Voyage of the Dawn Treader

[Mewtarthio]

Quick thoughts: It was a huge disappointment. Leagues below the first or even the second movies.

Longer version: Okay, I'll grant them a bit of leeway here: The source material does not lend itself well to a Hollywood adaptation. The plot's not much more than "A few important characters plus one weird new guy sail around the world looking for some old guys on a lark." It makes sense they'd want to create a somewhat more pressing main plot to keep the audience interested. That does not, however, excuse them from making the main plot a cliched piece of drivel.

The main threat here is the LOST Smoke Monster's numerous green cousins, which hail from what was The Place Where Dreams Come True in the novel but here is known only as "Dark Island." Yes, the source of all evil in this movie is called "Dark Island." No, that's not some appellation made up by terrified sailors; that's the actual name used by people who've studied it. Anyway, it turns out the only way to defeat Dark Island's evil powers is to collect the seven swords of the Great Lords and bring them to Ramandu's island. They are given this quest by a wise old wizard.

The villains themselves (such as they are) are lacking in any sort of menace. I joked earlier about how the special effects seem like a pallete-swap of the LOST creature, but don't let that fool you into thinking they're powerful or threatening. The movie tries to imply that Dark Island is responsible for a lot of the more dangerous locations in the Eastern Sea, but it only does so by inserting the green mist special effect every so often when bad things are happening.

Now, they've already handicapped themselves by making their villain completely inhuman (the mists occasionally take the shape of Jadis, but only to taunt Edmund; they never exhibit any actual motivation). Still, an inhuman threat can still be interesting, provided it's actually a threat. Dark Island is not a threat by any stretch of the imagination. Its one real power seems to be the ability to randomly create trite moral lessons everywhere. Subtlety may not have been Lewis's strong suit, but the writing team on this movie apparently thought he could have been a little more straightforward. Take, for example, the movie's interpretation of Deathwater Island:

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Just like in the book, the party stumbles across a pool that contains an oddly realistic gold statue of one of the Lords. Sure enough, they determine that the cursed pool can trasmute any object into gold. At this point, Edmund looks at the dead Lord and speculates, "Maybe he was on to something..." Then he dips a shell into the water, watches it turn to gold, and goes into outright cheesy supervillain mode as he declares that he will RULE THE WORLD with his newfound power!!! Caspian rather dryly reminds Edmund that he can't actually take anything out of Narnia, so the pool's useless to him, which causes Edmund to go into a somewhat non sequitur rant about how he should be the King and how all of you fools don't appreciate him, then Caspian attacks, the two have a brief fight scene, and Lucy stops them by telling them the place is "tempting" them. And so they recover the Plot Voucher sword from the pool (it's not gold, because magic), we see some green mist floating around down there, and no one speaks of it again.

Compare it to the exchange in the original book:

"The King who owned this island," said Caspian slowly, and his face flushed as he spoke, "would soon be the richest of all the Kings of the world. I claim this land for ever as a Narnian possession. It shall be called Goldwater Island. And I bind all of you to secrecy. No one must know of this. Not even Drinian - on pain of death, do you hear?"

"Who are you talking to?" said Edmund. "I'm no subject of yours. If anything it's the other way round. I am one of the four ancient sovereigns of Narnia and you are under allegiance to the High King my brother."

"So it has come to that, King Edmund, has it?" said Caspian, laying his hand on his sword-hilt.

"Oh, stop it, both of you," said Lucy. "That's the worst of doing anything with boys. You're all such swaggering, bullying idiots--"

Again, the original is hardly subtle, but the changes the movie makes are all outright ridiculous. They make Edmund the one who wants to exploit the island's powers instead of Caspian, even though Caspian's the one who could actually use the gold. They exchange the threats and intimidation for outright shouting and violence, perhaps in some misguided attempt to make the scene tenser. Perhaps most jarring of all, they take out the idea that wealth is just naturally appealing to people and instead blame the entire thing on Evil Mind Control.

Dark Island never actually threatens the heroes until the climax. It just arranges these contrived morality plays that do nothing more than teach the characters A Very Valuable Lesson. That is not how you make a villain look threatening. Compare this with how Jadis spends her movie executing all who oppose her with impunity, or how Miraz repels Peter's raid and slaughters most of the attacking soldiers.

And a few more nitpicks on more spoilery things:

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The mists repeatedly try to tempt Edmund by taking Jadis's form and offering to make him king. First of all, let's ignore the fact that Edmund's already a king (and a legendary super king who outranks all other kings, at that). Let's pretend she's offering him something he doesn't already have. Even then, he's already made that mistake once before. He knows he can't expect anything more than some dry bread and a messy execution. Heck, the second movie even expanded on a scene from the book to show that he's not going to fall for her tricks again. And yet, in the climax, when he's one shot away from defeating the Final Boss, he actually hesitates and thinks about it for a second. Even if we're supposed to assume that Dark Island is using Evil Mind Control to make him think about it, why wouldn't it try to tempt him with something that at least looks tempting?

Dark Island itself. In the novel, the Island where Dreams come true is a nightmare in the most literal sense. When you go there, all your nightmares are made manifest. In the movie, the mists taunt a few major characters (which is hardly any different from what they've been doing so far), then Lord Rhoop warns them that "They will find your greatest fear and take its form!" This obviously does not mean what it meant in the book, in which everyone experiences his own worst nightmare. It just means that somebody pictures a sea serpent, so the Final Boss takes the form of a sea serpent. That's right: It's the Traveler from Ghostbusters.

Aslan's Country. After the crew reaches the end of the world, Aslan makes it clear that his country lies just beyond, but no one can return once they go there. He also stops just short of explicitly stating that his country is heaven. Reepicheep, adventurous as always, boards a small coracle and sails off to Aslan's country. Here's the thing, though: In the real world, willingly taking a one-way trip to the afterlife goes by a much simpler term. At least in the book he was sacrificing himself to save the three remaining Lords; here, he's basically committing suicide because he wants to know what death feels like.

Okay, so those are my thoughts. I'm opening the floor to anyone else now.

[CorrTerek]

Haven't seen it yet, but that's...more or less what I was afraid of after reading the movie's description on IMDB.

[Hawkfrost000]

holy cow!

and people told me this was actually better than the other two movies

[Trazoi]

I remember the BBC TV miniseries being pretty good, but Voyage of the Dawn Treader is ideal for that sort of thing: a bunch of explorers hopping from one magical island to the next.

Ah well. I haven't seen Prince Caspian yet as I'm behind on so many movies. It would take a while before I got to watching this film anyway.

[Aidan305]

I was worried from the moment I saw the trailers for this that there would be untoward things occurring in it. It's a shame because Voyage of the Dawntreader is one of my favourite books in the series (After the Silver Chair and the Horse and His Boy). I had hoped, after the travesty that was Prince Caspian, that they wouldn't muck about with Dawntreader as much.

Evidently, I was wrong.

[pendell]

How was 'Prince Caspian' a travesty? Aside from

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the decapitation raid on the Castle, which Peter completely messed up,

it was reasonably true both to the events and spirit of the original work.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[druid91]

How was 'Prince Caspian' a travesty? Aside from

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the decapitation raid on the Castle, which Peter completely messed up,

it was reasonably true both to the events and spirit of the original work.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I agree with this. Even though I liked the spoilered part of the movie.

[Aidan305]

How was 'Prince Caspian' a travesty? Aside from

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the decapitation raid on the Castle, which Peter completely messed up,

it was reasonably true both to the events and spirit of the original work.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Certainly, but I felt that, overall, the film was lacking something. While I freely admit that Caspian is probably my least favourite book in the Narnia series, I was of the impression when watching it that the film could have been much better than it was.

[CorrTerek]

How was 'Prince Caspian' a travesty? Aside from

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the decapitation raid on the Castle, which Peter completely messed up,

it was reasonably true both to the events and spirit of the original work.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Well, for starters, apparently it's not realistic for two people to meet and hit it off, so we must needs have Caspian and Peter acting like a couple of idiots towards each other rather than the mutual respect (and, in Caspian's case, admiration) they almost immediately had for each other in the book.

And then there's the "romance". Don't think I really need to elaborate there.

And yes, that spoilery thing you mentioned was a complete wallbanger.

[TruorTupnm]

I haven't seen it. Probably won't. The Lion, The Witch, As Well As The Wardrobe was better than I thought it would be, but Prince Caspian making Peter into something that isn't just pure good (which I always hated about him, anyway, but then, I also hate change, apparently) is just plain crazy. Go watch the B. B. C. films. Much better.

[Shyftir]

Narnia doesn't make very good movies short of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. They are moral/Christian allegorical works and quite good as such. But they certainly aren't geared toward the modern Hollywood style/culture/whatever.

C.S. Lewis was a genius and one of Christianities most effective apologists but his childrens' novels aren't all that great. This coming from a guy who is specifically a evangelical Christian and generally a fantasy fan.

I could go into more detail about what is good and bad about The Chronicles of Narnia but a lot of that conversation would require speaking fairly in-depth-ly about religion which is not allowed on these here boards.

[AtopTheMountain]

...Huh. This comes as quite a large shock to me; I really liked the movie, more than Prince Caspian but probably not as well as the first one. This is probably because I never read the third book all the way through.

I agree about the anviliciousness of it, as well as the cliche plot, but I definitely found it enjoyable to watch.

[JadedDM]

Ah, too bad there most likely won't be any more movies. This one made less than half the money of the second one, which is particularly bad as the second one wasn't inflated with 3D prices. Ouch.

[Barbarian MD]

Very long article outlining why the first two movies went completely against the spirit of Lewis' work (warning: theological content).

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archive...id=23-06-030-f

A quick Excerpt:

This account of hatred and rivalry and mutual recrimination is about as far as it could be from Lewis’s own account of the relationship between these two noble kings. For Lewis, that relationship is overwhelmingly marked by support, trust, and generosity.

Consider just a few lines from the drastically different story that Lewis tells of the first meeting of the kings. In Lewis’s story, that meeting takes place just after Peter has leaped in to help Caspian in a fight with the deceitful Black Dwarf Nikabrik. As the heroes catch their breath after this deadly clash, the following remarkable exchange occurs:

“We don’t seem to have any enemies left,” said Peter. “There’s the Hag, dead. . . . And Nikabrik, dead too. . . . And you, I suppose, are King Caspian?”

“Yes,” said the other boy. “But I’ve no idea who you are.”

“It’s the High King, King Peter,” said Trumpkin.

“Your majesty is welcome,” said Caspian.

“And so is your majesty,” said Peter. “I haven’t come to take your place, you know, but to put you into it.”

We are clearly in a different world, with a conversation like this one. Caspian is not overbearing and self-important; he knows that his army is in trouble, and he is glad for assistance. And when he learns that the assistance comes from the High King, he is not put off or threatened: “Your majesty is welcome,” he easily declares. Peter’s reply is equally striking: “So is your majesty.” Each side happily welcomes and supports the other. There is no pompous ego or arrogant competition here. Instead, we find nobility, authority, courtesy, and humility all wrapped into one.

I saw Dawn Treader Tuesday night. They took my favorite book of the series and ruined it, in my opinion. I get why--they wanted a main plot, rather than independent chapters of story. But they took my favorite scenes and stole all of the meaning and emotion out of them. I ALWAYS cry when they meet Aslan upon the beach in the last chapter. Always. And yet I was angry watching the movie version.

I'm done with the movie series. Silver Chair might be alright, but I can also foresee a lot of mucking about with the plot of Horse and His Boy, Magician's Nephew won't have enough plot for them, and The Last Battle (with all of its theological implications) will never see the light of a movie screen on a national scale.

[Jerthanis]

I didn't care how different Caspian was from the book because it's been so long since I read them that all I remember from the series is someone falling asleep while flying somewhere in the Silver Chair I think, Susan (I think) crying on her bowstring in the Last Battle, something about scissors in Voyage and being unbelievably bored all the way through Magician's Nephew.

To me, Caspian was actually better than the first one because it made the characters deeper, in my opinion. I really liked how they were all mature souls in young bodies, I feel like this was pulled off very well with everyone except Lucy, whose actress was too young to really buy that sort of maturity. How easily they adopted their heroic mantles was cool.

In terms of the kings clashing with each other's personalities... I think it was a good choice because if everyone gets along and there's no clash of personalities it's easy to fall into the trap of not giving anyone a personality at all. Especially in a busy movie where you've got to run around to a bunch of places and do a bunch of things or the plot won't make sense, as is the case with most movie adaptations of books.

The fight scenes were all great, even amazing at times. Particularly the Armored Duel near the end of the movie. That was incredibly well choreographed. The only issue I have was that archery barrages were way too effective, where it seemed like every single arrow found a mark and obliterated entire charging legions in one volley.

There were things at stake and the ideas they had to overcome their obstacles told us something about their characters. The planned raid, the negotiation with the White Queen, the actual battle in the end and how it was fought... all these things were aspects of a story, involving characters so I actually liked it quite a bit.

I admit, I came out of the theatre thinking Caspian sucked, and my opinion has only changed a bit after retrospection, so it's possible I've just forgotten whatever problems I had with it at first.

[averagejoe]

I didn't care how different Caspian was from the book because it's been so long since I read them that all I remember from the series is someone falling asleep while flying somewhere in the Silver Chair I think, Susan (I think) crying on her bowstring in the Last Battle, something about scissors in Voyage and being unbelievably bored all the way through Magician's Nephew.

To me, Caspian was actually better than the first one because it made the characters deeper, in my opinion. I really liked how they were all mature souls in young bodies, I feel like this was pulled off very well with everyone except Lucy, whose actress was too young to really buy that sort of maturity. How easily they adopted their heroic mantles was cool.

In terms of the kings clashing with each other's personalities... I think it was a good choice because if everyone gets along and there's no clash of personalities it's easy to fall into the trap of not giving anyone a personality at all. Especially in a busy movie where you've got to run around to a bunch of places and do a bunch of things or the plot won't make sense, as is the case with most movie adaptations of books.

In principle I agree, but the way they did it made the characters just seem more stupid than deep and, far from "mature souls," were just kinda whiny. The conflict wasn't really created organically from their characters, but shoehorned in for the sake of itself.

Also, it irritated me how Reepacheep was relegated to comic relief. Even in the scene where he was dying.

[Aidan305]

Also, it irritated me how Reepacheep was relegated to comic relief. Even in the scene where he was dying.

I think that the main problem I had with Reepacheep was that I had grown up with him as played by Warwick Davis who gave a far better performance.

[CorrTerek]

In terms of the kings clashing with each other's personalities... I think it was a good choice because if everyone gets along and there's no clash of personalities it's easy to fall into the trap of not giving anyone a personality at all. Especially in a busy movie where you've got to run around to a bunch of places and do a bunch of things or the plot won't make sense, as is the case with most movie adaptations of books.

It wasn't that they clashed, it was that both characters spent the movie jockeying over who was actually in control. That wasn't in the book at all, because (as was explained rather well in the article linked to) Peter knew perfectly well he wasn't there to take back his own throne, but to help Caspian gain his.

Caspian, for his part, understands that Peter is older, wiser and much more experienced and is happy to take Peter's general advice. However, when it comes to who is actually the current king of Narnia, Peter cheerfully acknowledges (as do the others) that Caspian is the king. They don't try to overrule him or take his authority (which happens all the freakin' time in the movie).

It's distressing to think that Hollywood believes that two people can't hit it off, or that two people with power can't wield it without fighting over it.

[Jerthanis]

It's distressing to think that Hollywood believes that two people can't hit it off, or that two people with power can't wield it without fighting over it.

Call me cynical but... I don't think it's possible either. I think Hollywood is right.

Also, the way I saw the movie was that Peter et al were miserable in their English lives, and longed to return to Narnia. His jockeying for power was a reflection of his desire to stay, even if it was against the will of Aslan, or the course of his destiny or whatever. This straying from their purpose was most of the plot, so I actually think it'd be counterproductive to drop this aspect.

People can get along perfectly or whatever, but it's hard for me to see why that would make a better story than them having conflicts for them to expose character over. I mean, I guess it would expose that their characters are super-good friends and extremely humble and virtuous, but... maybe I'm just being cynical again but that doesn't seem to be a good story to me.

[horngeek]

Holywood isn't right, in fact. Yes, it IS possible for two people to just be friends right from the first and respect each other.

Now. What I CAN say without going into religion:

I liked it. Yes, they changed it significantly. Do I see why these changes had to be made? Yes.

My only real problem is they made it into a Fetch Quest, and this irks me. But if they didn't make the change... okay, to be honest, that would have lead to the movie being directionless. The changes are, ultimately, ones that had to be made.

Also, Reepicheep gets more serious time!

I'll watch the Silver Chair, and all the others they bring out. Good movie. Not the best adaptation, but a good movie.

[CorrTerek]

Also, the way I saw the movie was that Peter et al were miserable in their English lives, and longed to return to Narnia. His jockeying for power was a reflection of his desire to stay, even if it was against the will of Aslan, or the course of his destiny or whatever. This straying from their purpose was most of the plot, so I actually think it'd be counterproductive to drop this aspect.

You're right, that was pretty much the entire movie's plot. It wasn't, however, part of the book's plot at all. And that would be the problem. When you're inventing plot points wholesale in what is supposed to be an adaptation of a book, you're not really making that book into a movie.

People can get along perfectly or whatever, but it's hard for me to see why that would make a better story than them having conflicts for them to expose character over. I mean, I guess it would expose that their characters are super-good friends and extremely humble and virtuous, but... maybe I'm just being cynical again but that doesn't seem to be a good story to me.

In the book, most of their conflicts are external. That is, their conflict comes from the danger they're in, and how each of them responds to that danger. Not how each of them personally can't stand any of the others.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

As one of my friends described it, it sounds like a Zelda game. "Collect the Seven Swords and bring them to the Stone Table to thwart the powers of evil!"

[averagejoe]

Call me cynical but... I don't think it's possible either. I think Hollywood is right.

Also, the way I saw the movie was that Peter et al were miserable in their English lives, and longed to return to Narnia. His jockeying for power was a reflection of his desire to stay, even if it was against the will of Aslan, or the course of his destiny or whatever. This straying from their purpose was most of the plot, so I actually think it'd be counterproductive to drop this aspect.

People can get along perfectly or whatever, but it's hard for me to see why that would make a better story than them having conflicts for them to expose character over. I mean, I guess it would expose that their characters are super-good friends and extremely humble and virtuous, but... maybe I'm just being cynical again but that doesn't seem to be a good story to me.

That's one of those logical fallacies I forget the name of. The one where you say, "Not X implies that it has to be Y," or equivalently, "It must be either X or Y." Which is to say, not having this conflict between Peter and Caspian doesn't make the characters saints, super-good friends, and virtuous. It just means that we have main characters who, among other things, have sense and intelligence and don't sacrifice this to sate the audience's need for cheap drama. Trumpkin's disbelief of the authenticity and abilities of the four, his humbling at their hands, their humbling at his hands, and the mutual respect that all five gain for each other is 1) much more interesting, and 2) much more satisfying because it came from each of the characters, and unlike the movie's Peter/Caspian conflict, didn't come off as something you could have put between basically any two allies with an overlapping interest. They glossed over this in the movie, though, and not saying they shouldn't, just pointing out that the characters in the books were not all palsy-walsy, they just didn't pointlessly argue when they knew that doing so could potentially tear apart their side and undermine everything they'd worked for.

Conflict of some variety is, arguably, essential to having what we think of as a "story" or "narrative" at all. Conflict derived from the interpersonal relationships between people who are friends/allies is a sort that is in vogue right now, in the same way that romantic subplots are in vogue; it can be a side plot of pretty much any script, and it can make things more interesting, or at least more entertaining. However, that does not mean that interpersonal conflict is always more interesting than not interpersonal conflict in every situation. For example, if they were on some very sensitive, critical mission, and Caspian and Peter kept sniping at each other at critical moments, it might make a more interesting stories in some academic sense, but it also doesn't work for a story whose structure depends on finding the main characters relatable, likable, or not stupid.

Besides all that, the conflict was absolutely uninteresting and (or, perhaps, because) it revealed nothing about their characters. The conflict was absolutely cookie-cutter, and any two characters could have had excuses of equal weight to have such a conflict. And I say, "excuses," because there is no character growth in such an arc. Rather, it's the other way. We see Peter angsting about Narnia and not getting along in the real world, and this gives him an excuse to have a conflict with Caspian. They've changed at the end, but there's no arc, because there's no reason for the change other than, "We should stop behaving like jerks to each other or we're going to die." It's not interpersonal conflict, it's false conflict that pads for time and creates the illusion of drama.

[Starbuck_II]

How was 'Prince Caspian' a travesty? Aside from

Spoiler

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the decapitation raid on the Castle, which Peter completely messed up,

it was reasonably true both to the events and spirit of the original work.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

It was a good movie, but the

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Tree ents

were out of no where. I mean, sure magical plants aren't unusual in a magical world but it was never shown as possible.

[Barbarian MD]

However, they were in the book (sort of). Aslan and his forces were a literal deus ex machina at the end of Caspian.

[CrimsonAngel]

In principle I agree, but the way they did it made the characters just seem more stupid than deep and, far from "mature souls," were just kinda whiny. The conflict wasn't really created organically from their characters, but shoehorned in for the sake of itself.

Also, it irritated me how Reepacheep was relegated to comic relief. Even in the scene where he was dying.

Reepacheap dosen't die. HE LIVES FOREVER!

*hides in my corner*

[Saph]

Well, I just saw it today.

General thoughts: Pretty good.

Bad points: The 'fetch quest' for the swords was a bit unnecessary. I would have preferred keeping it to the book. One of the reasons the book's so interesting is that it's one of the few fantasy stories where there's no real villain. It's just exploration. There's villains aplenty in the other 6 Narnia stories, so I would have liked to see them keep to the source text for this one.

Good points: Reepicheep is awesome. The 3-D is mildly distracting, but still fairly cool, and it means we get more beautiful panoramas instead of blurry close-ups. They managed to replicate the weird, unexpected nature of the book - you never knew what was going to happen next. Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace were all pretty good, even if some of the dialogue needed work. I think Reepicheep and Eustace's relationship was my favourite bit of the movie - that swordfight was hilarious.

Overall, worth seeing.

[pendell]

Saw the movie this afternoon. It wasn't bad; reasonable plot, 'fetch quest' was a very minor overlay on the story, most episodes survived intact. Reasonable graphics, actors pretty good.


So why was it my least favorite movie in the series...?


I've thought about this, and I guess the thing that bothered me the most -- which didn't bother me in the last two movies -- was the pacing. What you have is a retelling of Homer's Odyssey as our heroes voyage from island to island, and it was rammed together into 1 hour 52 minutes. It might have done better as a miniseries where you give each island about 1 hour for plot resolution and character development. As it was, things happened too quickly; it felt rushed.

I've seen enough CGI in my time that effects by themselves don't interest me; I care far more about the interactions and development of the characters. There simply wasn't any of that; it was like a very fast-paced action cartoon.

While it didn't ruin the movie for me, I also didn't get the little girl they introduced on the Lone Islands. She shared Lucy's cabin, she got no meaningful dialog. What's the point, guys? If you're going to inject someone into the plot, at least give them some story purpose that couldn't be adequately fulfilled by a statue!


I didn't hate it, but I can't say that it struck me with the wonder, the thrill, that either LOTR, Lion Witch and Wardrobe, and to a lesser extent Prince Caspian gave me.


Therefore , I rate it three stars on a scale of one to five.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Mordar]

While it didn't ruin the movie for me, I also didn't get the little girl they introduced on the Lone Islands. She shared Lucy's cabin, she got no meaningful dialog. What's the point, guys? If you're going to inject someone into the plot, at least give them some story purpose that couldn't be adequately fulfilled by a statue!

I wonder - did some of her scenes end up on the cutting room floor, or was her only purpose to provide Lucy's moral vis a vis her own longing to be Susan? Paraphrasing:

"When I grow up I want to be just like you..."

"No, when you grow up, be just like you."

- M

[Ender Wigin]

Quick thoughts: It was a huge disappointment. Leagues below the first or even the second movies.

Longer version: Okay, I'll grant them a bit of leeway here: The source material does not lend itself well to a Hollywood adaptation. The plot's not much more than "A few important characters plus one weird new guy sail around the world looking for some old guys on a lark." It makes sense they'd want to create a somewhat more pressing main plot to keep the audience interested. That does not, however, excuse them from making the main plot a cliched piece of drivel.

The main threat here is the LOST Smoke Monster's numerous green cousins, which hail from what was The Place Where Dreams Come True in the novel but here is known only as "Dark Island." Yes, the source of all evil in this movie is called "Dark Island." No, that's not some appellation made up by terrified sailors; that's the actual name used by people who've studied it. Anyway, it turns out the only way to defeat Dark Island's evil powers is to collect the seven swords of the Great Lords and bring them to Ramandu's island. They are given this quest by a wise old wizard.

The villains themselves (such as they are) are lacking in any sort of menace. I joked earlier about how the special effects seem like a pallete-swap of the LOST creature, but don't let that fool you into thinking they're powerful or threatening. The movie tries to imply that Dark Island is responsible for a lot of the more dangerous locations in the Eastern Sea, but it only does so by inserting the green mist special effect every so often when bad things are happening.

Now, they've already handicapped themselves by making their villain completely inhuman (the mists occasionally take the shape of Jadis, but only to taunt Edmund; they never exhibit any actual motivation). Still, an inhuman threat can still be interesting, provided it's actually a threat. Dark Island is not a threat by any stretch of the imagination. Its one real power seems to be the ability to randomly create trite moral lessons everywhere. Subtlety may not have been Lewis's strong suit, but the writing team on this movie apparently thought he could have been a little more straightforward. Take, for example, the movie's interpretation of Deathwater Island:

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Just like in the book, the party stumbles across a pool that contains an oddly realistic gold statue of one of the Lords. Sure enough, they determine that the cursed pool can trasmute any object into gold. At this point, Edmund looks at the dead Lord and speculates, "Maybe he was on to something..." Then he dips a shell into the water, watches it turn to gold, and goes into outright cheesy supervillain mode as he declares that he will RULE THE WORLD with his newfound power!!! Caspian rather dryly reminds Edmund that he can't actually take anything out of Narnia, so the pool's useless to him, which causes Edmund to go into a somewhat non sequitur rant about how he should be the King and how all of you fools don't appreciate him, then Caspian attacks, the two have a brief fight scene, and Lucy stops them by telling them the place is "tempting" them. And so they recover the Plot Voucher sword from the pool (it's not gold, because magic), we see some green mist floating around down there, and no one speaks of it again.

Compare it to the exchange in the original book:



Again, the original is hardly subtle, but the changes the movie makes are all outright ridiculous. They make Edmund the one who wants to exploit the island's powers instead of Caspian, even though Caspian's the one who could actually use the gold. They exchange the threats and intimidation for outright shouting and violence, perhaps in some misguided attempt to make the scene tenser. Perhaps most jarring of all, they take out the idea that wealth is just naturally appealing to people and instead blame the entire thing on Evil Mind Control.

Dark Island never actually threatens the heroes until the climax. It just arranges these contrived morality plays that do nothing more than teach the characters A Very Valuable Lesson. That is not how you make a villain look threatening. Compare this with how Jadis spends her movie executing all who oppose her with impunity, or how Miraz repels Peter's raid and slaughters most of the attacking soldiers.

And a few more nitpicks on more spoilery things:

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The mists repeatedly try to tempt Edmund by taking Jadis's form and offering to make him king. First of all, let's ignore the fact that Edmund's already a king (and a legendary super king who outranks all other kings, at that). Let's pretend she's offering him something he doesn't already have. Even then, he's already made that mistake once before. He knows he can't expect anything more than some dry bread and a messy execution. Heck, the second movie even expanded on a scene from the book to show that he's not going to fall for her tricks again. And yet, in the climax, when he's one shot away from defeating the Final Boss, he actually hesitates and thinks about it for a second. Even if we're supposed to assume that Dark Island is using Evil Mind Control to make him think about it, why wouldn't it try to tempt him with something that at least looks tempting?

Dark Island itself. In the novel, the Island where Dreams come true is a nightmare in the most literal sense. When you go there, all your nightmares are made manifest. In the movie, the mists taunt a few major characters (which is hardly any different from what they've been doing so far), then Lord Rhoop warns them that "They will find your greatest fear and take its form!" This obviously does not mean what it meant in the book, in which everyone experiences his own worst nightmare. It just means that somebody pictures a sea serpent, so the Final Boss takes the form of a sea serpent. That's right: It's the Traveler from Ghostbusters.

Aslan's Country. After the crew reaches the end of the world, Aslan makes it clear that his country lies just beyond, but no one can return once they go there. He also stops just short of explicitly stating that his country is heaven. Reepicheep, adventurous as always, boards a small coracle and sails off to Aslan's country. Here's the thing, though: In the real world, willingly taking a one-way trip to the afterlife goes by a much simpler term. At least in the book he was sacrificing himself to save the three remaining Lords; here, he's basically committing suicide because he wants to know what death feels like.

Okay, so those are my thoughts. I'm opening the floor to anyone else now.

... Are... You.. Serious??!?! thats... Its... They need to collect seven mystical swords to save all of Narnia?!?! Does this look like Dragon Ball Z to you?!?! Thats... GAHHH!

Disney, you have failed us for the last time. Who am I kidding, you'll never stop.