Prince Caspian: Non-Spoilery Review - Warning: Comments now contain Big Huge spoilers!

[orichalcum]

Haiku Review:
Many battle scenes,
Susan and Lucy so rawk!
Very true to book.

Well, the diversity of official reviews seemed to suggest that either you would love or hate this movie. True enough, I loved it and cerebralpaladin hated it.

What did I love? How true it was to the book in many minor details, the immense coolness of both Susan and Lucy, my favorite Talking Animal of all time, Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard, folks! hca might want to see it for this alone, as Reepicheep seems like a very hcaish sort of character), and some gorgeous set and costume design work. You should keep in mind here that I'm probably a bigger fan of the Narnia books and world than of any other childhood series (maybe Prydain comes close, but both certainly beat Middleearth.) I think I read Prince Caspian at least 17 times (I stopped counting after I'd read all the books except Silver Chair and Last Battle 17 times), and so I'm the fangirl in the audience sitting there going, "Oh good, they've got the Brown Bear as one of the Heralds!" So for me, it really worked, in that it didn't tarnish any of my memories.

cerebralpaladin, while he liked the Narnia books as a kid, had virtually no memory of the plot. And well, he had some deep moral and tactical qualms with the way that Adamson chose to represent various scenes and choices. These really impaired his ability to enjoy the film.

So mostly, I would say, if you remember liking the book, you'll probably love the movie. If not - maybe less so.

And in an amusing non-spoilery note, they totally played on one of my major points of childhood confusion from the book - how exactly Edmund could have a _torch_ in his backpack.

N.B: cerebralpaladin has now listed his major objections in a spoilerific comment below; read at your own risk.

Comments

[den-down-unda.livejournal.com]

Tolkien hated Narnia. I doubt he had any direct influence. Also, tLotR was effectively done by 1949. The publication was held up by publishing shenanigans and Tolkien's taking about a year to type the ms.

(How's that for a 'the world has changed' moment? A college professor sixty years ago, couldn't type.)

PC was written in, I think, 1949–1950, so it would have been composed after the main writing of tLorR was done. I expect much of Narnia seems familiar because Lewis and Tolkien were drawing on the same sources rather than explicit contact or pilfering.

As far as the movie goes, I'm not that bothered by the similarities to tLotR. It's only natural. And Peter the Moronic got a raw deal in the movie. He's not nearly so bad in the book. For one thing, the whole castle strike is made up from whole cloth. It's not in the book at all.

In fact, IIRC, the book does better address some of your moral qualms. I don't remember if a battle ever takes place, but if it does, it's entirely through the agency of the Telmarines. Peter's duel is not a delaying tactic, but an attempt to stop the war. If Miraz loses, the Telmarines have no reason to fight, since Caspian is the rightful king. And Miraz loses because he's killed treacherously (as in the movie), but there's no mercy scene. He slips and Lord Sopespian stabs him. Then the battle is about to start but Aslan puts an end to it, with Lucy and Susan's help. So I suppose he's a little more effable in the book, though the theme of needing God's agency is still there.

[gee-tar.livejournal.com]

Coming into this kind of late since I just saw the movie a couple days ago, but I must say I enjoyed it, despite Adam's qualms (though I acknowledge those problems). I would like to point out, in relation to The Two Towers that popular opinion has it that Treebeard is supposed to evoke C.S. Lewis personally, especially the very slow method of talking. So I think there is clearly cross pollination of some ideas, though it's hard to put a finger on the specifics.