Rama’s SCREEN

The sequel to one of the most beloved stories of all time has arrived stronger than the first movie. That said, it also has a fair amount of weaknesses. PRINCE CASPIAN is a great family fantasy/adventure film with moral lesson and values that would be priceless to young audiences. Those who’ve read the book series would find this unsatisfying. I as a … movie buff, who never read Narnia books find this installment entertaining, inspiring but at the same time I think director Andrew Adamson and his crew have tried so hard to make everything bigger and better for this one, but some things just appear.. comical. Maybe that was their intention, who knows..

Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are summoned by Prince Caspian who’s blown Queen Susan’s magic horn. Narnia is not the place they used to remember. The Telmarine has claimed the land and Narnia creatures gone into hiding.
Prince Caspian is the only rightful heir to the throne, but to defeat the evil king Miraz means to work together with a society he thought had been extinct for hundreds of years.

I watched it at a midnight showing with a bunch of La Sierra University students who were mostly English and Religion Departments who’ve actually read the books.
My roommate said that book is better, well.. that’s usually the case with all movies that are based on books.
The question now is the quality of the movie.

I think the visual effects are great in a sense that it redefines what the first movie did and put more effort into details.
However, you can only go so far with CGI, because then the movie’s so focused on wowing and overwhelming us with amazing creatures, dancing trees and griffins flying in the night, that it forgets to deliver the sequences in an artful manner.. with taste.

I do however respect the way the filmmaker decides to emphasize the intensity of the violence caused by the heated battle, people killing people, without showing blood and gore. What I’m trying to say is the movie manages to not hide the ugliness of evil and what it can do and at the same time, it remains PG-13 and family friendly.
You’d see a soldier slashing somebody’s throat with his sword but it’s all…rather implied, meaning you rarely see it happen, …when it’s being done, usually the camera would focus in on the face of either the conqueror or the victim.

The cast is perfect for their parts. The actors who play the kings and queens of Narnia and Ben Barnes who play Prince Caspian, all of them give excellent performances. They’re gonna go far in life, you can bet on that.

When I mentioned comical earlier… it’s like this, some scenes would be so serious, you can’t help but to respond in chuckles or laughter. The talking Grizzly Bear cracks me up and… when all the Narnians gather to discuss something.. it looks like a group photo of all the animals in San Diego Zoo.
The bad guys are a bunch of Spaniards.

Bravo to the very heartfelt original score by composer Harry Gregson-Williams. That reoccurring theme in the song would get stuck in my head for the longest time and I won’t mind.
I think the running time which is 147 minutes is way too long. It’s understandable though..they want to include the most they can get from the book and onto the big screen

The fight scene between Peter and King Miraz is very well-choreographed. Last time I scene a fight duel so awesome was when Brad Pitt went head to head against Eric Bana in the movie Troy

Storywise, it has Christian theme. It’s about how young man is taken over by his pride. Peter doesn’t wanna be played like a child again, he wants to prove that he’s the man even though he knows he’s not ready. His pride compels him to take matters into his own hand and the result is chaos and destruction, not to mentioned the hundreds of Narnia Creatures who die in the process.
It’s about not doing things on your own, not feeling pressured to handle everything. Aslan wants the kids to keep looking for him, to eventually find him and to let him fight the battles for them.

* Place the cursor on the image below to check my grade for this film