The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader entered theaters in America on Friday. Here is my unwatered down, uncensered, completly baised evaluation of the movie.
Please turn of all cell phones and pagers and avoid talking during this analysis. Thank You.
caution. spoiler alert.
1) overall thoughts.
Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. It definitely met my expectations and might of even exceeded them. Since I have read spoilers about the movie since the film was green lighted (or green lit) I was well aware of the plot changes made to the movie. I felt that this movie was more an adaption of the book, rather than the book made into a movie. That being said it was a very good adaption. I thought the acting was very good, although I thought the character of Drinian (the old bald dude) was rather flat. Will Poulter was fantastic as Eustace. Everyone else had very solid performances. The digital effects were quite good and I can't wait to see the movie in 3D.
now for the specifics.
2)The Plot.
I thought that Michael Apted did a decent job with the plot. Personally, I would have spent more time exploring the interactions between the characters on the ship and on the islands. I didn't really care for the green mist, I felt that it made it a little to obvious when the characters were and were not being tempted. I thought that Apted did a good job of retaining the themes and character dynamics from the books. While I have heard that the glowing swords reminded some people of Sting, during the movie I never thought about LOTR.(Lord of The Rings). Overall I thought the new plot was good, however it would have been better if the movie was 15-20 minutes longer. I thought the movie moved a bit to fast and took away from the dynamic between the characters.
3)Acting
This is the part of the show where I admit I was wrong. Before I saw the movie I had reservations about the casting of Will Poulter as Eustace. I shouldn't have, because Eustace was exactly like I envisioned him from the book. Eustace provide some much needed comic relief that temporarily hid the fact that the story was speeding by. Georgie, Ben, and Skander were very good as Lucy, Caspian, and Edmund. Caspian was a much better character in this movie than in Prince Caspian. I was pleasantly surprised that they makers of the movie gave Edmund such a large role in this movie. In Prince Caspian he was more of a background character like in the book. I also thought Reepicheep and Aslan were very good although I would have preferred a stronger presence from Aslan in the movie.
Therefore, even though there where quite a few changes that I thought were unnecessary or could have been handled differently, none of the changes significantly impacted my enjoyment of the movie. The main core of the book remains intact, include some scenes which took lines directly from the book. All in all I encourage everyone, book fan and non book fan, to go see the movie. It has a very good story and remains true to the book in the most important places. Along with some additional action scenes :) the story has something for everyone. Now I look forward to the Silver Chair.
