Product: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Two Disc Edition + BD-Live) [Blu-ray] (2008)
Rating: 2.0
marketing appeal vs. substance
It had been awhile since I'd read the books, and having enjoyed the first Narnia film I was looking forward to seeing this. Yet, I was left with an empty feeling upon watching it. I was unable to put my finger on the reason for this, so I went back and re-read the book.A-ha! The film diverges so vastly from the book that what we are left with is yet another example of why Hollywood has struggled so much in recent years to make big budget, quality, substantial movies. They have a tendency to sacrifice heart and substance for flash and marketing appeal.Now I know film versions of books have to take some liberties, even with relatively short books like Prince Caspian, in order to try and come in around two- to two-and-a-half hours in length. That usually means sacrificing some character development.But what we have here is character RE-development. They changed the characters of almost all the main players, one suspects, because some executives focus-grouped it and decided to make it more appealing to the teen market. (The irony of 40-50 year old executives sitting around deciding what teens want or don't want is amusing.)I won't list out all the vast changes this film made with the book; other reviewers here have done an admirable job with that already. But I will say that in just about every serious deviation the filmmakers took away from the book, it was a step in the wrong direction. What we are left with is a rather hollow stringing together of fantasy/action/romance elements, many of which were simply the invention of the filmmakers and had nothing to do with Lewis' book. Let's hope they do better with the next Narnia film.