John Lindal’s Blog

Prince Caspian

May 18, 2008 on 6:39 pm | In Books, Movies | No Comments

If you love Narnia, don’t see this movie.

OK, so much for the executive summary. The extended previews on Disney Channel sounded wrong, and I re-read the book to confirm this, so I went to the theater with very low expectations. However, nothing could have prepared me for something this abysmal. Peter Jackson has moved down to #2 on my Worst Butchers In History list. Yes, as unbelievable as it sounds, this movie is worse than Peter Jackson’s anti-accomplishment. The reason is simply that, while The Lord of the Rings is a deep and intricate story, the Narnia series is so simple. Each book has one main theme. If you throw that out the window, there is nothing left.

The first book is about Christ dying for our sins. To my eternal astonishment, they got that movie right.

The second book is about Faith, both by people who have never experienced Christ, but who feel deep in their soul that the message is true, and those who have not experienced Christ in a while, in the middle of a so called dry spell. And about the Joy of discovering or re-uniting with Christ.

This movie had neither.

Instead of Prince Caspian and his army hanging on to hope while sustaining mounting losses, finally blowing Queen Susan’s horn in their darkest hour, and then having to hang on to hope even a bit longer before help finally arrived, the children meet Caspian at the beginning of the movie and proceed to invade Miraz’ castle with disastrous results.

Instead of Lucy and Susan romping with Aslan to reawaken the trees and the rest of Old Narnia, Susan leads the archers in the final battle while Lucy actually goes in search of Aslan, as if He were some random lion who lives in the woods, rather than the Creator and Driving Force of Narnia.

Reepicheep was OK. All the other characters were hopelessly distorted.