Prince Caspian

Contains spoilers for the film of Prince Caspian and the book The Last Battle.

Since Prince Caspian came out in the cinemas I've been resisting the urge to download it illegally or buy a really bad pirated copy. It was a film that I yearned to see.

Since I was a kid I loved the Chronicles of Narnia. Now they are still my guilty pleasure. The books are racist and sexist and downright unbelievable. After all who would believe that children should be royal rulers just because they are human. It makes no sense.

The Last Battle is one of my favourites but it's also really disturbing. Susan doesn't get to go back to Narnia because she is "interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations". I think that her overt display of sexuality was what kept her from paradise. Shades of Eve perhaps. Strange that it's always the woman who is punished for this.

Oops, went off on a bit of a tangent there. I'm writing about the new disney movie version of Prince Caspian. I finally got to watch it a few days ago. I had been looking forward to it for so long that I know that it couldn't live up to my expectations but I was thinking that it might be ok. I liked movie of "The lion, the witch and the wardrobe" despite the liberties it took with the source material.

I am appalled at Prince Caspian. It is a terrible film. And I don't just mean the textual liberties. It made no sense. If a viewer had not read the book, I doubt it would have been comprehensible.

For one thing, Trumpkin is arrested and sentenced to execution before the rebels decide to meet at Dancing Lawn. So how did the children know where to go? Of all the lawns in Narnia, they just stumbled on the right one? Ridiculous.

For another thing, the storm of Miraz's castle? WTF was that about? If it was to show the idiocy of this movie, then mission accomplished. Cutting Aslan out, Caspian not being aware of the old Narnians, Beruna's bridge, the squabbling of Peter and Caspian, the continuity errors et al made this a horrible film.

I was shocked at the desecration of the characters. King Peter the Magnificent belligerent lout who considers siding with the White Witch. Caspian the petulant man who had *no* idea that Miraz was the bad guy. Susan the love interest - she didn't even get a character. Lucy was almost but not entirely unlike her literary counterpart. Edmund was there.

It was boring. While watching I fired up my computer because I needed distraction from the tedium. Very disappointed. I probably will watch Voyage of the Dawn Treader to see if it gets any better.