Product: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Two Disc Edition + BD-Live) [Blu-ray] (2008)
Rating: 2.0
C.S. Lewis did NOT write romance and barely wrote humour
Having disliked the first movie (until pretty much the finale), and own but have never watched the BBC versions, I was kidding myself that I actually wanted to go and see them. But after getting my big book of all seven books in one back after two years (TWO YEARS) I started reading Prince Caspian again - and I read it overnight. I finished it at 9am, I saw the film at 7:30pm. (I've now started reading all the books from the beginning again, although skipping The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe/The Horse and His Boy as read the first one too many times, and the latter is the worst.)With the book fresh in my mind, it probably wasn't the greatest idea to go right into seeing the movie. My other big mistake was thinking that Andrew Adamson would actually stay faithful to the book. I learnt to read through these books (my dad could NOT do the voices), and have had a love of reading ever since. Quite an accomplishment in this day and age when kids are more interested in hanging about street corners than sitting quietly reading.The books aren't being filmed in chronological order, which I'm not too sad about, considering what comes between TLTWATW and Prince Caspian, The Horse And His Boy. In my opinion, THAHB was the worst book. As long as they film The Silver Chair, The Last Battle - OK, I like the rest of the books. As long as they film all of them, I won't complain. There's really not much need to have The Horse & His Boy inbetween, since all it really does is introduce the Telmarines.The film starts with introducing Caspian, but cutting out most of his back story and only giving us a hint of what is really going on. I instantly realised this film wasn't going to be the film of my childhood imagination, when they did a major bit wrong - Caspian is unconscious when he's rescued by the dwarves, not awake. Then a couple of scenes later, Caspian blows the 'magic' horn. This wasn't even 'seen' in the book, it was only mentioned afterwards.Then we're shot straight back to war torn London, where Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are all waiting to go back to school. Susan gets chatted up - another silly point in the movie.You know what happens after this - if you've actually read the book. I don't mind people who haven't actually read the books, I will quite happily lend it to them - but not if they keep it for two years. But people who talk about the Narnia books, but seem to only talk about TLTWATW - hello there's another six books!!! Grrr.The actors are getting slightly better now into the second movie. They're like the Harry Potter actors - they always suck in the first movie. I still don't like Anna Popplewell as Susan, and she seems to 'blossom' in this movie. From the outrageous flirting with Caspian (they don't even share a scene together in the book until chapter 15) to her figure in the outfit when they're trying to get to Aslan's How - it's rated a PG for a reason love, put them away. That's what I would call a 'wench' in that outfit. The romantic subplot between her and Caspian was really irrelevant- it did not move the storyline forward in the slightest (except to make me cringe) and the heart wrenching scene at the end??? She doesn't even appear again in any more of the books, except albeit briefly. So heart wrenching. She hasn't even had any scenes in the next book yet.Ben Barnes as Caspian was absolutely atrocious. He based his accent on Antonio Banderas, and it was truly awful at points. He was never my favourite character in the books, so thankfully he's only in for two books approximately.Andrew Adamson previously did the Shrek movies, and no doubt there was some influences - if you look at Puss In Boots, and Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard, which I didn't think would work) they're almost the same character. And funnily enough, one's a cat and one's a mouse.There's one big battle in the book. The director obviously thought it would be 'fun' to add in another battle scene, the night raid on the castle, which was unnecessary and to extend the other battle scenes so they not only became tiresome and bored me. Not necessary. Also, the reappearance of the White Witch was merely suggested in the book, and never actually appeared, but she's appears in this for a few minutes.One can only hope that they stick more closely to the books in future films. Or get shot of Andrew Adamson. Maybe I'll have forgotten my anger by the time Voyage Of The Dawn Treader comes out in 2010. Read the books in the chronological order as CS Lewis wanted them to be read.