I have just returned from Prince Caspian and need to vent. Not that I haven't already had ample opportunity with Katrina, Sam, and Amy, but I'm hoping that laying it all out in an organized blog rant will purge me of my feelings of violation. Beware, I will not be kind.
I always have conflicting feelings when I prepare to watch an adaptation of a beloved book. On the one hand there's the excitement of seeing the thing realized on screen. On the other hand, there's the fear that they won't get it right. Ever since LOTR we've been inundated with Hollywood adaptation of fantasy classics, or fantasy anything. Let me just say that I was and am a total fantasy dork. I grew up with my dad reading me the Hobbit, cut my teeth on Narnia and Redwall, and tackled the Lord of the Rings in 5th grade. Something I was immensely proud of at the time and am immensely embarrassed of now.
When the Lord of the Rings movies started coming out, I was 14, at the peak of my geeky awkwardness and unbelievably excited. Because part of the thrill of fantasy is the desire for it to be real. It's all so much more interesting than the hum-drum real world. Finally I would be able to see elves and hobbits and all the things I'd only been able to read off the page before and it would almost be like Middle Earth was real. And yet the older I get the less appeal these adaptations have for me because they invariably come up short. Narnia is making me realize how very good the LOTR movies were, but even then I was disenchanted by their shortcomings.
I enjoy movies a lot. I've taken three film classes so far and am always on the prowl for classic films. But I'm a purist when it comes to books. The book is (almost?) always better. Take out the almost. There's just more time for development, for the presentation of ideas, and there's more freedom for the reader to interpret and to imagine how things look. The Narnia series is one of those pieces of children's literature that will always be sacred to me, so it's especially hard to see somebody else change it. I actually enjoyed the first movie to an extent. There was a little too much action, some of the dialog was awkward, and it was kind of an airbrushed Hollywood version of the book. But the book was still there underneath it all. That's more than I can say for Caspian. It felt like the scriptwriters just looked at the cover and went from there.
Oh where to start? I think one of the best things about C.S. Lewis is he creates such delightful characters. Think of the beavers in LWW, or Puddleglum in the Silver Chair, or even Eustace, or Bree the neurotic war horse. They're all delightfully quirky. My opinion is that Trumpkin and Reepicheep (especially Trumpkin) make Prince Caspian, but the movie doesn't showcase or develop these or any characters at all. And one of the things that irritates me to no end is the script-writers insistence on rewriting all of the dialog. When it comes to writing, Andrew Adamson and friends vs. C.S. Lewis? Who do you think is going to win? My advice is that if you're adapting a classic work of literature, maybe include some of the, er, literature. Lewis was intelligent and his children's books are intelligent, certainly far more intelligent than something like "Whether this horn is magic or not, it brought us together... and together, we have a chance to take back what is ours!" And then we all sing kumbaya. I'm sorry, but Hollywood one-liners, while cute in some cases, should not make up the entirety of a movie.
I was so confused by what they were trying to accomplish. I don't mind a few changes to make it more interesting, but it was like a string of battle sequences with a few references to something that happened in the book in between. I found myself gazing into the distance reminiscing about how the short scene preceding Battle No. 212 was such a good part of the book while I watched the thousandth Telmarine get sliced open by Peter and Co. I've decided that their goal was to make it the perfect movie for 8-year-old boys. Give some guys swords, string together some action sequences and voila! Who cares about the story? And really there was so much violence. I think Lewis would have been appalled. This is the man who worried that the nightmare sequence in Voyage of the Dawn Treader might be frightening for small children. These books were for children! This movie is not for small children! I feel like we're so tolerant of violence in our entertainment, it's almost a double standard. We'll allow gratuitous depictions of death in our children's entertainment, but we won't allow sex. Does this really make logical sense? I'm not trying to be prude, it's just something I've had pointed out to me about American culture. I think it's true the the movie theater has become our virtual version of the Roman Colosseum.
Gosh, there was just so much that bothered me it's difficult to stop. Angst! There was so much angst! It was like the fanfiction version of Prince Caspian. What was the deal with Peter and Caspian? When they weren't slicing people open on the battlefield in needless battle sequence No. 32, they were screaming at each other. I mean, conflict is the essence of story-telling, but most of the time it didn't seem like anyone got beyond their own selfish interests. The Narnians want Narnia back, Caspian wants to be king and this just so happens to put him in league with the Narnians, Peter wants to have power, Susan apparently wants Caspian and who knows where the heck that came from, and at the end I was wondering how different are our heroes from Miraz? What exactly are they fighting for? Themselves?
I thought perhaps that I might be able to take the movie on its own terms, without judging it as an adaptation, but really I don't even think it was that good of a movie. The dialog was cliched, we're supposed to like the main characters for some reason, although they hardly stop screaming at each other long enough to become likeable. We're supposed to believe that they've formed strong bonds of friendship but we haven't really seen them interact enough to feel any sort of connection between anyone at all. And so much seemed to be stolen from other films. There was at least one scene practically airlifted from each of the LOTR movies. Frodo, er, Caspian escaping across the river and the later scene where Gandalf/Aslan calls for the river god. The ents, er, trees marching on the Telmarine army. The entire final battle sequence with the catapults was so reminiscent of Return of the King. The entire secret agent attack on the castle was just absurd. My favorite is one reviewer's reference to Princess Bride, saying he expected Caspian to step forward and say "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." It all seemed so contrived and shallow I really couldn't stomach it.
I could go on. And on and on and on and on and on. But maybe I should stop. I think I've complained enough. I just, gosh, there are such wonderful moments and characters that could have been portrayed well and weren't. Would it kill just to slow the pace down a little bit and let us get attached to the DLF and Professor Cornelius and Aslan who the filmmakers tiptoe around like dynamite in fear of offending someone. Would it kill to keep some of the integrity of the work intact? To have some demonstration of selflessness, or true friendship, or sacrifice, things that kids can look up to and that Lewis held so immeasurably dear. Would it kill to maybe explain the plot in a straightforward manner instead of using gimmicky storytelling because apparently the audience can't stay interested in a straightforward narrative. I personally was bored out of my mind. Some of these actors obviously have some charisma and ability, but there's no way for that to shine through in a performance of a story and characters that we love, not with this treatment.
So, it is with this regretful desecration behind me that I have hopes for the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I am also very anxious about as it's my favorite of the series. There will be a new director at the helm (Michael Apted of Amazing Grace fame) and hopefully that will make all the difference. In the meantime, I think I will have to reread the book to remind myself of how good it is and why I love Narnia so much. Ah yes the books, with all their delightful quirks and nuances. I still learn a lot from them. Aslan's statement that every year Lucy grows older he will also be bigger is one that I find to be more true every day. His admonition that even though you may be the only one that is no excuse for not coming to him strikes closer to home than I'd like to admit. Even if you're not a Christian, you can appreciate Lewis' encouragement to make us bigger than we are. Lewis calls us to be the kind of people that we should be, to improve upon ourselves and to help others through our own example and encouragement. It's a high calling and it's one that I think even non-Christians can appreciate. Lewis rebukes our sinful behaviors and calls us to be people of integrity. I think that's part of why these books are more than just silly children's stories, or Jesus stories, or whatever. They've endured for a reason. I think they do have literary merit. I just wish more people understood that.
Beautiful illustration of Caspian I found on deviantart by an artist called kaytii.
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