The Chronicles of Narnia is back in full Christian-allegorical force in the much-anticipated sequel subtitled Prince Caspian. This time around though, weaknesses from the first film are beginning to pile up, leaving the Narnia movies to seem more and more like a lesser version of The Lord of the Rings movies. The films even force this comparison, undermining what C.S. Lewis was aiming for with his story and unfairly comparing him to his friend and colleague J.R.R. Tolkien, yet again.
The first Narnia installment took the story of the Pevensie children set in Second World War Britain and Disney-fied it for the apparent benefit of a twenty-first century audience’s sensibilities, giving the film an overall soulless, corporate sheen. CGI animals with cutesy one-liners, an excessive showcasing of special effects and an inadequate amount of character development of the kids themselves–who are fairly photogenic and charming child actors–pushed the gimmicky feel further. In Prince Caspian, even more money is thrown at the special effects department and even less time is spent with the kids, and most crucially, on the story.
The PG rating, the all-around Disney-fication of the story and a blandness that carries over from the first movie seems to compete with an apparent rip-off of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in the expansion of the epic battle scenes. The battles have been bloated in Prince Caspian, much like in Two Towers, and it overwhelms the real heart of the books: the story of the four Pevensies. Little time is spent on developing the children’s lives back in the real world, from where they are escaping the war by living as kings and queens in the fantastical realm. Before we know it, they are whisked away back to Narnia to fight on its battlefields. As the story is made into a conventional war movie, it is noticeably bloodless and bland due to the kiddie movie restriction and falls back on emphasizing those CGI characters we don’t particularly care about. It all makes for “epic” battle scenes that are neither epic nor have anything that really feels at stake.
The role of the eponymous Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) is also reduced in the wake of the constant swordplay. He spends a lot of his non-battle screen time alpha-male bickering with Peter Pevensie (William Mosely). The rivalry seems to be built entirely on empty and meaningless back-and-forth insults of battle strategies and other stereotypical dominance traits, a product of the under-developed storyline. A hasty romance with Susan Pevensie (Anna Popplewell) is inserted in the Prince’s storyline as well, perhaps to lure in the Tiger Beat element. Admittedly, the Prince is rather dreamy, but stays as vacuous and underdeveloped as the movie itself.
Ultimately, Prince Caspian is a strange and awkward creature: a kiddie war movie. Though adventure played a role in Lewis’s original story, the movie sacrifices the story itself for drawn-out battle scenes. The filmmakers would’ve done well to stick to the kids and the idea of the magical imaginary world as a refuge. An altered approach could have made Narnia a world worth fighting for, as well as a movie worth watching.
Prince Caspian is in theatres now.