"Gorgeous and entertaining fantasy movie, that misses the chance to show a darker side of Narnia in a more mature way."
I grew up reading Narnia books until I knew them by heart and now, despite all the sweet naivity in them, I still hold the series very close to my heart, so I was really excited when The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe came out. And, in every possible way, I absolutely loved it because it seemed to fit the spirit of the book so well, while compensating for some blanks left in CS Lewis' minimalistic way of telling his tales.
Prince Caspian is kind of a "loss of innocence" for the Narnia universe. It tells the story of how the magic and beauty of Narnia could be opressed for hundreds of years - and not through sorcery of a powerful, beautiful White Witch, but through plain old military strength and politics.
Because I always assumed this cinematic Narnia saga was here to follow the footsteps of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, targeting more or less the same type of audience, I was very much expecting this second installment to take the opportunity of this storyline, and achieve a somewhat darker, more mature approach.
I was wrong though!
On the one hand, the movie is everything the first movie was in technical terms; it's beautifully shot, has some truly astonishing special effects, amazing wardrobe and makeup effects, and yet another superb musical score by Harry Gregson-Williams.
The acting, which was never the biggest strength here, looses a lot with Tilda Swinton leaving and Ben Barnes entering, but the younger Pevensies (played by Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley) are once again delightful in their respective roles and Sergio Castellito has a solid performance as the cold and ruthless Miraz.
Speaking of Ben Barnes, he was indeed extremely weak for a movie that features his character's name on the very title. You constantly felt like Prince Caspian was not really up to the ideal of the Narnian king as Peter was (unlike in the book, of course). And for someone who went through the things he did, he seemed rather unexpressive most of the time.
To some extent, Caspian wasn't as developed as in the book - because they decided to cut down all of his childhood and didn't really build much on his relationship with Cornelius, his tutor, probably to reduce the "boring" sequences of the movie. Hence, for example, you never really understand just how amazed he would be to meet real talking animals.
But the main fault on this Prince Caspian's flaws is really Ben Barnes' poor acting. While it's true that William Moseley is not exactly the most talented kid around either, I constantly felt he was the perfect Peter Pevensie, as I always imagined him; I didn't get this same impression with Barnes.
I was under the strong impression Barnes was casted on account of his looks, which leads me to my main point: throughout watching this movie, I constantly felt it wasn't really being aimed towards me, the nerdy fantasy fan who grew up reading the books, but towards a major audience of kids and young pre-teen (girls mostly).
The movie constantly "represses" the impressions of violence and truly dark times that one gets when reading the book. There isn't the slightest hint of blood even during the most hardened battles and even during what could be an extremely shocking massacre scene.
I thought a cinematic version of Prince Caspian could show some sort of flashback or other method to depict how Narnia was defeated and opressed but they really don't dig much into this. And one of the most shocking things of the book - the once rational animals being returned to their wild state - is obscenely under-developed. I felt like they wanted to skip immediately to "hope", without showing us a glimpse of Narnia's suffering.
Overall,this is a good fantasy movie for all the family, but in my opinion it has Disney written all over it, and doesn't really succeed in appealing to more grown up audiences.
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