Prince Caspian: The Chronicles of Narnia has hit local movie houses; somewhere, one imagines C.S Lewis doing somersaults in his grave.
What is it about this movie franchise that never seems to get it right? Is it the charmless CGI creatures of Narnia — the fauns, bears and squirrels merely stuck in each frame to create the illusion of “magic”? Or is it the wiseacre one-liners that Lewis’s wide-eyed children — Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy — are forced to utter because, you know, that’s just the way kids talk nowadays? Is it the gratuitous use of a roving Steadicam through rendered forests which induces nausea in non-tweeners? Or maybe it’s the by-the-numbers plundering of the “look” found in other successful “action” movies — Lord of the Rings and Gladiator chief among them — that prevents the Narnia movies from ever achieving greatness.
It sure isn’t the source material that’s at fault, because C.S. Lewis’s seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia still enchants, still instructs, still works its magic on the imagination. Heck, even the black-and-white drawings (by Pauline Baynes in my edition) pack more magic than the CGI creations seen on movie screens here in Manila.
But mostly it’s because Lewis lived in an age when kids trusted books. They loved books; they read them again and again. Harry Potter notwithstanding, these are different times. And that’s the calculated truth that Prince Caspian director Andrew Adamson operates by. He doesn’t seem to trust “old-fashioned” storytelling to do the trick. So he tricks out his screen version with a tacked-on “action” opening in which Caspian’s evil uncle Miraz plots to have Caspian dispatched (the accents of Miraz, Caspian and cohorts were hard to shake: I kept imagining we were in Italy, not the outskirts of Narnia). Lots of thundering music, horses in chase mode. This bears little resemblance to the book, which allows Narnian dwarf Trumpkin to tell the Caspian story in his own fashion.
The Pevensie kids have grown up a little, and apparently they’ve adopted irony and sarcasm as part of their repertoire: it’s a shame to see these — preserved in youthful bewilderment in the Lewis books — rolling their eyes and blurting out lines straight from Hannah Montana or Totally Spies.
Again, it just seems Hollywood doesn’t trust that kids are still, basically, kids. The peevishness of the Pevensie kids mutates into sulkiness and brattiness in Adamson’s hands. Even worse, Prince Caspian seems aimed at as wide a demographic as possible. It’s not enough to lure tons of kiddies into those seats; they want to pull in the parents, too, who presumably can’t get enough of bloodthirsty battle scenes.
And there’s a point that needs emphasizing: Prince Caspian gets a G-rating from this movie board, despite truly horrific makeup, scary images and brutal battle scenes. Why? Is it because of the implicit “Christian” message buried deep in the text of this movie? Believe me, if the makers were after “Jesus dollars,” they completely missed the mark, message-wise. (Aslan, the Christ symbol in Lewis’s books, is practically a no-show in the movie.)
No, it seems more likely that Adamson felt such mayhem was necessary to maximize box office. There’s a distinct bloodthirstiness about Caspian. Arrows fly, catapults pummel, bodies drop. The director seems overly fond of the post-production graininess found in battle scenes from Gladiator and 300. His battle between Miraz and Peter has got that sped-up look, with metal masks and clanging swords — all of which is, again, miles away from the tone of the book. The battle scenes at the castle are dark, hard to follow, and packed with dead bodies. Again, we imagine the sound of C.S. Lewis whirling in his grave.
Though the movie does stick to the bare bones of the novel, it constantly strives to update and make the material more “modern.” Here, Prince Caspian seems to have a “thing” for Susan (who we notice in earlier scenes is fast approaching womanhood, and who also have a reciprocal thing for him). Such blatant hormonal expression is not only at odds with C.S. Lewis’s book, it seems more suited to One Tree Hill viewers.
Casting a few ethnic types in this extravaganza seems odd, too. Sergio Castellitto as King Miraz seems particularly one-dimensional (my wife said he was a cross between Jean Reno and Adam Sandler; I detected a bit of John Turturro’s scenery-chewing about him), while Ben Barnes as Caspian lays on an even thicker accent. Narnia by way of Umbria, perhaps.
It’s a pity that C.S. Lewis isn’t around — as a raging, avenging spirit to haunt the makers of the Narnia movies, perhaps — or at least to lend a guiding hand to the bean counters responsible for such summer dross. At least Harry Potter has the firm hand of J.K. Rowling around to keep the series close to the books. But it also takes someone who loves the source material, as Peter Jackson clearly did with the Tolkien trilogy. In any case, it takes someone with enough directorial style to overcome the humdrum, plodding intertia of this sequel. Adamson needs to retire. Or maybe the franchise needs retiring.
If this summer dud has one positive outcome, it may entice young readers to ask their parents to buy the C.S. Lewis series (which is conveniently available in a brick of seven paperbacks), if they don’t own them already. There, they will find a much wiser, wittier imagination at work: layered themes, positive messages, truly enchanting characters (both human and Narnian).
Curiously, the only one in the Caspian movie who does seem to understand the gentle humor and outsized spirit of C.S. Lewis’s creations is Reepicheep, voiced by British comic Eddie Izzard. Though saddled with recurring catchphrases (“Don’t you have any imagination?”), he actually struts his part well, capturing the fighting spirit of a mouse warrior for Aslan.
Sheesh. It’s really telling when a summer blockbuster movie is stolen by a pint-sized animated mouse.
Can anyone say “Ratatouille”?