Haven’t seen it yet, but I will on Saturday.
I’m going to be optimistic about this movie as well. The first one was well done. The trailers look decent. Yes, Prince Caspian is too old. But, if that is the only major change, then I’m fine with it.
One thing I wonder about is the end. Will they really tell Peter and Susan they’re too old for Narnia?
I would think so. I still remember reading PC as a kid. I was crushed when they realized where and when they were at the beginning in the ruins of Cair Paravel, then damn near cried when Susan and Peter couldn’t come back.
I’ll be travelling this weekend, but I’ll surely see it sometime next week.
I’m looking forward to the exchange that Lucy has with Aslan when she sees him again the first time. She remarks that he’s grown bigger; he says no, she’s the one who has grown, and the older she gets, the bigger he will seem. They’d better not cut that!
The battles should be very cool also.
Then I’m sad to report, you won’t be fine with it.
I actually went to the midnight showing on a weeknight, I was so excited to see this. When we left, I told my wife that I now know what hardcore LOTR and comic book fans felt like when their movies weren’t up to their standards. I was utterly disappointed.
Major changes:
[spoiler]A James Bond/Mission Impossible sneak into Miraz’s castle, to take the fight to him. This ends with a battle in the castle itself, completely made out of whole cloth.
There’s no town by Beruna Bridge, it’s actually built by Miraz to walk his army over to Aslan’s How. No celebration by Bacchus w/ Susan, Lucy, and Aslan, no changing of schoolchildren to pigs and the liberation of the innocent teacher.
A love interest between Susan and Caspian…! Not serious, mind, but still. WTF?
Caspian blows Susan’s Horn (heh) right when he falls off Destrier escaping from Miraz. He’s not knocked out, but is scared shitless by the appearance of Trumpkin, Nikabrik, and Trufflehunter.
The witch/werewolf scene takes place much later on. Cornelius and Trufflehunter are not present. They actually start the spell to bring in the White Witch, and Caspian is -><- this close to going ahead with it. Interrupted by Peter et al, who do their thing. Peter is then severely tempted. Repeat scene just played with Caspian, saved by Edmund.[/spoiler]
There’s more, but I just woke up and am very tired. And mad.
Oh damn it. I hope this isn’t the beginning of a trend. Grrrrr…
Since the title says open spoilers, I am not going to use a spoiler box.
I hated the scene where the Narnians went after Miraz in his castle, it made them the aggressors. We all know Miraz was the bad guy but the rest of the Telamarines did not, so that made the Narnian’s look like the bad guys. It also made them look pretty stupid.
There were a lot of changes some bothered me, some didn’t, but the afore-mentioned one was the worst. I probably shouldn’t have re-read the book recently, it just made the changes more obvious.
IMO, Peter Dinklage stole the movie.
I was so confused by the changes, my face was like this the entire movie: :eek:
That said, I don’t think all the changes were necessarily bad. They seemed to have set up Susan for her bannishment from Narnia much more strongly than Lewis ever did, which was fine by me since I still hate Lewis for that. (The interest between her and Caspian was interesting. It tied into her skepticism about Narnia - how she resents being unable to control her existence there, and how she would almost rather have not come at all, since she knows they’ll have to leave eventually.) The invasion of the castle scene was the biggest change, I think, but I have to admit - it was one of the best scenes in the movie.
One thing that did surprise me was how the children took the passage of time in Narnia for granted. It’s never really explained in the movie and the kids don’t seem that surprised by it at all.
I was wondering how they were going to do the betrayal scene where Miraz gets stabbed in the back by his own men. I think they did it fairly neatly.
This movie is definitely not going to please the purists, that’s for certain. They altered it so much I could barely recognize the original plot. And the actor who played Caspian seemed to be little more than a pretty face most of the time. But I enjoyed it overall. It was fun, if you can get over the extreme discrepancies between the movie and the book.
I never read the book so I didn’t have anything to compare it to. I thought it was okay at best and not as good as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But to be fair, most of my gripes with the movie were from a technical standpoint. While I’m not too nitpicky about things usually I was with two of my friends who are notoriously anal about the movies they watch so it kind of rubbed off on me.
The two big things that I nitpicked about were:
-The fact that Miraz couldn’t get his army to Aslan’s How immediately because they had to build the bridge to cross the river…which in the midst of retreat you clearly see the army wade across quite easily.
-In the initial battle, they’re fighting on a huge plain surrounded by forest. When the betrayer dude (I don’t know his name) orders a retreat to the river, the film cuts to the river, which is in a huge valley. How did the army magically retreat through a mountain?
Also, I think the Aslan-as-Jesus stuff was a lot less subtle and a lot more heavy-handed than in the first one. That didn’t really bug me, but it sort of took me out of the world when I noticed it.
Well, they did have those giant catapults to transport, y’know.
I’m not surprised that they did, though. The original story was perhaps the least engaging of the Narnia novels, and it didn’t have as much action as the others.
BTW, I don’t normally appreciate shoehorning a romantic subplot into a classic story, but in this case, I didn’t mind. Susan was supposed to be the beauty of the Pevensie group, and so it made sense that they’d show a couple of guys responding to her in that manner.
I really disliked it. But then, I’m a purist. And this is my favorite of all the books.
It looked good, but that was all. Big disappointment.
I’m going to see it tonight, and was planning on rereading the book today in preparation, but I think, based on posts here, perhaps I’ll not. I don’t remember the book in all that great detail, so I may end up liking the movie if I’m not constantly pissed off at what they change. I’ll read the book again next week, instead. (And be pissed off retroactively, but at least I can enjoy the movie tonight.)
That’s my plan as well.
I agree, after re-reading it I was prepared for changes to be made because there wasn’t a lot of action and a lot of stuff didn’t seem like it would work in a movie, so the only change that really bugged me was the bit with the Narnians attacking the castle first.
I enjoyed it pretty well. One thing I’m not as happy about in the movies is how they don’t show the characters discussing things as much as in the books. Plus, all the conflict between the characters is punched up, but I guess that makes dramatic sense.
Having never read the books, we thought this film was pretty good - great visuals and the story kept us interested.
I do have to admit that I started to be fascinated with the lips of Susan (Anna Popplewell). Maybe it was the huge widescreen, but man - those lips started to take on a life of their own. I don’t even remember noticing them in the first film.
But back to the film - as much as the action seemed to move right along, there did seem to be quite a few lingering moments of pomp that seemed a bit over the top in places. But all in all, a nice summer film that had some good special effects and a story that was better than average in holding interest.
I hadn’t read the book in years and years, but I have a good memory.
I wasn’t going to see it, but a friend invited me and I hadn’t seen him in months so… sigh It pissed me off. A lot. My comments were along the lines of “Now you’re just making shit up!” “I will kill you with MY MIND!” “Why must you piss on my childhood?!” “He’s YOUNGER than her!” (about Caspian and Susan). I will not be seeing any more of them. No way.
I’ll admit I’m rather a book purist. I wouldn’t have minded the changes in dialogue (mostly for comedy) and even the appearance of the White Witch was ok in retrospect, but cutting scenes to add new stuff doesn’t fly with me. Also, there weren’t enough tigers. =^.^= (Actually we were complaining because there weren’t enough Talking Animals in general. And… but I’ll start ranting again)
I though that, if you were going to make this book into a movie, this is the movie it would have become. Sacrificing to make money and bring in more people is lamentable, but they did a good job of it. Fun fights, good performances, and now I’m much more interested in schoolgirl uniforms ;).
The big castle fight I took as a way to spell out the tension between Caspian and Peter and lead to the White Witch without a lot of talking. Admittedly, I am lsee of a purist than most.
Huh.
I just got back from seeing it, and since I’ve been such a fan of the books for such a long time, I ought to be annoyed. And yet, I’m not.
Sure, the plot doesn’t bear anything but the most superficial resemblance to the book, but I still found it to be extremely enjoyable.
Casting Peter Dinklage as Trumpkin was genius.
I hope this does well enough for them to film ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’.
I thought it was alright. Not great, but well enough. However, most of the “new” material dragged. I also felt they did not adequately bring in many of the characters. Reepicheep felt too CGI and too much silly.