Prince Caspian

We saw the midnight showing of Prince Caspian (and the theater was almost empty! I expected more fans would be there for the first showing.) and I have now stewed over it long enough that I can write a lengthy opinion on it. Be warned that there are spoilers, and that my opinion is most decidedly negative, so if you haven't seen it yet and hope to enjoy seeing it, please don't read any further.

The very first moments in the movie began destroying Peter and Susan's characters. Susan is looking at a magazine when a young man introduces himself and says that he's seen her around the school that she attends. He asks her name and she lies, obviously in disgust of him. Lucy runs up and calls Susan just after she tells him that her name is Phyllis. Lucy came to get Susan because Peter is in a fist fight. Cops break up the fight, and Susan asks Peter what it was about "THIS time." And Peter replies that the person bumped into him and then demanded an apology.

Peter and Caspian have a very rocky relationship. Both seem to not like the other, and Peter is very arrogant and demands power. He seems proud of his status as "High King" and unlike in the book, seems to want to reclaim his throne, rather than help Caspian claim HIS throne.

Susan fights all during the movie in a very feminist manner, including dive-bombing the Telmarine castle on gryphons. I've never liked Susan very much, even in the books, and the way she was portrayed in both of the Narnia movies so far just disgusts me. I have a lack of respect for Anna Popplewell's acting and everything in the movie annoyed me. Especially how the romance between her and Caspian was played up. She kisses him at the end and I was nearly gagging. Don't get me wrong, occaisionally I enjoy romance, but this... ugh. Anyway. Moving on.....

Actually, not moving on. Now I have to rant about how the romance ruins Caspian before I move on to what else I hated about Caspian. I'm so mad that they made Caspian appear to be in love with Susan. Now I won't be happy in Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Caspian marries Ramandu's daughter, because it will seem like he's being unfaithful to Susan, even if she does drive me crazy. Augh, I can't believe how terrible this all is. I am SO glad that Andrew Adamson won't be doing any more Narnia movies!

So anyway, the rest of what I hated about Caspian. Oh, wait, changed my mind. What I liked will be a shorter list, and therefore easier to write. I actually kinda liked Ben Barnes' acting. Amazingly enough. But I didn't like him as Caspian. I like how he looked. He looks like I wanted Caspian to look. I liked his accent. And I liked when he meets Aslan for the first time, and Peter, Susan, Edmund and he are kneeling and Aslan says, "Rise, kings and queens of Narnia" and Caspian remains kneeling. That was cool. And that's all I liked about Caspian.

I absolutely loved Edmund. That's the good thing about this movie: as much as it made me hate Peter and Susan, it doesn't really matter because they aren't in Voyage anyway. Edmund was awesome. I loved that he helped Peter in his fight, even if the fight was stupid, and I loved when he stabbed the ice that the White Witch was in, and I loved his line after he destroyed the Witch to Peter "I know, you had it sorted" (Peter was gazing at the witch in spellbound stupidity). Skandar Keynes did a great job with his part. And I was ecstatic at the end when they included my VERY favorite line from all the books "Bother, I left my new torch in Narnia!"

Lucy still kinda irritates me. I don't like Georgie Henley. But I liked Lucy much better in this movie, and I anticipate liking her even better in Voyage. She was really cute when the Telmarine army was marching over the bridge of Beruna, and she stood at the other side with her tiny little dagger held up like a sword.

I'm wildly excited about Reepicheep!!!! He was sooooooo perfect!! I've never seen a picture in the books or anything that perfectly captured how I imagined him, but they really did it. He was exactly right. Absolutely perfect. (Infinitely better than the horribly huge costume in the BBC version... *choke*) Everything about him was PERFECT. And they included the bit about his tail, which I had been so scared they would leave out.

I hated that they had a battle at the Telmarine castle (which was a huge failure and made Peter look like an idiot) before having the battle after the duel. I liked how they did the duel. That was pretty cool. The battle afterwards was ridiculous though. There were hardly any Narnians and tons of Telmarine troops and yet somehow the Narnians weren't wiped out.

But as long as I just try to forget about everything that I hated, it's so nice to finally have the perfect image of Reep, and I really liked Edmund. So hopefully, Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which is my favorite book) will be good. I trust Michael Apted to do a good job. (You can't imagine my disgust when I found out that the director of 'Shrek' was going to do Narnia. I hate Shrek.) I think it's set up perfectly for Michael Apted to refresh the series.

~Lizzie