This book was my least favorite in the Narnia series.And The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe didn't leave much for me to expect. Prince Caspian really put the nail in the coffin for any hopes of me seeing a good adaptation of Narnia.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is very much like Shakespeare's Hamlet. It's about Narnia hundreds of years from the last film being ruled by some evil king who has ordered the death of his son/nephew (I forgot) Prince Caspian played by Ben Barnes. Caspian escapes and accidentally summons the Pevensie children back to Narnia.
Now the reason why this was my least favorite Narnia book is because of all 7 books, this one had two stories instead of one main plot. And also because we only see Aslan for 3 seconds. We have this story of Prince Caspian forming a rebelion of Narnians to retake the land from the Telmarins. And we have the story of the Pevensie children trying to figure out what the hell they're doing back in Narnia.
The film bored me during the Pevensie children's side story. It's basically and hour long sequence of them walking through the jungle with a 70 year old pedophilia dwarf while constantly asking, "What are we doing here?" "What happened?" "Where's Aslan?" While I get that this was all in the book and was necessary, the director could have easily shaved of 30 minutes and focused on what was the real plot of the film, Prince Caspian.
I still feel that the Pevensie children were gravely miscast. Hardly any of these characters are memorable, I just didn't care about them. When you're making a series as big as Narnia, you gotta have good actors that can carry characters. Take Harry Potter for example. Radcliffe, Watson and Grint. Just by their surnames you can picture their HP characters. It's like the second film already and if people can't recognize the main characters, you're series is in deep shit.
But I think that Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley are really coming into their own and they were the better half of the Pevensie kids in my opinion. Hopefully they'll have better material to work on when Dawn Treader comes around.
But what I did like was Ben Barnes as Prince Caspian. He was the only character I liked in the film and his scenes does make up huge ground that was lost developing the Pevensie children's plot. Horrible accent aside, he fits that image of young, strapping, medieval rebel. Plus I love the hair, I wonder what shampoo he uses?
The CGI of the film is spectacular like in any fantasy film. My personal fav is what I call the 'sungaiman' scene. You know, the part where the river turns into a man and terrorizes a bunch of soldiers on the bridge. Yeah, that scene was pretty cool. And I felt the part with the trees were much better than the Ents in Lord of the Rings. The battle scenes have vastly improved since The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The editing is a whole lot better and it finally feels like an action battle instead of a Disney version of a battle.
But all the great visuals and battle scenes still couldn't redeem an hour long of the annoying Pevensie children walking and talking. This would have been a better film if it stayed with Prince Caspian for the most parts and ex that horrible use of Regina Spektor at the end. I was like... WTF? This is a fantasy medieval film. You can't have a pop song in this. Where the hell is you're orchestra God dammit!
RATING: 5/10
Source URL: https://magazinestarz.blogspot.com/2008/06/chronicles-of-narnia-prince-caspian.html
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