Continuing my one-man, hate-filled vendetta against the new Prince Caspian movie, I’ll link to a couple blog reviews today.
Christopher Cowan of The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has posted two pieces on the movie—here and here. His reservations are much the same as mine. Except for being more coherent, better developed, and properly researched, of course.
Gene Edward Veith at Cranach was disappointed with the movie, for a different reason.
Everything I read tells me that this is probably a pretty good flick, one which I’d enjoy under other circumstances.
But as an adaptation of Prince Caspian, it appears to be deeply flawed.
I’m sad about that.
well, Susan does put arrow to bow in Caspian, just before they were attacked by the bear, but she doesn’t shoot. And she and Lucy are not on the field when the battle starts….
But Jill, in the Last Battle, fights, and fights well– though she must turn her head to keep her tears from wetting her bowstring.
So Lewis did have girls fighting.
But on the whole, I think you probably have a point. I’ll have to see the movie before I decide whether it’s ruined or not, though.
I’m not a-gonna see it and nobody’s a-gonna make me!!
From everything I’ve read review-wise, it’s not so much the Susan stuff that bothers me – though I don’t like that either. It’s what they’ve done to Peter – turning him into a jealous putz. First they wussified him in the first movie and now this…
ARGH!!!
Yeah, I’ve seen Caspian (and I think ya’ll should too, but maybe as a rental) and what bothered me was the shift in focus of the overall story to the personal struggle of the kids and not the redemption of Narnia, and due to that they left out a lot of really great material and put in more battles and angst scenes. What got me about Susan is not her willingness to fight but the little romance they put her in. Plus Peter was a real jerk. They just wasted time with all these smaller, lesser plot lines and ignored the really wonderful life-affirming ideas.
The movie was entertaining though, and I do recommend seeing it. I also feel like they did a better job with Aslan in this one–I remember being really disappointed with him in the last movie, but in Caspian he had real power. There were some really great touching moments, but it’s definitly not the ‘real’ story. As someone else in this conversation has said, it’s more like Lord of the Rings Lite, than anything else.