prince caspian: a review

I am prefacing this post with a confession. I am come from a family of Narnia purists. I think my father latched on to these stories in college because imagination and wonder turned out to be the perfect antidote to his fundamentalist upbringing. Fundamentalism and its sister Piety tend to strip the imagination, forcing you into line view rules and statutes. Narnia taught us that there are rules and statutes but that these honor the King and the King is a Lion who roars over the whole creation that is His.

I knew the Disney version of Narnia would be disappointing. This isn’t because I think most books shouldn’t be made into films. It certainly has proved entertaining and I have no qualms getting into other people’s imagination of Narnia. My own imagined world is so deeply fixed after 28 years that even the flash and dance of Disney isn’t enough to uproot it (note: my children will never see these movies for this very reason).

What I found disappointing in the first movie was the Candyland sweetness of Narnia. It was a little too surupy for me. Caspian does a lot to bring back the darkness of Lewis’ medieval story-shaped fantasy but that’s about where my praise ends.

One of the enduring themes of the Christian life and of the Chronicles is our inability to see God yet we are asked to trust and follow, against logic, against reason. In Caspian it seemed like the person who wasn’t trusted was faithful Lucy. It felt a bit like the lesson was “believe your little sister” and less “believe in Aslan.”

Also, there were so many Hollywood additions and it felt like too much liberty was taken with the story. For instance, the entire “storming the castle” scene – not in the book. And don’t get me started on Susan the Smoocher. Ay yi yi.

The problem for Americans and their lapdog movie creators is that Narnia is not Hogwarts. The Chronicles don’t jump from battle to battle, from mischief to mischief. There’s no snogging Cho at the dance because it plays into our romantic instincts. Lewis spends pages and pages of the relatively short Caspian giving you descriptions of ruins, islands, centaurs and castles. There is one battle scene lasting one chapter which is punctuated by Lucy’s meeting with the Great Lion in a quiet glade. And good English girls would never ever act like Susan did. Lewis was a gentleman’s gentleman (for better or worse). The irony is that Prince Caspian is short enough that every detail of Lewis’ story could have been preserved.

The problem for Hollywood is that the purpose of the Chronicles is simply that we would love Aslan better by the end of the story. The plot of the books is to tell that story well. We are being formed to fear the treason of the dwarves, to long for the virtue of Reepicheep, to yearn for the faith of Lucy, to denounce the pride of Miraz. The problem for us is that Disney finds all of this utterly boring. It’s not something you can make a ride out of for your amusement parks, sell on T-shirts or put on a lunchbox.

But this also means that the real Narnia remains untouched for you (and is available in just over 500 pages).