A day after seeing Voyage of the Dawn Treader, with ten years separating it from my last reading of the book, I wrote this about it:
This third episode in the Narnia series is obviously striving to avoid the mistakes (both artistic and commercial) of the second: it keeps things moving briskly, makes its dramatic points clearly, and remembers that it was intended for a child audience. It will probably entertain those of that audience who are not readers of C. S. Lewis, but those who are--although they may enjoy it to a degree, as I did--I believe will agree, regretfully, that it still misses the mark.
First of all and most of all, it fails to take us back to the world of the first movie, or even of the second: Narnia is a completely different country in each. This robs us of the most fundamental pleasure of a series, that of revisiting a beloved place--and a magical one, which the Narnia of this movie is not, in spite of the appearance of a magician's spell book and a few mythical beasts. Lucy and Edmund, the two returning children, say they love it, but we don't see any evidence they do or any particular reason why they should: it isn't so very wonderful.
In spite of smiles and hearty cheers all around, this movie lacks any real joy or lightness of spirit. Even the first movie was heavier than it needed to be, and this one is more so (though less dour than its immediate predecessor). It concentrates on action and peril or the threat of peril, on keeping us anxious most of the time: too anxious, I think, for a children's movie. It has too much of alarm and too little of relief.
More important, the stress on the physical slights the moment-to-moment narrative and drama. The movie's script leaves out any number of little moments from the book (as well as whole sections of the plot) and substitutes big ones of its own, which are not out of keeping with the whole but are simply distractions from what we really need to see. For example, we didn't need a little girl to be stowing away on the ship just so we could later witness a teary reunion with her missing mother. But we did need and don't see the moral error and reformation of the one new child protagonist, Eustace. At the beginning he is certainly an odious nuisance, but that's all he is, and his repentance is not shown. Of course at that point he's a dragon, but one with an inexpressive face and without the power of speech (or even the interior monologues he is given at other points in the movie). His redemption by Aslan, we hear him tell about in a brief long shot, a throwaway.
The other two protagonists, Lucy and Edmund, hardly communicate with each other, or with their buddy Caspian. The Dawn Treader itself is a gorgeous creation, imaginatively photographed, but we don't get to see how they feel (and therefore we don't feel) what it's like to be in it or to be at sea, and on a Narnian sea. Their adventures at their various ports of call are rushed, not given their full due, so that the myth-like elements--the invisible attackers, the golden pool, the enchanted sleepers--carry little resonance (in contrast to, say, the lamppost or the courtyard of stone figures in the original movie). I'm sorry to say that halfway through the movie my heart sank a little on realizing that the characters still had five of the seven objects of their quest left to work through.
According to report, the scheduling of each next Narnian movie will depend on the success of the last Narnian movie. I should judge that the prognosis for The Silver Chair is doubtful. It would carry over none of the original protagonists, only Eustace, and the actor playing that part unfortunately is not very appealing, even reformed (or, if he can be, did not have a chance to show it in this movie). The series has accumulated no momentum because of its intermittency; its failure to carry through the best elements from the first installment; the unavoidable over-aging of its actors; and the separateness of the stories (since unlike Harry Potter and LOTR it is not a continuing serial). It has not even an audience to count on: a child who was 8 when it began will probably have attained to his or her majority before the end, if the producers manage to get through all seven of the books. The unlikeliness of this prospect seems a pity, since the last two have the most movie-suitable stories of all (the Creation and the Revelation, in Narnian terms).
And here is my addendum after re-reading the original:
I don't know how they did it, but the movie makers managed to mess up all the episodes in the book: every one: changed them, chopped them up, left out the best lines and scenes, sailed right by most of the feelings evoked and most of the messages conveyed. Lewis deserved more appreciative translators.
This third episode in the Narnia series is obviously striving to avoid the mistakes (both artistic and commercial) of the second: it keeps things moving briskly, makes its dramatic points clearly, and remembers that it was intended for a child audience. It will probably entertain those of that audience who are not readers of C. S. Lewis, but those who are--although they may enjoy it to a degree, as I did--I believe will agree, regretfully, that it still misses the mark.
First of all and most of all, it fails to take us back to the world of the first movie, or even of the second: Narnia is a completely different country in each. This robs us of the most fundamental pleasure of a series, that of revisiting a beloved place--and a magical one, which the Narnia of this movie is not, in spite of the appearance of a magician's spell book and a few mythical beasts. Lucy and Edmund, the two returning children, say they love it, but we don't see any evidence they do or any particular reason why they should: it isn't so very wonderful.
In spite of smiles and hearty cheers all around, this movie lacks any real joy or lightness of spirit. Even the first movie was heavier than it needed to be, and this one is more so (though less dour than its immediate predecessor). It concentrates on action and peril or the threat of peril, on keeping us anxious most of the time: too anxious, I think, for a children's movie. It has too much of alarm and too little of relief.
More important, the stress on the physical slights the moment-to-moment narrative and drama. The movie's script leaves out any number of little moments from the book (as well as whole sections of the plot) and substitutes big ones of its own, which are not out of keeping with the whole but are simply distractions from what we really need to see. For example, we didn't need a little girl to be stowing away on the ship just so we could later witness a teary reunion with her missing mother. But we did need and don't see the moral error and reformation of the one new child protagonist, Eustace. At the beginning he is certainly an odious nuisance, but that's all he is, and his repentance is not shown. Of course at that point he's a dragon, but one with an inexpressive face and without the power of speech (or even the interior monologues he is given at other points in the movie). His redemption by Aslan, we hear him tell about in a brief long shot, a throwaway.
The other two protagonists, Lucy and Edmund, hardly communicate with each other, or with their buddy Caspian. The Dawn Treader itself is a gorgeous creation, imaginatively photographed, but we don't get to see how they feel (and therefore we don't feel) what it's like to be in it or to be at sea, and on a Narnian sea. Their adventures at their various ports of call are rushed, not given their full due, so that the myth-like elements--the invisible attackers, the golden pool, the enchanted sleepers--carry little resonance (in contrast to, say, the lamppost or the courtyard of stone figures in the original movie). I'm sorry to say that halfway through the movie my heart sank a little on realizing that the characters still had five of the seven objects of their quest left to work through.
According to report, the scheduling of each next Narnian movie will depend on the success of the last Narnian movie. I should judge that the prognosis for The Silver Chair is doubtful. It would carry over none of the original protagonists, only Eustace, and the actor playing that part unfortunately is not very appealing, even reformed (or, if he can be, did not have a chance to show it in this movie). The series has accumulated no momentum because of its intermittency; its failure to carry through the best elements from the first installment; the unavoidable over-aging of its actors; and the separateness of the stories (since unlike Harry Potter and LOTR it is not a continuing serial). It has not even an audience to count on: a child who was 8 when it began will probably have attained to his or her majority before the end, if the producers manage to get through all seven of the books. The unlikeliness of this prospect seems a pity, since the last two have the most movie-suitable stories of all (the Creation and the Revelation, in Narnian terms).
And here is my addendum after re-reading the original:
I don't know how they did it, but the movie makers managed to mess up all the episodes in the book: every one: changed them, chopped them up, left out the best lines and scenes, sailed right by most of the feelings evoked and most of the messages conveyed. Lewis deserved more appreciative translators.