I saw Prince Caspian last night. And I enjoyed it. But as my roommate put it, I enjoyed it as a stand-alone movie. When compared with the book, it fell short. Extremely short. But as I said, it's excellent as a stand-alone movie. I could even, after a little while, forgive the fact that Prince Caspian's accent put me so in mind of Inigo Montoya that I half-expected him to approach his uncle at any given point and say, "Hello, my name is Prince Caspian. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
In addition, there was a highly unnecessary friction between Caspian and Peter. One that is most definitely not palpable in the book. My roommate, thinking aloud, said, "Well, perhaps they thought they needed conflict." And then we laughed. The whole movie is one big fat conflict between two races of people.
But I could forgive its shortcomings in relation to the book, because it still served the ultimate purpose of all of the Narnia books. It did a good job of showing me the parallels between us and our relationship to God, Lucy and her relationship to Aslan. The filmmaker did an excellent job of allowing the teaching nature of the books to come out natural.
In fact, the English-major and gospel-analyzer in me was bouncing up and down (metaphorically) in my seat at everything I was seeing. And since the whole spirit of Narnia is, well, spiritual . . . the movie succeeded. I walked out feeling replenished, which isn't a norm for me after seeing a movie.
P.S. We also executively decided the coolest Institute class ever would be called "The Gospel and Narnia" . . .
2 comments:
Oooh, I want to take that class!
"Hello, my name is Caspian... Prepare to die." >.< LOL! Oh I didn't even think of that, but you're right!
Yeay! I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed over the Peter/Caspian friction. >.O That bugged me... And they didn't even really resolve it! *grumble*
And yeah, no movie ever comes close to the book... Well, except maybe LOTR... but that's a rare exception.
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