post, news item and Youtube reference with rapt attention. There seemed to be so much at stake back then. I wasn't 100% thrilled with the whole movie once it came out, but there had been so many dire predictions about the various wretched ways they might abuse the story that the actual outcome was a bit of a relief. At least the movie hit all the the major scenes and followed the plot decently enough. I regarded it as a reasonably good movie.

This time, I was not so preoccupied about it. I suppose I felt assured that this movie would do Prince Caspian justice at about the same level that LWW did its book justice, and I could handle that. Anyway, life has been so crazy lately, between homeschooling and work and tutoring and handbells and the recent server concerns that I just plain didn't have TIME to fret over Prince Caspian. So... maybe the warnings were there; I just wasn't paying attention.

At any rate, if you have NOT seen it yet, please go in knowing that the story told in this movie is NOT the Prince Caspian story you know. It's very similar, granted, but it's also very different in many, many ways.

If I have two specific complaints to make, they are these:

1. Why must Peter be so wholly bad-tempered throughout this film? Does a child have to be a complete jerk in order to be 'emotionally complex'? There is nothing in this portrayal of Peter that supports Aslan's choice to make him the High King of Narnia. It's hard to even LIKE him, much less feel he's a good choice as a king.

2. Where was Aslan for 3/4ths of the movie? So there. That's what I thought. I will still probably buy the DVD when it comes out, and I'm not sorry I went. I just really hope that they don't destroy Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Of all of them, I think VDT stands the greatest chance of making a really good movie.