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The sun rises and the Dawn Treader arrives at another island. “I doubt the lords stopped here, my liege,” says Reepicheep as he and other crewmembers head towards the shore in one of two longboats. “There’s no sign of anything living.” Indeed, this island has a very dry, rocky climate. It’s actually a combination of two islands from the book, neither of which were described that way. I sympathize with the change though. The last island we saw was quite lush and it’s nice to have a variety of environments. I do think though that the way C. S. Lewis described the islands made it more believable that the crew would be able to keep gathering supplies for their voyage, which Caspian here tells Reepicheep is their reason for landing. “Once we get ashore, take your men and search for food and water,” he calls from the other longboat. “The three of us will look for clues.” Eustace, who is in the same longboat as Caspian, Lucy and Edmund objects. “Hang on. You mean the four of us.” Everyone looks at him.

Eustace: Come on, please don’t send me back to the rat!
Reepicheep: I heard that!
Eustace (muttering): Big ears!
Reepicheep: I heard that too!

We cut to later. As the crew unloads, Eustace sneaks away from them. Elsewhere, the three royals explore the island. Caspian finds a rope tied around a giant rock, the end of which trails down into a hole in the ground. “The lords?” suggests Edmund. “Could be,” says Caspian. He drops a small stone down the hole, and they listen to the echo of it falling to ascertain the depth. Then they climb down the rope ladder to explore.

After a bit, they find a pool with a golden statue of a man in it. In the book, this pool is aboveground but, again, I sympathize with the change of location. This underground cavern, lit only by holes from the ground above, makes for a cool set. Edmund breaks off a giant root from the cave wall and dips it into the pool. Beginning with the tip that touches the water, the wood transforms into gold! Just before the gold spreads to his fingers, Edmund cries out in fear and drops the root. It sinks to the bottom of the pool. Now in the book, if you dipped something like that in the water, only the part that was submerged would turn to gold, but I guess I’m OK with the change. It does make a for a nice creepy moment here.

Our heroes bend down to examine the underwater statue which they now realize isn’t a statue.

Caspian: He must have fallen in.
Lucy: Poor man.
Edmund: You mean poor lord.

Edmund has noticed the man’s golden shield. Caspian recognizes the design on it as “the crest of Lord Restimar” and Edmund points out his sword. “We need it,” Caspian says. OK, aren’t they being kind of glib here? I get Caspian probably never knew Lord Restimar personally; he was just searching for him out of duty and, of course, getting his sword is vital to saving the Lone Islands. I don’t think the movie needed a big funeral scene for this character or even a big moment of silence, but it still feels kind of tasteless to pass over him this quickly. Couldn’t they have had a little moment of silence? Anyway, Edmund uses the sword he got from Lord Bern to lift Restimar’s sword out of the water and-oh no! There’s that Green Mist again! It feels like whenever there’s a scene in this movie that’s like the book and I, as a fan of the source material, start to relax and enjoy it, the Mist will show up and snap me out of it. Also, the quality of the scenes strangely tends to drop after the it appears even when that dropping doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the Mist itself. This bit is a case in point.

Edmund succeeds in retrieving the sword and Lucy notes that neither it nor his own has turned to gold. “Both the swords are magical,” says Caspian. Neither he nor Lucy is onscreen when they say those lines, so I suspect they were added in post-production in response to viewers of test screenings making the same observation as Lucy. It’s nice that they realized there was one confusing plot point they needed to clarify anyway. Lucy seems to agree with me that Lord Restimar isn’t getting enough respect. “He mustn’t have known what hit him,” she says as she stares at his golden remains. “Maybe,” says Edmund, “Or maybe he was on to something.” On to something? If Restimar had perished trying to dip something into the water, that line would make sense but, judging from his pose, he was cupping his hands to get a drink.

Edmund takes a nearby seashell and dips it in the pool, turning it to gold. He stares at it like he’s under a spell.

Edmund: Whoever has access to this pool could be the most powerful person in the world. Lucy, we’d be so rich! No one could tell us what to do or who to live with!
Caspian: You can’t take anything out of Narnia, Edmund.
Edmund: Says who?

That’s a good question actually. I don’t remember it being established in either the books or the movies that no one from this world could take things from the world of Narnia. The only reason to believe this is the Pevensies’ Narnian clothes being replaced with their English ones when they return^[1]In the movies, not always in the books. and I’m not sure if it makes sense for Caspian to know about that. Anyway, back to the conversation.

Edmund: Says who?
Caspian: I do.
Edmund: I’m not your subject.
Caspian: You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you? To challenge me. You doubt my leadership!
Edmund: You doubt yourself.
Caspian: You’re a child!
Edmund: And you’re a spineless sap!
Lucy: Edmund-
Edmund: I’m tired of playing second fiddle! First it was Peter and now it’s you. You know I’m braver than both of you! Why do you get Peter’s sword? I deserve a kingdom of my own! I deserve to rule!
Caspian: If you think you’re so brave, prove it!

Now it tends to bug me when critics disparage works of art by saying the artists just made it for a paycheck and didn’t really care about the quality. How do they know that? It seems to discount the possibility of artists trying to make great art and failing through a lack of taste. For that matter, does it ever occur to the critics that the works of art they love and into which they believe the artists put their hearts and souls might have actually been made by artists who were just going through the motions but had enough talent to make something great anyway? How do we know the critics aren’t just projecting their own feelings about the art onto the artists? So I try to avoid making those kinds of statements on this blog but it’s hard to resist with these Narnia movies because…I really do think Andrew Adamson, the director of the first two, put a lot of passion into them whereas Michael Apted, the director of this third one, didn’t. Mind you, I don’t consider everything about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) or Prince Caspian (2008) great, but I believe that Adamson thought they were great and was trying to make the greatest movies he could even when I disagree with his taste. With Michael Apted, well, I’m sure he wished to avoid making an outright bad movie. Sheer professional pride forbad him that. But I don’t get the impression he was trying to make the greatest movie possible. It feels like he just wanted to wrap up filming as quickly as possible every day so he could go home and do his laundry, and that attitude trickled down to the whole crew. Well, not the whole crew. Some people did great work on the movie, but I imagine the credit goes to those individuals, not to Michael Apted’s leadership.

And the nice thing about this scene is that it allows me to give specific reasons for this impression beyond just “I liked the other movies better.” Caspian and Edmund are supposedly going through the same experience here, but their actors portray it entirely differently. Skandar Keynes snarls and hams it up like he’s transforming into Mr. Hyde. Ben Barnes, on the other hand, gives a subtly creepy performance, making it hard to say when exactly Caspian starts going crazy.^[2]To be fair, that may just be because his dialogue is relatively less heavy handed. It feels like Apted had no particular vision for the scene and just let the actors do whatever they wanted. If you ask me, he should have been telling Keynes to follow Barnes’s example.

Caspian and Edmund start to sword fight, but Lucy gets between them. “Stop it!” she cries. “Both of you! Look at yourselves. Can’t you see what’s happening? This place has tempted you! It’s bewitching you! This is exactly what Coriakin was talking about.” OK, who would say “this place has tempted you” even if that’s what they were trying to express? To me, it feels like the screenwriters, being unable to see an overriding theme in the original book, showed admirable humility by asking some Christians they knew who told them it was about temptation.^[3]That’s not what I’d call the main theme of the story by the way but it’s not totally wrong. But they didn’t actually have anything interesting to say about temptation, besides “it sure is bad, isn’t it,” so this just comes across as a shallow attempt to appeal to Christian audiences.^[4]Along similar lines, Lucy’s subplot feels like the screenwriters heard that young girls tend to be insecure about their looks and wanted to address that without actually having an interesting … Continue reading Incidentally, in the book, it was Aslan who intervened to save Edmund and Caspian from themselves. If the movie really wanted to tell a Christian story, it probably should have kept that. Still, I can see the appeal of Lucy, having recently mastered her how temptation, being the one to snap the others out of theirs. It’s one of the movie’s few subtle attempts at character development “Let’s just get out here,” she says. They follow her advice. Before he leaves, a chastened Edmund tosses the golden seashell away. I’ve been pretty hard on this movie for the last three paragraphs or so, so I’ll say that’s a good visual way to show the magic pool no longer has power over him.

Now back to being hard on it. This is a good time to ask how come the Mist doesn’t try devouring our heroes as it did the sacrificial victims on the Lone Islands? Tempting them doesn’t seem to be working that well. I’d say that the Mist gets more powerful the closer one gets to Dark Island and the characters simply aren’t near enough yet for it to do something like that. But then how was it able to devour those people all the way back at the Lone Islands? Can it only do that to those who have deliberately been sacrificed? But then why were they being sacrificed in the first place? Yeah, this is the Narnia movie that benefits the most from not thinking about it. To be fair, there are things about the other movies and even the original books that also benefit from a lack of thought but this one really takes the cake.

We find Eustace wandering around the island and complaining about the silliness of the plot. I love it when he does that. “Oh yes,” he rants, “follow the imaginary blue star to the island of Raman-doo-doo! Lay the seven steak knives at the table of the talking lion! Hmph! Ninnies!” Just then, Eustace finds a shallow canyon, the ground of which is covered with golden treasures.

“I must be dead!” he breathes. Once he recovers from shock, he grabs a golden bowl and starts filling it with loot. His eye is drawn to a golden armband though he screams when he sees it’s on the arm of a finely dressed skeleton. “Your definitely dead,” he says before ripping the band off and putting it on his own arm. “Won’t be needing that then, will you?” A strange roaring/hissing noise is heard. Eustace looks around nervously but when he doesn’t hear it again, he goes back to collecting treasure. In the book, Eustace finds this trove in the cave of an old dragon he sees die, who may or may not have been one of the seven missing lords under an enchantment. Presumably, that’s what made the noise here though we never see it and it’s probably confusing if you haven’t read the book. Unseen by Eustace, the Green Mist surges. Now I’m really annoyed. It made sense that the Mist would want Lucy to accidentally make it so she never went to Narnia or that it would want either Edmund or Caspian to the kill the other. But how does it benefit from Eustace robbing the dead? As we’ll see, it actually makes him an asset to the Dawn Treader’s crew in their attempts to destroy the Mist.^[5]Maybe the Mist just can’t resist tempting everyone even when doing so doesn’t benefit it. That would be an interesting weakness if that was the movie’s intention. This is the kind of thing that happens when people put a villain into a story that didn’t have one. They tend to just blame everything bad on the villain even when it doesn’t make sense for them to be responsible. In the book by the way, the scene with the water that turned things to gold took place after this and Eustace was present. The fact that he was one of the only ones not to be tempted by the prospect of unlimited riches subtly showed his character development so it’s too bad the chronology was changed for this movie. Still, that’s hardly the worst bit of artistic license here.

Caspian, Edmund and Lucy return to the longboats. Rhince shows them the meagre food his party has found. “It’s volcanic, Your Majesty,” he says apologetically, “Not much grows.” (See what I mean about it making more sense in the book how the ship never ran out of supplies?)

Lucy looks around. “Where’s Eustace?” she asks. “I believe he’s out not helping us load the boats,” says Reepicheep. Lucy calls Eustace’s name. There’s no response unless you count the noise of a hot air blast from somewhere on the island’s surface. “Edmund, I’ve got a bad feeling,” Lucy says. Her line delivery makes it sound less like she’s worried something’s happened to her cousin and more like she’s going to throw up. Edmund goes to search for Eustace and Caspian, wanting to make amends, volunteers to go with him. They find the same glittering hoard that Eustace found. “Treasure?” says Edmund. “Trouble,” says Caspian. They investigate and discover Eustace’s clothes, and his diary charred.

“I’m sorry,” Caspian tells Edmund. “He was just a boy! I never should have left him!” Edmund, who was already feeling guilt stricken about his behavior over that alchemical pool, says. “What could have happened to him?” Caspian looks around warily. “In this place, anything and he wasn’t the first. ” He goes over to the skeleton. “It’s Lord Octesian,” he says, “We should find his-” But Edmund has already picked up the man’s magical sword. Again, it’d be nice to show a little more respect for the dead before taking their stuff. Just a tad.

Meanwhile, Lucy and the others are back on board the Dawn Treader. They hear a strange roar coming from the island. “What was that?” she asks Drinian. A burst of flame is visible from the crags. “Is it the volcano?” MLG asks. “Oh, no,” says Drinian grimly, “that’s no volcano.”

Next Week: A Dragon!

We transition from the magical map to the actual sea. There’s a storm brewing and within the Dawn Treader, Eustace is writing in his diary again. “For reasons beyond my comprehension,” he gripes, “we’ve taken the advice of a senile old coot who doesn’t possess a razor and dawdles around in a dressing gown.” I love that there’s a character in the movie who feels the same way about that last scene that I do. “So we’re back in this tub and lost in a tempest. Brilliant.” We see some of the crew valiantly trying to navigate the storm. This scene isn’t bad, but I’m surprised the movie isn’t trying to make this more intense. Other parts, like the scenes on the Lone Islands, seek to make the story more action-packed than it is in the book. What I imagine though reading C. S. Lewis’s description of a storm at sea is a lot scarier.

It seemed to Lucy that a great valley in the sea opened just before their bows, and they rushed down into it, deeper down than she would have believed possible. A great grey hill of water, far higher than the mast, rushed to meet them; it looked certain death but they were tossed to the top of it. Then the ship seemed to spin round. A cataract of water poured over the deck; the poop and forecastle were like two islands with a fierce sea between them. Up aloft the sailors were lying out along the yard desperately trying to get control of the sail. A broken rope stood out sideways in the wind as straight and stiff as if it was a poker.

Oh well. Like I said, this isn’t a bad little scene in the movie. Maybe it just needs some dramatic music.

“Fourteen days of being tossed like a pancake and not the slightest sight of land,” laments Eustace. “The only consolation is everyone is finally as miserable as I am. Except for that showoff talking rat. He’s one of those annoying glass-is-always-half-full types.” We see Reepicheep standing on the nose of the Dawn Treader’s dragonhead prow. I’d like to think this is meant to be a reminder of his thirst to find Aslan’s country and “the utter East.” It’s hard to tell though since that part of his character ends up feeling like an afterthought in this movie. Still, it’s possible that was the intention.

In the stern cabin, Drinian is having a private word with Caspian and Edmund. “We’re stuck here,” he says placing a marker on a map, “at half rations with food and water for two more weeks maximum. This is your last chance to turn back, Your Majesties. There’s no guarantee we’ll spot the blue star anytime soon. Not in this storm. A needle in a haystack, trying to find this Ramandu place. We could sail right past it and off the edge of the world.” “Or get eaten by a sea serpent,” says Edmund mockingly. That’s to say, I think he’s saying it mockingly. Given what happens later, I believe the subtext is that Edmund is genuinely nervous about sea serpents and is hiding it behind a show of bravado but Skandar Keynes’s performance in this movie is just too indifferent to convey anything that nuanced.

Drinian: I’m just saying the men are getting nervous. These are strange seas we’re sailing, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.
Caspian: Then perhaps, Captain, you would like to be the one to explain to Mr. Rhince that we’re abandoning the search for his family.^[1]Technically, it’s just the search for his wife but whatever.

Theoretically, I have no problem with that line. All three characters in this scene have been sailing with Rhince and MLG^[2]That’s what I’m calling his daughter, remember? for weeks or possibly even months. Of course, they care about them. But I haven’t been sailing with those characters and the line has the unfortunate side effect of reminding me that I don’t care about them, not nearly as much as the movie wants me to care anyway. Drinian ceases to argue but before leaving the cabin, he warns Caspian and Edmund, “The sea can play nasty tricks on a crew’s mind. Very nasty.”

In Lucy’s cabin, a lantern sways from the roof as the ship is rocked by waves. After making sure that MLG is asleep beside her, Lucy takes out the page she tore from Coriakin’s spell book. She reads from it as Green Mists swirls around the lantern to make sure we know this bad.

Transform my reflection.
Cast into perfection
Lashes, lips and complexion.
Make me she whom I’d agree
Holds more beauty over me.

The sound of thunder fades away. The ship is suddenly still and light pours from the windows. Lucy gets up and looks at herself in a full-length mirror. Her nightgown changes into the kind of outfit she might wear for a party back in England and she, herself, transforms into her sister. I’d like to pause a moment to credit this scene’s magical visuals. They’re some of the more fun ones in the movie.

Lucy-or rather Susan-hears big band music of all things coming from behind the mirror. It turns into a door, and she steps through it onto a sunlit porch somewhere in America. A garden party is in swing. “Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Susan Pevensie,” announces a man and everyone applauds. Susan-or rather Lucy who looks like Susan-is starting to enjoy this.

Her brothers fall in step with her.

Lucy: Edmund!
Edmund: You look beautiful, sister.
Peter (William Moseley): As always.
Lucy: Peter!
Photographer (Laurence Coy): Excuse me, Miss, can I get a photo?
Peter: Mother’s going to love this! All her children in one picture.
Photographer: Smile!
Lucy: Hang on. Where am I? I mean, where’s Lucy?
Edmund (through smile for camera): Lucy? Who’s Lucy?

A startled Lucy tries to get away, but Peter holds onto her. “Susan, what’s wrong?” he asks, also speaking through his teeth. “Come on now, Miss,” says the photographer, “nice big smile!” But Lucy isn’t feeling it anymore.

Lucy: Edmund, I’m not sure about all this. I think I ought to go back.
Edmund: Go back where?
Lucy: To Narnia!
Edmund: What on earth is Narnia?
Lucy: What’s going on?! Stop this!

The camera flashes and suddenly Lucy is back in the cabin, looking into the mirror, her old self again though rather shaken. Well, that was…a thing. I feel like the scene went by far too quickly for us to feel what Lucy felt. I mean, the final thirds of entire movies have been about such scenarios but here no sooner has Lucy been horrified by the implications of the alternate universe she created than it’s all back to normal again. Not very cathartic. I suppose a longer scene in the Lucy-is-Susan world would have taken away from the main plot but why bother with something like creating an alternate reality if you’re not going to give it room to breathe? Anyway, Aslan appears beside Lucy’s reflection. She turns around but in a nice touch, he can only be seen in the mirror. The soundtrack plays a subdued, melancholy version of the Pevensies’ theme.

Aslan: What have you done, child?
Lucy: I don’t know. That was awful!
Aslan: But you chose it, Lucy.
Lucy: I didn’t mean to choose all of that! I just wanted to be beautiful like Susan. That’s all.
Aslan: You wished yourself away and with it much more. Your brothers and sister wouldn’t know Narnia without you, Lucy. You discovered it first, remember?
Lucy: I’m so sorry!
Aslan: You doubt your value. Don’t run from who you are.

That’s the first big message we’ve gotten from this movie. I wouldn’t call it a bad message, especially if you interpret it as “be content with what you have.” But let’s compare it to those from the first two films, never mind the books. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensies learn to put the good of Narnia over their own lives. In Prince Caspian, Peter learned to give up his yearning for control and let others lead while Lucy learned she should stand up for her beliefs even if it means standing alone. And here the most profound thing she learns is “don’t run from who you are?” Talk about disappointingly trite. To be fair though, the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is mostly concerned with basic moral lessons like don’t enslave people, don’t be greedy, don’t eavesdrop, generally don’t be like Eustace, so you could argue this isn’t too far a stretch.^[3]I’d maintain that the book has a larger spiritual theme of searching for the divine and the transcendent bolstering those basic lessons, but I digress. I’d still argue the book had more interesting things to say than just “be yourself.” In Lewis’s version, Lucy didn’t say the beauty spell, as I mentioned previously, but she did say a spell to learn what people said about her behind her back. She overheard one of her friends from back in her own world tell an enemy she had “more sense” than to be “taken up” with Lucy and was tired of her company. Naturally, this hurt, and Lucy vowed never to trust that friend again. Later, she and Aslan had this conversation.

“Child,” he said, “I think you have been eavesdropping.”
“Eavesdropping?”
“You listened to what your two schoolfellows were saying about you.”
“Oh that? I never thought that was eavesdropping, Aslan. Wasn’t it magic?”
“Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way. And you have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean.”
“I don’t think I’d ever be able to forget what I heard her say.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Oh dear,” said Lucy. “Have I spoiled everything? Do you mean we would have gone on being friends if it hadn’t been for this — and been really great friends — all our lives perhaps — and now we never shall.”
“Child,” said Aslan, “did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?”

Now wasn’t that much more interesting than what the movie did?

Lucy wakes up to find the storm still going on. She crumples up the page with the spell on it and throws it into the fireplace. The smoke forms an image of Aslan’s head which roars. You’d think it would roar triumphantly but for some reason, it sounds angry.

If that whole thing was an Aslan-sent dream by the way, does that mean the Green Mist was also part of it? I don’t know why Aslan would include that since Lucy didn’t seem to notice it. Anyway, the Mist wafts its way through the Dawn Treader’s sleeping quarters, still not looking as creepy as it should. Caspian tosses and turns in his slumber. “Father! Father!” he cries. A big cloud of Mist forms above Edmund. An all too familiar voice calls his name. In a flash of lightning, he sees the White Witch (Tilda Swinton.) “Join me!” she says. On the plus side, this moment is fairly effective in its creepiness.

On the minus side, do we have to see the White Witch again? Maybe if they hadn’t temporarily brought her back from the dead in Prince Caspian, I would be more openminded about this, but they did temporarily bring her back and now it feels like overkill.^[4]Overresurrection? I wonder if the screenwriters deeply regretted that she couldn’t be the villain of every story but didn’t want to offend the fanbase by having her survive The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As a member of that fanbase, I’m grateful for that but this compromise of having her keep seeming to return without really doing so gets lame after only two instances.

Flustered, Edmund draws his sword, but the Mist has disappeared and with it, the Witch. “Edmund?” whispers another voice. This time, it’s Lucy’s. “I can’t sleep,” she says. Edmund looks at her and at Caspian who has also awakened. “Let me guess,” he says. “Bad dreams. So either we’re all going mad or something’s playing with our minds.” Or you could you just be having bad dreams because you’re under a lot of stress, you know. That has been known to happen in life without any magical explanation. To the movie’s credit though, the Dark Island is very much connected to dreams, particularly nightmares, in the book and it’s nice that the adaptation tries to retain that somehow.

Next Week: I Take a Break from Narnia for a Halloween Post (Sort of)

As the sun rises over the beach, Caspian and Edmund awake to find giant footprints in the sand and no Lucy. Drinian notices this too and rouses the rest of the crew so they can follow the prints. Well, not all the rest of the crew. Eustace is left snoring on the shore. For some reason, Reepicheep isn’t among them. I guess he remained on the ship which is odd. Didn’t he say there was honor in turning away from adventure recently?

Meanwhile, in the invisible mansion, Lucy walks down a silent hall to a library in which a giant tome lies on a stand. In the book, her walking down the hall was a great creepy scene with a jump scare moment of her seeing her face in a bearded mirror that was made for cinema. Here it’s over in a matter of seconds. This is the shortest of the three Narnia movies. Would it have hurt it to draw this scene out a little longer? It seems like such a waste.

The literary Lucy had a moment of being unable to open the book before realizing it was shut by two leaden clasps. The movie actually gives this a nice whimsical gloss. The letters of books titled are scattered all over the cover^[1]In the book, it didn’t have a title by the way. and the (singular) clasp won’t open. Then a little wooden cherub carved into the bookstand comes to life and blows through its lips. Lucy follows its example and blows on the book. At once, the letters rearrange to spell “The Book of Incantations,” a design forms beneath them and the clasp unlocks.

Lucy pages through the book which turns out to be one of my favorite props in any Narnia movie. The detailed illustrations and calligraphy are beautiful, and it perfectly matches C. S. Lewis’s description. There’s a cure for toothache, a spell to remember things forgotten, a spell for forgetting things you want to forget and a cure for warts that involves bathing them in a silver basin by moonlight. If the movie had nothing to recommend it but the design of this book, I would still hesitate to dismiss it.

There’s also a spell that’s not in the book. Lucy comes to a page that’s completely black with white text. She reads aloud. “With these words, your tongue must sew for all around there to be snow.” I’m really not sure about the grammar of that poem. Wouldn’t your tongue be sewing the words themselves, not sewing with them? Also, shouldn’t it be sow, not sew? Anyway, a snowflake falls on the page. Lucy looks up to see snow is indeed falling from the ceiling. I really don’t know why she would read this specific page out loud and not others and I’m told this bit is a rip-off of a scene from Harry Potter. Part of me, cynically thinks the movie just did this because the more financially successful of the previous two Narnia movies had snow in it. Still, that moment when the first white snowflake lands on the black page is pretty magical.

Before long, snow has covered the book. Lucy blows it off and this triggers some kind of magical wind that rapidly flips through the pages. Lucy has to slam her hand down on a page to stop it. For some reason, she doesn’t turn the pages back to see if the spell to make the unseen seen was on one of the pages she missed but continues going through the book. Now, aside from irritating but forgiveable little things like that, I’m really enjoying the scene up to this point. It’s very true to the spirit of the equivalent scene in the book and even true to some of its details. But here we get something that’s not from the book and which I don’t enjoy. When Lucy slams her hand down a page, that silly looking green mist starts to pour out from between the pages. It doesn’t devour Lucy like the sacrificial victims in the longboat at Narrowhaven though. In fact, it’s kind of implied she can’t see it.

The page Lucy on which Lucy has stopped promises “an infallible spell to make the beauty you’ve always wanted to be.” In the book, this was a spell for “to make beautiful her that uttereth it beyond the lot of mortals,” which is way cooler, but I suppose no actress could live up to it. Ah, well. As Lucy looks at the accompanying illustration of a beautiful woman, it transforms into a mirror. Then her reflection in it shifts so that she looks just like Susan. (By the way, this is one of the most graceful special effects in the movie if you ask me.)

Lucy stares at it, entranced. “I’m beautiful,” she murmurs. I don’t really feel like the movie needed that line. I don’t hate it or anything, but the script had already established that Lucy envies Susan’s looks and the book just told us that this magic spell would makes its caster “the beauty (they’d) always wanted to be.” Those things, coupled with Georgie Henley’s performance were enough to establish that this character considers Susan better looking than herself without her saying, “I’m beautiful” at this point. I feel like if Andrew Adamson, the director of the other Narnia movies, had done this one, he would have cut the line. But Michael Apted seems to have been deeply committed to including every line in the script whether it felt right during filming or not. Lucy runs over to a regular mirror in the room to see if she’s actually transformed into her sister. She hasn’t. By the time, she gets back to the book, the mirror is already fading away. “No, wait!” she says, slamming her hand down on the illustration. She tears out the page with incantation on it. After she does, the pages start rapidly flipping again, this time accompanied by the sound of a roar. The voice of Aslan (Liam Neeson) is heard, saying, “Lucy! Lucy!” He sounds pained. “Aslan?” she calls but she can’t see him anywhere. In C. S. Lewis’s version of this scene, Lucy doesn’t tear out any pages from the book. Instead, just as she’s about to say the beauty spell, an illustration of Aslan’s face growling appears on the page and Lucy turns it in fright. Here, she looks guilty but pockets the stolen page anyway. The pages of the magical book stop turning. Again, Lucy doesn’t turn them back but that makes sense this time as they’ve actually stopped at the very spell that she sought in the first place. As in the book, the spell to make the unseen seen^[2]Or “hidden things visible” as the source material phrases it. is on a page with no illustrations (initially), only words. A lot of words actually. The incantation is so long we don’t hear the whole thing in the movie.

“Like the P in psychology,” Lucy reads, “the H in psychiatry, invisible ink or the truth in theology…”

Wait. What?

It’s no secret that much of the Narnia books’ fanbase is Christian (in America anyway) and Christians would say they do very much see truth in theology. I don’t necessarily think the filmmakers should have pandered to Christians but with the last movie having underperformed at the box office, why alienate part of the fanbase that’s already there? On reflection though, this line actually implies that there is truth in theology, but people don’t see it. Isn’t that offensive to atheists whom the filmmakers also wouldn’t want to offend? What a weird, unnecessary joke. Making it even weirder, it’ll soon become apparent the screenwriters do want to appeal to Christian fans of the books though they only seem to know how to do so in the shallowest way possible. The “truth in theology” line is one of the things that makes this movie’s script feel like a rough first draft to me.^[3]I know for a fact that it wasn’t a first draft since pages from a quite different version leaked on the internet at one point but that’s how it feels to me. The sad thing is if it were a first draft, I’d call it a fairly promising one. Much of Eustace’s dialogue is great and much of Caspian’s, Lucy’s and Edmund’s is fine if not particularly memorable. Subsequent drafts could have eliminated unnecessary lines, replaced really cheesy lines^[4]We’re getting to some of those. with more eloquent ones, and ironed out confusing plot points and inconsistencies.

Anyway, we cut to Caspian, Edmund and company searching the topiary garden for Lucy. Edmund finds her dagger. Just then, spears start to rain down in front of our heroes. “Stop right there or perish!” says the leader of the voices. The Dawn Treader’s crewmembers find their weapons snatched out of their hands. Invisible enemies knock them down.

Meanwhile, Lucy finishes the incantation. “The spell is complete. All is visible.” I’d love to know the previous line with which “visible” rhymed. I’d also have loved to have seen the illustrations on the page turn visible, as in the original book, but for some reason, the movie doesn’t do that. Instead, an old, bearded man (Bille Brown) materializes in front of Lucy. Oh no! It’s the Oppressor!

In the book, it’s Aslan whom Lucy meets at this point. The movie hasn’t exactly cut his scene with her though. It’s just moved it to later. I don’t really like the visual of how invisible things become visible in this movie by the way. Instead of fading in reverse, they sort of jerkily materialize with a gloopy sounding noise. It’s hard to explain but it reminds me of science fiction more than fantasy.

We cut back to Caspian. “What sort of creatures are you?” he demands of his opponents.

Voice 1: Big ones. With the head of a tiger and the body of a…
Voice 2: Different tiger.
Voice 1: You don’t want to mess with us.
Edmund: Or what?
Voice 3: Or I’ll claw you to death!
Voice 2: And I’ll run my tuft right through you!
Voice 1: And I’ll gnash you with my teeth!
Voice 4: And I’ll bite you with my fangs!

These threats are undermined by the creatures regaining visibility. They’re revealed to be silly looking dwarfs^[5]That’s not a criticism. They’re supposed to look silly., each with a single leg-not like they’ve each lost a leg but like they’re just naturally one-legged-and a gigantic foot. The speakers are all being upheld by others of their species to give the illusion that they’re taller.

“You mean squash us with your fat bellies?” Edmund asks. “Tickle us with your giant toes?” suggests Caspian. The leader of these dwarfs (the one played by Roy Billing) is dropped, and Edmund puts a sword to his throat. “What have you done with my sister, you little pipsqueak?” he demands. “Where is she?” After some hemming and hawing, the one-legged dwarf answers, “In the mansion.” “What mansion?” asks Edmund. Just then, the house appears near him. “Oh, that mansion,” he says. I feel like that line would be funnier if Skandar Keynes gave it a much drier delivery. Actually, I feel like it would be better if it were just “Oh.” Anyway, Eustace bursts out of the bushes, complaining about being left behind. “It’s the pig!” says one of the creatures upon seeing him. “This place just gets weirder and weirder!” says Eustace. I’m not sure if a boy in his culture would have used the term, weird, in that way but maybe he would have. I’m no expert. Lucy emerges from the mansion with “the Oppressor.” He bows to Caspian and Edmund and addresses one of them-don’t ask me which-as “Your Majesty.” This version of the reveal that he’s a good guy is different from the book’s but I’m fine with it.

Lucy: Caspian and Edmund, this is Coriakin. It’s his island.
Voice 1: That’s what he thinks! You have wronged us, magician!
Coriakin: I have not wronged you. I made you invisible for your own protection.
Voice 1: Protection?!
Voice 2: That’s oppressive!
Voice 1: Oppressor!
Coriakin: I have not oppressed you.
Voice 1: But you could have if you’d wanted to!
Coriakin: Begone.

He tosses some dust at them and the creatures bounce away in terror on their single legs, looking highly goofy. “What was that?” Lucy asks. “Lint but don’t tell them,” Coriakin replies.

Eustace: What were those things?
Coriakin: Dufflepuds.
Eustace: Right, of course, silly me.

Now in the book, the creatures were originally called duffers, duffer being an old-fashioned insult for a stupid person. Coriakin also didn’t turn them invisible for their protection. Instead, he turned them into giant-footed one-legged beings called monopods, mono meaning one, as punishment for their refusal to obey a perfectly reasonable command. Eventually, the book tells us, their old and their new name were combined into the term dufflepud. If the movie wasn’t going to do that and it’s understandable that they wouldn’t since it’s complicated, I’d rather they just had the puds be called monopods. Dufflepuds, without context, just sounds random. Anyway, in the book, they used Coriakin’s spell book to turn themselves invisible because they couldn’t stand the sight of their new forms but then they got tired of invisibility. There was this hilarious bit of Lucy trying to convince them that Coriakin’s punishment actually improved their appearances.

“And we’re extremely regrettable,” said the Chief Monopod, “that we can’t give you the pleasure of seeing us as we were before we were uglified, for you wouldn’t believe the difference, and that’s the truth, for there’s no denying we’re mortal ugly now, so we won’t deceive you.”
“Eh, that we are, Chief, that we are,” echoed the others, bouncing like so many toy balloons. “You’ve said it, you’ve said it.”
“But I don’t think you are at all,” said Lucy, shouting to make herself heard. “I think you look very nice.”
“Hear her, hear her,” said the Monopods. “True for you, Missie. Very nice we look. You couldn’t find a handsomer lot.” They said this without any surprise and did not seem to notice that they had changed their minds.
“She’s a-saying,” remarked the Chief Monopod, “as how we looked very nice before we were uglified.”
“True for you, Chief, true for you,” chanted the others. “That’s what she says. We heard her ourselves.”
“I did not,” bawled Lucy. “I said you’re very nice now.”
“So she did, so she did,” said the Chief Monopod, “said we were very nice then.”
“Hear ’em both, hear ’em both,” said the Monopods. “There’s a pair for you. Always right. They couldn’t have put it better.”
“But we’re saying just the opposite,” said Lucy, stamping her foot with impatience.
“So you are, to be sure, so you are,” said the Monopods. “Nothing like an opposite. Keep it up, both of you.”

Why couldn’t they be that funny in the movie? Oh well. It’s not like they’re unfunny.

Coriakin leads Caspian, Lucy, Edmund, Eustace and Drinian into his mansion. Lucy asks what meant about making the dufflepuds invisible for their own good.

Coriakin: It seemed the easiest way to protect them. From the evil.
Edmund: You mean the Mist?
Coriakin: I mean what lies behind the Mist.

He unfurls a giant piece of parchment on the floor. A three-dimensional map of the sea appears on it. In the margins, clips from the first Narnia movie play. I guess this installment in the series wanted to refer back to the most profitable one as much as possible.

Eustace gets another well-conceived bit of character depth, automatically saying, “It’s quite beautiful,” then when his cousins stare at him in surprise, adding snippily “I mean for a make-believe map of a make-believe world.” Coriakin’s map zooms in on a weird looking cloud of dark smoke with a green glow emanating from it.

Coriakin: There is the source of your troubles. Dark Island. A place where evil lurks. It can take any form. It can make your darkest dreams come true. It seeks to corrupt all goodness, to steal the light from this world.
Lucy: Excuse me, sir, could you try to be less vague and more specific in your descriptions? If we’re going to defeat this thing, it’d help to know its precise goals, powers and limitations.

Just kidding. All she says is “How do we stop it?”

Coriakin: You must break its spell. (pointing to Edmund) That sword you carry. There are six others.
Edmund: Have you seen them?
Coriakin: Yes.
Caspian: The six lords? They passed through here?
Coriakin: Indeed.
Caspian: Where were they headed?
Coriakin: Where I sent them.

In the book by the way, Coriakin is a really relaxed, friendly character, something that makes for a humorous contrast to the aura of fear the invisible dufflepuds had built up around him. Seeing him changed into this grim, portentous prophet of doom annoys me, especially as the justification for the personality change is a really silly plot. The magical map shifts to show another, more ordinary island with a blue star hovering over it. Look, I know I’ve dismissed some of the lines in the other Narnia movies as cheesy, but the following spiel of Coriakin’s is such a cheese-o-rama that it feels like it was written by a fantasy-loving teenager. (I’m allowed to say that because I once was a fantasy-loving teenager.) “You must follow the blue star to Ramandu’s Island. There the seven swords must be laid at Aslan’s table. Only then can their true magical power be released. But beware. You are all about to be tested. Until you lay down the seventh sword, evil has the upper hand. It will do everything in its power to tempt you. Be strong. Don’t fall into temptation. To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside yourself.”

I defy any serious actor to deliver that speech with a straight face!^[6]In all fairness, Bille Brown does manage to deliver it without hamming it up too much. But unlike some actors from the previous Narnia movies, neither does he make his lines sound better than they … Continue reading That is the way people who dislike fantasy think fantasy characters speak.

In the book, by the way, Coriakin magically creates a map of the islands the Dawn Treader has discovered on its voyage in a cool little scene, but he can’t make them a map of what’s to come. C. S. Lewis obviously denied him that ability since knowing what lay ahead in the voyage would ruin the story. I guess the movie’s Coriakin doesn’t totally ruin it. He only tells the voyagers about two of the islands they’ll encounter and doesn’t give very detailed descriptions of them or even very detailed directions for finding them. But that raises the question of why he doesn’t give them those things. However much the viewer wants to be surprised, the characters would want as much information as possible. Do they even think to ask?

Also, is it just me or does the whole collect-seven-swords-before-you-reach-your-final-destination-and-defeat-the-villain thing make it sound like this movie was written to be easily adapted into a video game? I remember when this film was still in preproduction and, figuring that they’d want to add some overarching threat or ticking time bomb to the book’s plot, I resigned myself to the inevitable and tried to guess what it could be. My first thought was that Caspian would need to find the seven lords or else the Telmarines would never accept his reign as legitimate. I rejected this idea since it made Caspian’s quest more selfish than noble^[7]Well, you could argue it’s not selfish in that he’s a good ruler and it really is good for Narnia if he’s in charge. But it still feels more selfish than him just seeking the lords … Continue reading and some of the lords would be dead anyway. Then I thought that the villains from the Lone Islands could follow the Dawn Treader to seek revenge. I dismissed that idea as just being silly. Why would they risk sailing into dangerous uncharted waters on a quest for vengeance that would almost certainly fail? Oh well, I thought, surely professional screenwriters will come up with a better plot than I can.

I’m not sure my faith was rewarded.

Next Week: The Last Temptation of Lucy Pevensie

We get a montage of life onboard the Dawn Treader as it sails eastward set to audio of one of Eustace’s diary entries. Those entries are a great source of humor in the book with the delusional way Eustace presents himself as a perpetual victim and everyone else as a villain. The movie actually makes them even funnier. “Dear diary,” Eustace writes, “there’s been an extraordinary turn of events. I’ve been abducted by my cousins and set adrift in uncharted waters in some ridiculous looking boat.” As Eustace writes that part, he’s seated in his hammock in the morning and Reepicheep’s tail dangles from the hammock above, annoying him. “What’s worse is I share quarters with an obnoxious mouse thing. And I thought bunking with my cousin was bad enough! So far, every person I’ve met in this strange place suffers from the most florid delusions, chasing green mists and looking for lost lords. I can only assume that this is the result of poor diet or they’re all just barking mad.” By now, the scene has changed to daytime and everyone is on deck. Caspian and Drinian are looking at a parchment^[1]I’d say a map but they’re supposed to be in uncharted waters., Lucy is mending her clothes, and Edmund is cleaning Bern’s sword. “Cousin Edmund is no exception,” writes Eustace. “He spends every spare second rubbing that tin sword of his like it’s some magic lantern. Poor fool clearly needs a hobby.” Reepicheep however tells Edmund the sword is going to be magnificent and jokingly asks if it comes in a smaller size. “Peeving marmot!” mutters Eustace who is huddled in a corner among some supplies, journaling. “He’s even more deluded than my cousin! In England, we had mousetraps and all that sort of thing.” A seagull lands near Eustace. “Speaking of food, you don’t know where I could get any, do you?” It’s revealed that a couple of sailors are staring at him. “Uh, why are you talking to that bird?” one of them, the minotaur, asks. “Why, I just naturally assumed he could-” The sailors guffaw and one of them, the human, describes Eustace as “mad as a loon” for talking to birds. This isn’t hilarious or anything, but I do appreciate that this movie establishes that not all animals talk in the world of Narnia. Between the Pevensies riding talking horses and automatically assuming a random bear they met could talk, I was wondering how they got meat.

Below deck, a hungry Eustace, after making sure no one is looking, pockets an orange. But he didn’t look hard enough. “Are you aware stealing rations is a capital offense at sea?” demands a voice. It belongs to Reepicheep. After seeing the size of who is confronting him, Eustace clearly intends to ignore him, but Reepicheep won’t be dismissed. “Men have been keelhauled for less!” he insists. “For what?” asks Eustace. “For treason and sneakiness and general nuisancery,” sputters Reepicheep. Do you see what I mean when I describe him as sounding like Bertie Wooster? By the way, in the book, Reepicheep catches Eustace stealing water after the ship has lost most of its water in a terrible storm.^[2]There will be a terrible storm later in the movie, but it won’t have nearly as serious consequences as the book’s storm had. Since there hasn’t been any mention of food being short in the movie, Eustace stealing one orange doesn’t really seem that bad. I guess the situation is similar enough in that the crew has no way of knowing when or if the Dawn Treader will reach land and they need to save as much of their rations as possible. But talking about keelhauling and treason still feels like an overreaction on Reepicheep’s part. “Look, just hand over the orange and we’ll let the matter pass,” he says. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Eustace and starts to walk away. “Allow me to clarify,” says Reepicheep, blocking his path or rather begins to say as he’s about to block his path when Eustace grabs him by the tail. “Look,” he says, “I’ve had quite enough of you-” OK, I know I called Eustace one of the best written and best adapted characters in this series as well as the most well-acted, but nothing is perfect, and I do feel like they’re sanitizing him in this scene. In the equivalent moment in the book, Eustace sneaks up on Reepicheep and tries to swing him around by his tail for fun. Just grabbing the tail in anger, while inappropriate, doesn’t seem that mean by comparison.

But Reepicheep is certainly appalled by it. “Unhand the tail,” he says in a chilling voice, drawing his sword. “The great Aslan himself gave me this tail. No one, I repeat, no one touches the tail! Period exclamation mark!” I’ve read some fans online object that to sound more British, Reepicheep should have said “full stop exclamation mark” instead of “period exclamation mark.”^[3]At least he didn’t say “exclamation point.” I just think it’s a dumb phrase either way and I’m annoyed that the character of Reepicheep said either version. And who thought “no one touches the tail” sounded better than “a tail is the honor and glory of a mouse?” Anyway, Eustace is intimidated enough to let go of the tail. “Now I will have the orange,” says Reepicheep, “then I will have satisfaction.” He uses his tail to hand Eustace a butcher’s knife so they can duel. “Please! Please! I’m a pacifist!” Eustace protests. He was a pacifist in the book too or his parents are pacificists anyway, so credit goes to the filmmakers for including that. Reepicheep won’t be dissuaded so Eustace runs up on deck. Foolishly, he doesn’t drop the knife, not realizing that Reepicheep would be too honorable to fight him unarmed. Reepicheep swings on a rope in front of Eustace. “Trying to run away? We’re on a boat, you know,” he taunts him. “Please,” says Eustace, “can’t we just discuss this?” Reepicheep cuts a hole in Eustace’s shirt. “That was for stealing,” he says then he spears the orange Eustace was hiding. “That was for lying.” Then he strikes Eustace across the face. “And that was for good measure!” The knife in Eustace’s hand trembles but it’s because he’s now angrier than he is scared. He swipes unsuccessfully at the mouse who jumps out of the way. “That’s the spirit!” he says. “We have ourselves a duel!” He tosses the orange to Drinian whose expression is hilariously resigned.

The rest of the crew are happy to see a little boy get beat up by a mouse. I guess they’re really desperate for entertainment. Again, for the most part, I love the writing for Eustace’s character in the movie, but it hasn’t shown him being enough a nuisance for the whole crew’s delight at his humiliation to feel justified. While we’ve heard him complain obnoxiously when he was first brought on board, lately he seems to have been keeping to himself, writing in diary and not bothering anybody.

In the book, when Eustace refuses to give him satisfaction, an angry Reepicheep instead uses his sword as a switch to lay down some corporal punishment. The movie instead has him see potential in Eustace that no one else sees and take this moment to playfully teach him how to swordfight. Since it’s rather cliche to have two characters start out hating each other and then develop a deep bond, I see the appeal of this change to Reepicheep’s character though I feel like him initially hating Eustace made more sense given his personality. From what I’ve heard from the people who love this movie, the relationship between these two characters is one of their favorite things about it and I can understand that. Eustace and Reepicheep are the only characters whom I feel the screenwriters really enjoyed writing and the only ones from the book whom they found a source of inspiration. With Caspian, Edmund and Lucy, there’s a palpable sense that the book gave them no ideas and I can feel them forcing arcs for the characters.^[4]This is probably because Eustace was the only character with a major arc in the book. I don’t mean that as a criticism by the way. I don’t believe every book needs to be about character … Continue reading That being said…this scene doesn’t work for me. Partly that’s because of what I wrote above and partly it’s because I don’t like the way Reepicheep is written here. His instructions range from silly (“Stop flapping your wings like a drunken pelican!”) to vague and cliche. (“Be nimble! It’s a dance, boy, a dance!”) In another book by C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, a character teaches the protagonist how to use a sword. I don’t how much research Lewis did but he really creates the impression that what the mentor character says is what an actual instructor would have said in a historical culture where swords were used.

“That shield is too heavy,” he said. “Here’s the one for you. Slip it on, thus. And understand from the outset; your shield is a weapon, not a wall. You’re fighting with it every bit as much as your sword. Watch me, now. You see the way I twist my shield — make it flicker like a butterfly. There’d be arrows and spears and sword points flying off it in every direction if we were in a hot engagement. Now: here’s your sword. No, not like that. You want to grip it firm, but light. It’s not a wild animal that’s trying to run away from you. That’s better. Now, your left foot forward. And don’t look at my face, look at my sword. It isn’t my face is going to fight you. And now, I’ll show you a few guards.”

Why couldn’t Reepicheep have been written like that in this scene?

The duel ends with Reepicheep pretending to topple overboard, sneaking up behind Eustace when he peers over the railing, tapping him on the shoulder with his tail and knocking him down when he turns. “And that is that!” Eustace knocks over a basket and someone crawls out of it. It’s the young girl whose mother was devoured by the Mist. “Gael? What are you doing here?” asks her father. I kind of despise the name Gael by the way. For the first two movies, the writers did a good job of inventing names that sound Narnian. Here they just took the name Gail and changed a letter. Same with her mother’s name, Helaine. At least the father’s name, Rhince, is from the book. (He’s the Dawn Treader’s first mate there.) When reports on the filming of the movie first mentioned this character, fans of the book were baffled as to her identity and some in the community took to calling her the MLG or the Mysterious Little Girl, so with the court’s permission, that’s what I’m going to call her. For a moment, it looks like MLG is in big trouble. Then her father, moved by her vulnerability, puts a protective arm around her.

All are silent as a stern looking Drinian approaches. “Looks like we have an extra crew member,” he says. Then he just hands her the orange and walks away. “Welcome aboard,” says Lucy with a smile. “Your Majesty,” says an awed MLG, curtseying. “Call me Lucy,” says the queen and leads her away. So… stealing one orange is a capital offense on the Dawn Treader but stowing away and giving them a whole extra mouth to feed with nothing in return is fine? Maybe the reason Reepicheep stressed the strictness of the rules was to make Drinian’s surprising tolerance as heartwarming as possible. It succeeds decently enough but it could have been a lot better. I feel that’s largely because of the casting. Not that any of the actors in this little moment give bad performances per se. But in the first two movies, every actor, even those in supporting roles, made a big impression. Hardly anyone in this film does. Just compare moments like Mrs. Pevensie bidding her children farewell, possibly for the last time, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) or Glenstorm’s wife realizing that one of her sons is dead or imprisoned, mostly like the former, in Prince Caspian (2008) to this. There’s no comparison.

I’m really not sure how MLG was able to stay hidden for so long by the way. Given how much progress Edmund has made cleaning his sword, it seems like the ship has been sailing for at least a few days.

As the crew gets back to work, Reepicheep tells Eustace, “Good match. I’ll make a swordsman of you yet.” Eustace actually smiles, grateful, before scrunching his face into its usual scowl and saying, “Yes, well…if the playing field were a little more even, it would have been an entirely different result.” Reepicheep chuckles as Eustace stalks off. “Indeed.” Throughout the first part of the book, Eustace never expresses anything but contempt for Narnian culture which he regards as disgustingly primitive compared to that of “a civilized country” such as his own. Here, it’s implied he does find Narnia cool deep down but is too proud to admit it. (Remember the impression I mentioned that Eustace’s character in the book gave the writers ideas whereas with every other character except Reepicheep, they had to force ideas?) I like the change. It makes Eustace feel more multidimensional and since the movie moves his most dramatic character development to later than it is in the book, there’s something to be said for starting to humanize him here to compensate.

The Dawn Treader arrives at the lush green shores of an island.

Caspian: Looks uninhabited. But if the lords followed the Mist east, they would have stopped here
Drinian: Could be a trap.
Edmund: Or it could hold some answers. Caspian?
Caspian: We’ll spend the night on shore, scour the island in the morning.

When the Dawn Treader reaches an island at this point in the book, Caspian won’t let the crew go on shore after dark for safety reasons, let alone sleep there. Of course, this isn’t the same island as the movie rearranges the order of events somewhat. This messes with the book’s subtle structure, something I didn’t realize it had until I’d read it several times. When the literary Edmund and Lucy first arrive on board, Drinian recaps the voyage so far to them. He mentions a tournament and a pirate attack, either of which could have taken place in a realistic story. Then we get the adventure on the Lone Islands and the storm, both of which are fairly mundane. Except for the magical painting and the talking mouse, there’s not much fantastical about the story. Then on the next island, there’s a dragon and after the crew leaves, they encounter a giant sea serpent. While those are fantastical beasts though, they’re still presented as ordinary animals.^[5]Something important does happen on Dragon Island that’s explicitly magical. The experience is kept somewhat distant from readers though. Then we get an island that contains something explicitly magical. Then we get one with even more magic. And the islands just get more and more surreal from there. The movie’s restructuring loses this the-further-east-the-crazier-the-story-gets thing. Still, that’s hardly the worst change.

As everyone slumbers on the beach, giant footprints appear in the sand around them. Voices speak but we can’t see anyone. All we can see is fog coming from invisible mouths. This has the potential to be such a scary scene and it’s frustrating that the movie is too fast paced for it to register that way, especially since the changes it makes to the story make it seem like a goal of the filmmakers was to make it more suspenseful and action packed than the book was. Anyway, one of the voices says, “It seems they’ve brought a pig” in response to Eustace’s snoring. “This one,” says another voice, looking at the sleeping Lucy, “It’s female.” A footprint appears next to MLG. “So’s this one,” says a voice. The pages of a book lying next to Lucy turn. “This one reads!” says the previous voice. Now in the book, only a little girl has the power to free these invisible creatures from their spell, but this is never mentioned in the movie, making their specific interest in “females” kind of odd and even a little creepy. Maybe the idea is they think a girl would be easier to capture.

“Let’s take her,” says the voice we heard first. Invisible hands are clamped over Lucy’s mouth, and she’s dragged away through the brush. Since I just criticized the first part of this scene for not being as creepy as it should have been, I’ll praise this part for doing a relatively better job on that score. Lucy is plopped down somewhere in a garden full of fanciful topiary. She draws her sword, but the unseen enemies knock it out of her hand then knock her off her feet.

Voice 1 (Roy Billing): There is no escape.
Voice 2 (Neil G. Young)^[6]Trying to match the dialogue to the right actors is kind of a lost cause. This is the best I can do. Sorry for any miscrediting.: Well put!
Voice 3 (Greg Poppleton): Scary.
Voice 4 (Nicholas Neild): Yeah!
Lucy: What are you?
Voice 4: We are terrifying invisible beasts!
Voice 1: If you could see us, you would be really intimidated.
Voice 2: You forgot to mention that we are very large.
Lucy: Well, what do you want?
Voice 1: You. You’ll do what we ask.
Voice 2: She will!
Voice 4: Very clear!
Voice 3: Well put.
Voice 4: Yeah!
Lucy: Or what?
Voice 1: Or death!
Voices (chanting): Death! Death! Death! Death!
Lucy: Well, I wouldn’t be much use to you dead now, would I?
Pause
Voice 1: I hadn’t thought of that.
Voice 2: No, you hadn’t.
Voice 3: Fair point.

That’s pretty funny though I’d maintain these characters were even funnier in the source material. One of the voices tells Lucy if she doesn’t comply, they’ll just kill her friends. She cringes in defeat.

Lucy: What do you want with me?
Voice 1: You will enter the house of the Oppressor.
Lucy: What house?
Voice 1: This one.

An invisible door opens before Lucy, revealing the interior of a house. Actually, this building isn’t so much invisible as it has a cloaking mechanism. If it were really invisible, either we would see all the furniture and everything inside it or when the door opened, Lucy would still see nothing. But enough quibbling.

“Upstairs you’ll find the Book of Incantations,” explains the chief voice. “Recite the spell that makes the unseen seen.” Lucy hesitates and the voices, all of them, remind her of what will happen to her friends if she disobeys. “Why don’t you do it yourselves?” Lucy asks suspiciously. “We can’t read,” says the first voice. “Can’t write either as a matter of fact,” says the second. “Or add,” says the third. In a nice touch, the movie implies they didn’t need to threaten Lucy to get her help. as she responds by saying, “Why didn’t you just say so?” The voices warn her to beware the Oppressor (“He’s very oppressive!”) and Lucy steps through the door. It ominously closes behind her. This scenario is slightly different from the book. There, the invisible enemies didn’t kidnap Lucy. They just confronted the Narnians and refused to let them leave alive unless Lucy went upstairs and worked the spell for them to which she agreed. I don’t mind the simplification though. Perhaps it helps the pacing.

Next Week: The Book of Incantations

As the sun sets-this scene has some of the nicer lighting in the movie by the way-Drinian announces that the Dawn Treader has reached the Lone Islands, specifically the port of Narrowhaven. Caspian and Edmund look at the oddly still and silent town through a telescope.

Caspian: Strange. Not a Narnian flag in sight.
Edmund: But the Lone Islands have always been Narnia’s.^[1]You may remember that the White Witch was the Empress of them back in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Drinian: Seems suspicious.
Edmund: I say we prepare a landing party. Drinian?
Drinian: Forgive me, Your Majesty, but the chain of command starts with King Caspian on this ship.
Awkward pause
Edmund: Right.

I don’t feel like that little moment was necessary. It basically serves to make it very clear there will be some sort of power struggle between Edmund and Caspian later in the story when it wouldn’t have hurt anything for it to be more of a surprise. Still, I don’t hate it or anything.

“We’ll use longboats,” says Caspian, “Drinian pick some men and come ashore.” Two longboats enter the harbor, leaving the Dawn Treader behind. Among the sailors in them are Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace and Reepicheep. “Onward!” cries the last one. “The thrill of the unknown lies ahead!” That’s kind of an odd thing to say at this point since the Lone Islands are technically part of Narnia though not one that any of the characters have visited recently, making them somewhat unknown but not nearly as much as the unexplored lands the voyagers will see later. In the book, Reepicheep says, “it is after the Lone Islands that the adventure really begins.” But maybe I’m just nitpicking. “Couldn’t it have waited till the morning?” Eustace gripes. “There is no honor in turning away from adventure, lad,” replies Reepicheep. Let me take this moment to applaud the screenwriters. That definitely sounds like something the book’s Reepicheep would say. Well, I could argue his position ends up being a little more nuanced than that^[2]Reepicheep did surprisingly advocate nonviolent solutions in two scenes in the book though neither of those counted as “turning away from adventure” and in the last chapter, he chided … Continue reading but that would really be overdemanding of me. “Listen!” says Lucy. “Where is everyone?” This would be a good moment to pause and take in the suspicious silence, but I fear the movie is a little too fast paced for that. “Come on, Jellylegs,” says Reepicheep, extending a paw to help Eustace out of the boat. “I’m quite capable of doing it myself,” says Eustace, stumbling and hurting himself on the stone steps. Reepicheep rolls his eyes. “And you’re certain he’s related by blood?” Caspian asks Lucy as he looks back at Eustace. I feel like that line would be a lot funnier if Caspian said it in a mischievous whisper for only her and Edmund to hear. As it is, he sounds kind of like a jerk. This whole situation was quite different in the book, almost the opposite. There the kings and queen suspected nothing amiss in the Lone Islands and decided to take a little stroll on the most sparsely populated of them before going to Narrowhaven. (“If Caspian had been as experienced then as he became later on in this voyage,” the books tell us, “He would not have made this suggestion; but at the moment it seemed an excellent one.”) They invite Eustace to join them out of politeness and he accepts because he’s desperate to get off the ship. As it is in the movie, there’s no reason why Eustace should be part of this potentially dangerous spy mission but do not question his presence! He’s the best part of this section by a long shot.

A loud bell clangs in a nearby tower, scattering some birds. Caspian automatically aims a crossbow at it. As the noise dies down, he collects himself. “Reepicheep,” he says, “stay here with Drinian’s men and secure the place. If we don’t come back by dawn, send a party.” I’m not sure why he can’t take Reepicheep, as well as a few other people besides Edmund, Lucy and Eustace-Eustace for crying out loud! I understand he doesn’t want to endanger everyone at once but there’s such a thing as strength in numbers too. Oh well. The three monarchs and Eustace explore the seemingly abandoned port town. I do basically like the design of it by the way. Eustace peeks through the window of a house and sees a family huddled together in fear.

Hilariously, his reaction to this is to say to the others, “Yeah, looks like nobody’s in, so do you think we should head back?” This part of the movie really plays up the character’s cowardice whereas the book played up his whininess more but that’s not a huge change. (It’s not like he hasn’t whined at all recently.) But the others want to explore the bell tower. Edmund, wanting to get Eustace out of the way, invites him to cover and “guard something.” Not wanting to explore the mysterious building, he gladly accepts. Caspian wordlessly hands him a knife. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” he babbles, “Don’t worry.” After his cousins have been inside for a few seconds, he calls, “I’m ready to go when you are.”

The interior of the tower turns out to be a pretty cool set. It’s dusty and cavernous and features ancient headless statues.

In the center of the room, stands a table with an official looking book on it. Edmund shines his torch on the pages, illuminating a list of names.

Lucy: Who are all these people?
Edmund: Why have they been crossed out?
Lucy: It looks like some kind of…fee.
Caspian (grimly): Slave traders.

Just then, the bells ring again. Men with weapons slide down the ropes, and a fight ensues. Again, this pretty different from the book. There, Caspian and company find the slave traders picnicking in a meadow and it’s only then that it occurs to him that there might be danger here. I prefer the way the book does the scene as the villains are more of a surprise. It’s pretty obvious from the start of the movie’s scene that something bad is about to happen to the main characters. Still, this isn’t the worst change you could make to the story. Anyway, the fight is interrupted by a blood curdling shriek. My first thought, watching the film, was that a woman had just been gruesomely murdered. Everyone turns to see one of the attackers (Colin Moody) holding Eustace and pressing a knife against his throat. “Unless you want to hear this one squeal like a girl again,” he says, “I’d say you should drop your weapons.”

Caspian, Edmund and Lucy reluctantly comply. “Put them in irons,” says the man. “Let’s take these two (Eustace and Lucy) to market. Send those two (Edmund and Caspian) to the dungeons.” Now in the book, Caspian insists that no one tells the slave traders his true identity lest they kill him to save themselves from the penalty of capturing the king, so I’m not exactly thrilled that the first thing the cinematic Caspian says as he’s being cuffed is “Listen to me, you insolent fool! I am your king!” Naturally, his captors don’t listen. One of them strikes Edmund in the face. “You’re going to pay for that!” he snaps. “Actually, someone else is going to pay for all of you,” says another man (David Vallon), one in slightly fancier clothes, stepping out of the shadows. At first, I assumed this was supposed to be Pug, the leader of the slave traders in the book. It turns out he’s actually a combination of him and Governor Gumpas, another character. In the book, Gumpas wasn’t really leading the slave traders. His crime lay in allowing the illegal slave trade in the Lone Island on the grounds that it boosted the economy by drawing tourists or something like that. In the movie, it seems like the slave traders have somehow taken over the government of the Lone Islands themselves. It’s really not explained clearly.

Edmund wakes up the next morning in a dungeon to find Caspian angrily kicking the iron door to no avail. Again, the adaptation is making Caspian look hotheaded and pathetic rather than calm and capable as he is at this point in the source material. “It’s hopeless,” says a weirdly calm voice in the darkness, “You’ll never get out.”^[3]I don’t mean that “weirdly calm” bit as a criticism. I believe the voice is supposed to sound weirdly calm. “Who’s there?” Edmund demands. “Nobody,” says the voice, “Just a voice in my head.” Caspian investigates and finds another prisoner (Terry Norris), an old man with wild, overgrown hair and very wide eyes.

He recognizes him. “Lord Bern?” he says. “Perhaps once,” says the prisoner sadly, “but I’m no longer deserving of that title.” Edmund asks if this is one of the seven missing lords, which it is of course. Bern studies Caspian’s face. “You remind me of a king I once loved well,” he says. “That man was my father,” Caspian says. Bern cries and kneels before Caspian, begging for forgiveness. Caspian helps him up. In the book, Lord Bern is not a pathetic old prisoner but a free and prosperous man who has settled down on the island of his own free will. He buys Caspian from the slave traders out of compassion and because Caspian reminds him of his old friend, Caspian’s father. I love the irony of the slave traders unknowingly helping Caspian in his quest and bringing about their own destruction by selling him to Bern, so I’m not happy about this alteration.

Edmund hears screaming from outside. He looks out the dungeon window and sees a cart full of prisoners being driven through the streets. A man (Arthur Angel) and a little girl (Arabella Morton) are running after it. The man manages to grab onto the end of the cart but one of the slave traders roughly knocks him to the ground. “Mummy!” howls the girl. “Stay with Daddy!” yells one of the women in the cart (Rachel Blakely.) All this is witnessed not just by Edmund but by Lucy and Eustace who are tied up with some other captives, waiting to be auctioned off in the slave market. “Don’t worry! I’ll find you!” the fallen man calls to his wife. She and the other prisoners on the cart are hustled onto a longboat. Caspian has now joined Edmund at the dungeon window. “Where are they taking them?” he asks Bern. “Keep watching,” Bern replies.

On my first viewing, I assumed that this little scene was just supposed to demonstrate the cruelty of the slave trade, but it turns out to be something less mundane. Suddenly, the bright blue sky darkens, and clouds swell ominously. It’s common of course for the weather in movies to reflect the dramatic situation but this looks a little ridiculous. That’s because it’s magic. Suddenly, a glowing green mist appears in the harbor. No, this is not a surprise appearance by the Time Warp Trio. (We should be so lucky.)

The mist bounces around-I can’t think of a better description than that-in wisps, enveloping the boat full of screaming people. It dissipates as swiftly as it appeared, leaving nothing behind.

Caspian: What happened?
Bern: It’s a sacrifice.
Caspian: Where did they go?
Bern: No one knows. The Mist was first seen in the east. Reports of fishermen and sailors disappearing out at sea. We lords made a pact to find the source of the Mist and destroy it. They each set sail. But none came back. You see, if they don’t sell you to the slave traders, you’re likely to be fed to the Mist.
Edmund: We have to find Lucy! Before it’s too late.

That explanation of Bern’s really raises as many questions as it answers. How did the slave traders realize that they needed to appease the Mist by sacrificing people to it? Can it communicate with them somehow? How? And why can’t they just avoid the Mist by staying away from the east and fishing elsewhere? What’s this distinction Bern makes between the slave traders and “they?” (He speaks of Caspian and Edmund being sold to the slave traders, not the slave traders selling them.) Is the governor of the Lone Islands collaborating with the brigands as I’ve suggested? Why aren’t any of these important characters given names? Exposition has never been a strong suit of these movies, the worst example being in Prince Caspian when the Telmarines brought Trumpkin to be executed at Cair Paravel with no explanation rather than executing him right where he was. But at least with the other two movies, I could follow the plot by reading the book, not that that excuses the screenwriters. Here, I’m totally at sea. And rescuing the Lone Islanders devoured by this mysterious Mist ends up being one of the story’s main goals, so it’s rather annoying that the circumstances of their sacrifice are so vague.

That’s not to say the Mist is completely original to this adaptation. What the filmmakers have done is taken the Dark Island, one of the islands the voyagers discover in the book and easily the scariest one, given it a mind of sorts and made it a villain who is a constant threat to the characters throughout their voyage. I could maybe live with that. I feel that adding an overarching villain to the story^[4]As opposed to a villain who only shows up at one island. distracts from the quest for Aslan’s country but an adaptation that made the change could still tell a good story in its own right and making the Dark Island a villain is probably better, from a book fan’s perspective, than inventing an original baddie. But did they have to make it green?! Why not have it be dark like in the book?^[5]The reason for the color change, from what I’ve gathered, is that in early drafts of the script, The Lady of the Green Kirtle, the villain of another Narnia book, was behind the Mist. I’m … Continue reading Don’t get me wrong. Pale green can be an effectively eerie color. One of my favorite fantasy movies, Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, uses it to great effect in one of its most memorable scenes. But it works best against a dark background, not a bright blue one. The filmmakers seem to have realized this hence the sudden change in the weather that heralds the Mist’s presence in this scene. But that didn’t help. When the Mist appears in this scene, it looks like a cartoon skunk farted. The weird, bouncy way the Mist is animated also makes it look more silly than creepy.^[6]The tendrils of smoke actually look a little like the skipping stone in Walden Media’s logo. Was that intentional?! I believe that adaptations can include things that aren’t from the source material but are great in their own ways. The Mist is not one of those.

We cut to Lucy being auctioned off at the slave market. I assume the merchants bidding on her are from Calormen as they are in the book. Now the Calormenes from the Narnia books have been criticized for embodying negative stereotypes of Middle Easterners and you’d expect filmmakers to be worried about how to depict them. Apparently not the filmmakers who made this movie though. The costumes the bidders sport are quite stereotypically Middle Eastern. What offends me here isn’t any possible racism but how boring and generic those costumes look. Whether adapters want to lean into the whole Middle Eastern flavor of the Calormenes or whether they want to steer away from it, they should look cool. The book describes them as “a wise, wealthy, courteous, cruel and ancient people.” Maybe you find that description racist, but you’ve got to admit it sounds cool! These Calormenes do not look cool, which is disappointing since this is the only glimpse of their culture Walden Media’s Narnia movies would give us. And costume design had been a strength of the series too.

While Lucy is sold, Edmund and Caspian are also hustled out of their cell, their hands tied. Bern is too though we don’t see him clearly yet. Eustace is up for auction now. “Who’ll kick off the bidding?” asks the auctioneer, who’s also the one who captured Eustace by the way. Nobody responds.

Auctioneer: Come on now. He may not look like much but, uh, he’s strong.
Man in Crowd: He’s strong all right! Smells like the rear end of a minotaur.
Eustace: That is an outrageous lie! I won the school hygiene award two years running!

While that specific dialogue isn’t from the book, nobody wanting to buy Eustace is and I love that it’s included here. “I’ll take him off your hands,” says a familiar voice in the crowd, “I’ll take them all of your hands!” A man in the crowd pulls off his head revealing himself to be Drinian and the speaker, Reepicheep, to have been under that hood. “For Narnia!” cries the mouse and others in the crowd pull of their hoods and start fighting. It’s the rescue party from the Dawn Treader. The man leading Caspian and Edmund away is distracted by the melee, giving a still handcuffed Caspian the opportunity to knock him out.

Edmund overpowers his guard, allowing Bern, who wasn’t handcuffed for some reason, to get his keys and toss them to Caspian. The terrified Eustace also manages to snag some keys, free himself and sneak away from the fight which other slaves and sympathetic Lone Islanders have joined. The leader of slave traders, whom I might as well call Gumpas to make this easier, also slips away with all the money he can carry. In the book, the Dawn Treader didn’t have enough men to rescue the slaves this way. They hadn’t known they’d need an army when they set out after all. Instead, Caspian and Bern tricked the bad guys into thinking they were a greater force than they were by things like having the ship fly all its flags and hang out its shields, all its fighting men appearing in full armor and send signals to a nonexistent fleet. It may not sound very gripping in summary, but it made for a really funny section in practice. It’s galling for me as a fan to see the movie throw it all in the garbage and replace it with this rather silly action scene. Even if they wanted this part to be suspenseful rather than humorous, the book’s version could have been that too with just a slight twist of emphasis and anyway, this scene in the movie is pretty comedic too. I guess they tried to stay true to spirit of the book by having the rescue party use trickery with their disguises. But, honestly, did the characters even need to do that? Conceal their weapons, yes, but disguises? The implication was that people came to the slave auctions from outside the islands. Drinian and company would have been seen as potential customers, not potential slaves. Reepicheep frees Lucy and she joins the fight. I expressed regret that Lucy took so little part in the action scenes in the last movie when it would have been much more in keeping with her character in the books than it was for Susan’s. I wanted to see her in more action scenes but not like this!

I know, I know. I should really write about how this action scene works on its own terms instead of just complaining that it’s untrue to the book. It’s…not terrible, I guess but I feel like the battle scenes in the first two movies were better. I feel like it’d work better if we knew more about these villains and could enjoy seeing the good guys trounce them more. To be fair, the book’s version required a good amount of exposition which might have felt weird to do in a movie for a conflict that would only last a few scenes. Still, I’d actually rather the Lone Islands section be completely cut from the story than adapted this way.

Anyway, Eustace makes it down to the harbor and gets into a longboat. He’s followed by Gumpas. Eustace looks helplessly down at the oars. “Oh, you’re a boat in a magical world,” he carps, “Can’t you row yourself?” Gumpas draw a knife and sneaks up behind him. Trying to balance a heavy oar in his hands, Eustace accidentally knocks him into the water. “Oh, God, I hope that wasn’t the British Consul!” he says. I love Eustace so much! He’s practically the only good thing about this part of the movie.

Even though this adaptation has completely flown in the face of the book with the scene just described, it could still mollify me by including the scene of Caspian confronting Governor Gumpas, stripping him of his power and making Lord Bern the Duke of the Lone Islands, some version of that scene anyway.

Some slight allusion to it at least.

No?

OK, then!

The victorious Narnians parade through the streets of Narrowhaven as the formerly oppressed people cheer. (It really would be nice to have that explained more clearly.) The desperate man we saw earlier, the one whose wife was fed to the Mist, runs up to Caspian, followed by his daughter and her aunt (Catarina Hebbard.) Drinian, acting as a bodyguard, gets in between the man and Caspian, but Caspian overrules him and allows the man to come forward.

Man: My wife was taken just this morning. I beg you take me with you.
Daughter: I want to come!
Man: No, Gael, stay with your aunt. (to Caspian) I’m a fine sailor. Been on the seas my whole life.
Caspian: Of course, you must.
Man: Thank you!
Daughter: Daddy!
Man: If I ever not come back…(he hugs her) Now be good.

A sympathetic Lucy observes this farewell.

So Caspian is now setting out to find and destroy the source of the Mist, hopefully succeeding where the six lords failed. Shouldn’t this scene feel more tense? Shouldn’t someone (probably Edmund) ask Caspian how they know the Mist isn’t just going to devour them before they get near it? And shouldn’t Caspian say something along the lines of “I don’t know but we have to try to help?” Instead, except for this little bit with the family, the mood of the whole scene is triumphant and even that bit goes by too quickly to have much emotional impact. Mind you, in the book, the crew of the Dawn Treader definitely left the Lone Islands in a triumphant mood so I’m actually asking the adaptation to be less like the book here. But if they’re going to change the story so that the crew is now dealing with a mysterious threat about which they know little, shouldn’t that lead them to changing the mood? It doesn’t really make sense otherwise.

As they’re about to board, the Narnians are met by Lord Bern, now much healthier looking. He hands Caspian an ancient, dirt encrusted sword.

Bern: This was given to me by your father. I hid it in a cave all these years.
Edmund: That’s an old Narnian sword!^[7]Don’t ask me how he can tell under all that grime. I’m stumped.
Bern: It’s from your golden age. There are seven such swords, gifts from Aslan to protect Narnia. (to Caspian) Your father entrusted them to us. Here, take it and may it protect you.

Um, weren’t the Telmarines enemies of Narnia? Why would Aslan give them magical swords (which aren’t from the book) to protect it?^[8]To be fair, there are times in the book where C. S. Lewis seems to have forgotten the relationship between Telmar and Narnia in Prince Caspian. I mentioned the dryad thing in the last post. One of … Continue reading Of course, since Bern tells us these swords are from the golden age of Narnia when Lucy, Edmund and their siblings reigned, the implication is that Aslan didn’t specifically give the swords to the Telmarines. Apparently, Caspian’s father just found them somewhere. But how would he know what they were? Shouldn’t Edmund and Lucy be the ones explaining the significance of the swords to Bern rather than vice versa? Maybe when Caspian’s father entrusted the swords to the lords, the idea was that they would stop the swords from helping the Narnians and defeating the Telmarines. Not sure how they could do that if the swords were magical, but it’s the best explanation I’ve got.^[9]I’d ask why Caspian IX didn’t just destroy the swords but later we’ll see that one of them is able to resist an enchantment that befell its bearer, so it’s not a stretch to … Continue reading Anyway, the crowd cheers. “Thank you, my lord,” Caspian says, “and we shall find your lost citizens.” Then he gives the sword to Edmund who stares at it in awe. Lucy smiles. Eustace just looks at Edmund like he’s nuts.

Next Week: There’s a Drain on the Dawn Treader’s Food Supplies-Two Drains Actually

When we last left Lucy, Edmund and Eustace, they had resurfaced to find that they were no longer at Cambridge but in the open sea with the sailing vessel from the painting looming over them. I’m pleased to report the ship, the Dawn Treader, looks much as the book describes.

Her prow was gilded and shaped like the head of a dragon with wide open mouth. She had only one mast and one large, square sail which was a rich purple. The sides of the ship — what you could see of them where the gilded wings of the dragon ended — were green.

I’m displeased to report that…it doesn’t look very good. In fact, I distinctly remember when I first saw it, my heart sank. To my eyes, the colors, red, green and gold, clash with each other and the whole thing looks overly shiny and fake, plastic even. It’s very obviously a prop and doesn’t give the illusion of reality that, say, Tumnus’s cave in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) or the Telmarine castle in Prince Caspian (2008) give. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it started out shiny and grew gradually more weathered looking as the titular voyage progressed, but I can’t see that that’s the case.

This may be nitpicking, but the dragon design of the prow strikes me as more like an Oriental dragon when a European one would make more sense for Narnia.

Our heroes desperately try to swim out of the ship’s path. (Eustace is noticeably a less capable swimmer than Edmund or Lucy.) A couple of sailors dive off the ship’s deck and swim after them. There’s hardly enough time to build suspense as to whether they’re enemies before it’s revealed that one of those sailors is Caspian (Ben Barnes.) As you’ve probably guessed, they’re in Narnia. Edmund and Lucy are happy to be rescued but Eustace hysterically fights off the sailor holding onto him, yelling, “I don’t want to go! I’m going to go back to England! I’m going back to England!” That’s not from the book but it sounds exactly like Eustace and it’s hilarious.

Lucy and Caspian are pulled aboard the ship in some kind of pulley contraption and Ben Barnes fangirls enjoy the sight of him in a wet shirt. The crew quickly wraps them in dry blankets. “That was thrilling!” says Lucy because that’s exactly what someone would say after almost drowning. “How in the world did you end up here?” Caspian asks her. “I have no idea,” says Lucy. By the way, Barnes no longer uses his “Telmarine accent” from the last movie. For some viewers, that’s a relief. For others, maybe it’s a distraction. I don’t care either way. Ben Barnes, perhaps because he’d only been in one Narnia movie prior to this, gives a much better performance than Georgie Henley or Skandar Keynes. If anything, he’s kicked his Caspian game up a notch and is one of the best things about this adaptation. Anyway, once Edmund’s on board, he and Caspian throw their arms over each other’s shoulders and talk about how great it is to see each other again. This is kind of weird since they barely interacted in the last movie.^[1]To be fair, you could say the same of Lucy and Caspian in the books. At first, I thought the screenwriters were trying to make amends to fans of the books for how unfriendly they made Peter and Caspian towards each other. In retrospect, I think their goal was to make a later conflict between Caspian and Edmund as shocking as possible.

“Didn’t you call for us?” Lucy asks Caspian. “No, not this time,” he says. “Well, whatever the case, I’m just glad to be here,” says Edmund. You know who’s not glad to be there? Eustace. The conversation between the monarchs is interrupted by a shrill scream of his. They turn to see him flopping around on the deck, yelling, “Get this thing off me!” That thing is none other than Reepicheep (voiced by Simon Pegg rather than Eddie Izzard in the only example of an actor being replaced in these movies) whom Eustace manages to push off of himself.

After exchanging pleasantries with Lucy and Edmund, Reepicheep asks about what they should do with “this hysterical interloper.”

Eustace: That giant rat thing tried to claw my face off!
Reepicheep: I was merely trying to expel the water from your lungs, sir.
Eustace: It talks! Did you see? Did anyone just hear that? It just talked!
A Sailor (Tony Nixon): He always talks.
Caspian: Actually, it’s getting him to shut up that’s the trick.
Reepicheep: The moment there is nothing to be said, Your Highness, I promise you I will not say it.

By the way, I’m sure that last line of Caspian’s was stolen from another movie; Shrek, I believe.^[2]Though when Caspian lost his temper with Reepicheep in the book, he did say that he promised to be a good lord to the talking beasts of Narnia, not beasts that never stop talking.” Since we’re on the subject of Reepicheep talking, I should give my opinion on Simon Pegg’s vocal performance. That’s hard though since I consider it a mixed bag. When he’s delivering dramatic dialogue, he’s great and to this movie’s credit, it gives him more dramatic dialogue than the Prince Caspian movie did. I should stress that I like what this movie is trying to do with the character better than what the last one did. Even when Reepicheep gets a humorous line, it sounds more like the quip of a swashbuckling hero than that of a snarky malcontent.^[3]I wouldn’t describe the Reepicheep of the books as a swashbuckler but it’s better than the snarky option. However, the way Pegg delivers those humorous lines makes Reepicheep sound like a goofy British stereotype. (Think of a swashbuckling Bertie Wooster.) While Eddie Izzard’s Reepicheep had a less dramatic role, he oddly had more dignity.

Anyway, Eustace continues to rant and rave hysterically and hilariously. “Perhaps we should throw him back?” jokes Reepicheep. Edmund looks like he’s considering it and has to be chided by his sister. That’s also an old joke but I can see why the writers found it hard to resist with these character dynamics. Eustace’s rant ends with the words, “I demand to know just where in the blazes am I!” Or rather it is interrupted by a minotaur (Narnia veteran Shane Rangi) saying, “You’re on the Dawn Treader, the finest ship in Narnia’s navy.” Eustace passes out. “Was it something I said?” asks the minotaur. Caspian tells him to see to Eustace and the minotaur obeys though once Caspian’s out of sight, he grimaces over the job. There actually were no minotaurs or any other specifically Narnian creatures besides Reepicheep on board the Dawn Treader in the book. You could argue that made no logical sense and the movie was right to change it. I’d argue though that a human crew made for a better contrast to the fantastic locations they encounter on the voyage. And you’ll remember I never liked making Narnian minotaurs good guys. Still, having more nonhumans in the crew is far from the worst bit of artistic license this movie takes with its source material.^[4]If only it were!

Caspian gives a speech. “Men, behold our castaways, Edmund the just and Lucy the valiant, high king and queen of Narnia.” This is another minor thing, I guess, but Edmund and Lucy were never called the high king and queen of Narnia in the books. The title of High King was reserved for Peter. I guess the screenwriters thought calling Edmund and Lucy the ancient king and queen would sound weird. While Caspian speaks, by the way, we get our first look at the ship’s captain, Drinian (Gary Sweet.) He looks a lot older and more grizzled (and grumpier) than I imagined from the book. Mind you, Drinian was always supposed to be older than Caspian but in another Narnia book, The Silver Chair, he was still alive and kicking when Caspian was in his old age. Oh well. This is, again, not the dumbest change to make.

Anyway, everyone bows to Edmund and Lucy as the heroic theme for the Pevensies from the last two movies’ soundtracks plays and we get some establishing shots of the ship. It’s kind of a cool moment.

Caspian leads Edmund and Lucy, now changed into Narnian clothes, into the stern cabin. (Eustace, by the way, remains in his English clothes throughout the movie despite how they must stink. Unrealistic but a good visual way to symbolize his contempt for Narnia.) Lucy notices something the book mentions, a golden image of a lion’s head^[5]Though it was on a different wall, I believe., and smiles. “Aslan,” she whispers. OK, there were plenty of images of lions in Narnian art in the last two movies. If Lucy only just now realized they’re supposed to be Aslan, she’s pretty slow.

Let’s talk about this cabin. The book describes it as being beautiful and ornate with pictures on the panels and I’m glad production designer Barry Robison stayed true to that. But I feel like they went a little too far. The cabin ends up looking not so much beautiful as gaudy in my opinion or at least like it could be described either way.

“Look!” says Lucy. “Susan’s bow and arrows!” Susan’s horn isn’t on display, something I appreciate as a fan of the book, since C. S. Lewis specifically wrote that Caspian left it with his regent, Trumpkin. Caspian takes out a box and shows its contents to Lucy. “My healing cordial!” she exclaims. “And dagger!” Henley’s delivery of that line is not good, but I’ll defend her in that…well, you try saying that line, especially in an excited voice, and making it sound natural. Edmund notices Peter’s sword. “Yes, I’ve looked after it as promised,” says Caspian. He takes it from the place of honor where it hangs and hands it to Edmund, saying, “Here. Hold it if you wish.” Edmund declines. “No, it’s yours,” he says, “Peter gave it to you.” This makes it incredibly obvious that there will be a conflict over who gets the sword later. “I did save this for you though,” says Caspian. He takes Edmund’s electric torch from the last movie out of a cupboard and tosses it to him. I have a theory that it really bugged the screenwriters that Edmund never got a special Christmas present in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe like his siblings did. In an early draft of their screenplay version, they had Lucy ask Father Christmas about it and where the other Pevensies had images of their gifts on the back of their thrones, Edmund had an image of the White Witch’s wand smashed by him. The torch is their biggest attempt to balance what they perceived as an injustice.^[6]Heh, there’s got to be a joke to be made about Edmund the just somewhere in there. I don’t say that to criticize them by the way. If anything, it kind of makes them endearingly human. And while a torch isn’t as cool as a magical cordial or horn, that arguably fits with Edmund’s implied inferiority complex in this movie.

A bit later, Caspian gives Edmund and Lucy a little update as they look over some maps. “Since you left us, the giants of the north have surrendered unconditionally,” he tells them, “And we defeated the Calormene armies at the great desert.” As you can guess, the northern giants and the Calormenes are antagonists of other Narnia stories and it’s nice to imagine them still existing in Walden Media’s Narnia universe even though they would never get to adapt those stories.

Caspian: There’s peace across all of Narnia.
Edmund: Peace?
Caspian: In just three years.
Lucy: And have you found yourself a queen in those three years?

As Lucy says that line, she grins and brushes her hair behind her ears as she saw the nurse do back in her own world. If the movie was trying to imply that she has a crush on Caspian though, it completely forgot about it after this scene, thank goodness! Caspian looks down, a little embarrassed. “No,” he says, “not one to compare with your sister.” You may remember I thought creating a romance between Caspian and Susan in the last movie was a stupid idea but I’m actually fine with this callback to it. You see, at around this point in the book, Drinian mentions that everyone was hoping for a marriage between Caspian and the duke of Galma’s daughter, but that Caspian found her unattractive. This subtly sets up the idea that Caspian is on the lookout for a wife which he will eventually find by the end of the story. The line about Susan serves the same purpose.

Edmund: Hang on. If there are no wars to fight and no one’s in trouble, then why are we here?
Caspian: That’s a good question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing.

That is an unusual aspect of this story. In another Narnia book, we’re told that “the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve were brought out of their own strange world into Narnia only at times when Narnia was stirred and upset.” This is not the case in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The fact that the script is emphasizing it at this point though is an ominous thing for book fans wanting a faithful adaptation. While Hollywood might make an adventure movie without a big villain to conquer^[7]Though it’s worth noting the book does have minor antagonists that show up for a chapter or two., they’d never draw viewers’ attention to the lack of one^[8]Actually, that’s not quite true. I haven’t seen Disney’s Strange World, but the internet informs me it contains a meta commentary about stories not needing villains., so lines like these are a promise that there will be a big overarching conflict of which the characters aren’t aware yet. But let’s not worry about that now. “So where are we sailing to?” Edmund asks. “Before I took back the throne from my uncle, he tried to kill my father’s closest friends and most loyal supporters, the seven lords of Telmar.” While he doesn’t give the names of these lords at this point, as he does in the book, he does show drawings of each of them, the closest things they have to photographs in Narnia, which I think is a nice idea on this adaptation’s part.

“They fled to the Lone Islands,” Caspian continues. “No one’s heard from them since.” In the book, the lords weren’t fleeing per se. Miraz actually sent them on an exploratory voyage, hoping they’d never return. I’m fine with this simplified backstory since long scenes of exposition are better on the page than the screen. “So you think something’s happened to them?” asks Edmund as he looks at the pictures of the lords. “Well, if it has,” says Caspian, “it’s my duty to find out.” Lucy asks what’s east of the Lone Islands though she should really know the answer as someone who was once empress of those islands for at least a decade and probably more than that. “Uncharted waters,” says Drinian. “Things you can barely imagine. Tales of sea serpents and worse.” Edmund expresses incredulity at the idea of sea serpents and Caspian affectionately tells Drinian, “that’s enough of your tall tales.” I’m not really sure why sea serpents would be more ridiculous than other fantastical creatures in the world of Narnia, but I won’t press the point since the book could be criticized along those lines. It mentioned sea captains telling “wild stories of islands inhabited by headless men, floating islands, waterspouts and a fire that burned along the water” when what the Dawn Treader actually encounter beyond the Lone Islands was only marginally less crazy.

We get a cool tracking shot passing over the Dawn Treader and its crew^[9]I may not like the look of the ship, but I concede it can be filmed in cool ways. but I can’t enjoy it as much as I’d wish since there’s an irritating song in the background. It’s being sung by Reepicheep whom we find on the dragon head of the ship’s prow, a location the book describes him as frequenting. Here are the words to his song.

Where sky and water meet,
Where the waves grow ever sweet,
Doubt not you Reepicheep
To find all that you seek.
There is the utter east.

In the book, this is supposed to be a very haunting song and it fulfills the same function in the movie, so I’m somewhat baffled as to why they give it such a perky, peppy tune. It doesn’t really fit the tone at all.^[10]The lyrics are ever so slightly different from those in the book by the way. I hope that’s just because the writers were working from memory and not because they changed them to fit that tune. “That’s pretty,” says Lucy, coming up from behind Reepicheep. Georgie Henley’s line delivery almost makes it sound like she’s trying to find a polite way to say, “Reepicheep! Please stop that horrible singing,” which would be appropriate but I’m not sure if was intentional. “Thank you,” Reepicheep says, “A dryad sung it to me when I was just a mouseling.” There’s actually a big continuity problem here that’s from the book. In Prince Caspian, the dryads had been silent for centuries and there’s no way one of them could have sung over Baby Reepicheep.^[11]If I were adapting the book, I might change the dryad to a centaur, Narnian centaurs having prophetic powers. I mention this because I intend to call out the movie on some major lapses in continuity and I don’t want anyone saying I hold it to a standard I don’t hold the book. Now back to the story. “I can’t divine the meaning,” says Reepicheep, “but I’ve never forgotten the words.” In the book, he says, “the spell of it has been on me all my life.” Why you would want to replace that phrasing with “I’ve never forgotten the words” is beyond me but oh well.

“What do you think is past the Lone Islands, Reep?” asks Lucy. “Well, I’ve been told the furthest east one can sail is to the end of the world,” says Reepicheep, “Aslan’s country.” “Do you really believe there’s such a place?” asks Lucy. Um, why not? Lucy has interacted with Aslan, arguably more than anyone else. Why wouldn’t she believe he has a country? I’m not just criticizing this line for being something Lucy wouldn’t say in the book. It doesn’t even make sense for her to say it in the movie! “Well, we have nothing if not belief,” Reepicheep replies, which is an… odd thing to say. It’s like the screenwriters wanted him to say a cool line here but they had absolutely nothing to say. I’ve been ragging on Georgie Henley’s performance in this movie a lot so far, so I should stress that her next line reading, in which she asks Reepicheep if he thinks it’s actually possible to sail to Aslan’s country, is actually really good. “Well, there is only one way of finding that out,” says Reepicheep. “I only hope I will one day earn the right to see it.” There are things I could say about the concept of earning the right to see Aslan’s country, but I’ll wait until the end of the movie to get into them.^[12]It’s not exactly wrong but it’s not exactly right either. For now, Reepicheep excuses himself with a polite “Your Majesty” and Lucy looks over the edge of the prow. She sees some water nymphs leaping and diving. One of them waves at her. I think these nymphs were supposed to be sea people AKA mermaids but that wasn’t in the movie’s budget. I also think this moment was likely inspired by an interaction between Lucy and a sea maid towards the end of the book.^[13]I actually quoted the book’s description in a post about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, so I’m not going to quote it again here.

Caspian and Edmund have a friendly fencing match, ending in a draw. “You’ve grown stronger, my friend,” says Caspian. “It seems I have,” says Edmund. A sailor gives him something to drink, and he goes to sit by Lucy. “Edmund,” she says, “do you think if we keep sailing to the end of the world, we’ll just…tip off the edge?” This moment of wondering about the implications of sailing to end of a world that isn’t necessarily round comes from the book though there it comes toward the end, not near the beginning. I feel like that made more sense from a pacing perspective. By the time, we get to the end of the world in the movie, we’ll have forgotten it’s even a thing. Still, realistically speaking, it makes sense for someone to bring up the question before then.

Edmund: Don’t worry, Lu. We’re a long way from there.
Eustace (emerging from below deck): I see you’re still talking nonsense, the two of you.
Lucy: Are you feeling better?
Eustace: Yes, no thanks to you!^[14]In a deleted scene, inspired by the book, Lucy would have given Eustace some of her cordial for his seasickness. I have a fine constitution.
Reepicheep: As effervescent as ever, I see. Find your sea legs?
Eustace: Never lost ‘em! I was simply getting over the shock of things. Mother says I have an acute disposition due to my intelligence.

Edmund spits his drink out at that last line.

Reepicheep confides to Lucy that he doesn’t think Eustace has acute anything. “I’ll have you know,” says Eustace, getting back into ranting mode, “as soon as we find civilization, I’m contacting the British consul and having you all arrested for kidnapping!” I’m delighted to hear Eustace referring to the British Consul here. The lack of one in Narnia is a major sore spot for him in the book. As Eustace tries to storm off, he bumps into an amused Caspian.

Caspian: Kidnapping, is it? That’s funny. I thought we saved your life.
Eustace: You held me against my will!
Reepicheep: Ha!
Caspian: Did I?
Eustace: And I must say in one of the most unhygienic quarters-it’s like a zoo down there!
Reepicheep (to Edmund and Lucy): He’s quite the complainer, isn’t he?
Edmund: He’s just warming up.

This is one of my favorite humorous dialogue scenes in any Narnia movie. Maybe my favorite bar none. One thing I enjoy about the book is that everyone reacts to Eustace differently. Edmund vocally despises him, Lucy tries to be nice to him, Caspian initially finds him amusing and Reepicheep also despises him but is more aloof about it than is Edmund. The movie is happily true to that though Lucy doesn’t so much try to be nice to Eustace as tolerate him and Reepicheep, like Caspian, is more amused than angered by him. I’m not a fan of that last change since it means there’s less of a variety of reactions but still the movie does a nice job of differentiating the characters here.

In fact, I’d like to say that this movie’s first fifteen minutes or so are probably closer to the book it’s adapting than the first fifteen minutes of either of the previous Narnia movies are to the ones they adapt. Mind you, I’d say I strangely enjoy the beginnings of those movies more due to things like music, visuals and acting. But as far as fidelity to the source material goes, there hasn’t been anything majorly wrong with this voyage. Edmund and Lucy’s unhappiness at staying with their relatives and Lucy coping with it better than Edmund. The painting of the ship coming to life. Caspian’s quest for the seven missing lords. Reepicheep’s desire to reach Aslan’s country. Eustace’s personality. It’s all been a relatively faithful and perfectly pleasant adaptation so far.

The reason I stop to emphasize that at this point is that a lookout calls, “Land ho,” and, as you may have guessed, the adaptation is about to take a very wrong turn.

Next Week: All Is Not Well on the Lone Islands

This post is part of a lengthy series I’m doing on the Narnia movies. To understand the format, readers should start with this post.

The third and, as it would prove, last of Walden Media’s Narnia adaptations had a bit of a rough start. After Prince Caspian underperformed at the box office in 2008, the Disney company dropped the series. Walden found a new partner for it in Twentieth Century Fox^[1]This, of course, was before Disney bought Fox in their unending quest for world domination. but considerably less money was thrown at this third movie. It also had a shorter production time. The Prince Caspian movie was released three years after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was released two years after Prince Caspian. Less ominously, this was the first Narnia film not to be directed by Andrew Adamson. (It’s rare for every movie in a lengthy series to have the same director.) Michael Apted was in the hot seat instead.

The result was that my favorite of the first three Narnia books^[2]Nowadays the first three books are listed as The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Horse and his Boy but most fans, including yours truly, believe they should be … Continue reading was adapted into my least favorite of the three Narnia movies. That sounds a bit harsh so I’m going to hasten to soften it. Since I really like, even love, the first films in the series^[3]Since I’m analyzing them in such detail on this blog, it probably sounds like I’m more critical of them than is actually the case., saying that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) is my least favorite isn’t the harshest indictment that could be given. While I don’t feel inclined to rewatch it as often as the other two movies, when I do, which is usually because I’ve just rewatched those other movies and feel that I might as well see the series through to the bitter end, I typically end up enjoying it more than I expect.

I should also say in this adaptation’s defense that it’s appropriate that it feels different from the previous two movies in the series since the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was very different from the books The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. The first two Narnia stories have much the same narrative formula which the third one doesn’t follow at all. Instead of being about overthrowing a tyrant who has taken over Narnia and restoring a rightful (and much younger) ruler to the throne, it’s about an expedition to unknown regions. While this movie adaptation adds a villain and creates an action-filled climax and not to good effect in my opinion, to its credit, that villain is very different from the White Witch or Miraz. Unfortunately, it might have been a better movie if that villain were more like the White Witch or Miraz.

Having written some words in the adaptation’s defense, I’d now like to take issue with some other defenses I’ve read of it. There are definitely fans of the books out there who consider this a better adaptation than Prince Caspian on the grounds that it doesn’t try to turn Narnia into something for teenagers and it doesn’t make the characters who were likeable in the source material unlikeable. Those are valid arguments to an extent, I suppose. It’s true that no character in this adaptation undergoes the character assassination that Peter underwent in Prince Caspian. However, while none of the main characters here are unlikeable in the sense that I dislike them neither are they particularly likeable in the sense that I find them engaging or memorable-except for one and he’s arguably not supposed to be likeable! It’s also true that the Narnia books were written for kids and a really good adaptation, to some extent at least, has to be for them too. But it shouldn’t be just for kids. C. S. Lewis described his approach to the writing The Chronicles of Narnia thus.

I was writing… “for children” only in the sense that I excluded what I thought they would not like or understand, not in the sense of writing what I considered to be below adult attention…I never wrote down to anyone and whether the opinion condemns or acquits my own work, it certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.^[4]I wouldn’t go that far myself. Disposable things, like Kleenex, can serve a purpose.

Enough preliminaries. Let’s get started.

First, we transition from the Walden Media logo to a stained-glass window. I prefer the logo transition in Prince Caspian, mainly because this one required a weird camera angle, but it’s still nice.

The camera pulls back to reveal that this is part of a building in Cambridge. It’s also revealed that the art direction and visuals for this Narnia movie are not going to be as beautiful as those of the last two. I guess that’s a contentious statement but look at any of the screencaps from my previous blog posts about Narnia and then compare them to the ones in this post. To my eyes, the colors are too bright and pastel, and everything looks like CGI even when it isn’t. If I didn’t know better, I would assume this was a made-for-TV or direct-to-DVD spinoff of the Narnia movies rather than a “real” sequel.^[5]Arguably, the script gives the same impression. Part of that might be because of a reduced budget or a slightly rushed production but it also probably reflects the times in which these movies were made. It was probably around 2010 that popcorn movies^[6]Family popcorn movies anyway. gave up trying to make their worlds look solid and real, opting instead to have everything be bright and shiny and obviously fake. I’m grateful The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) and Prince Caspian (2008) were made when they were. Another factor in this being the least visually appealing Narnia movie may be the absence of the great Roger Ford as the production designer. At least Isis Mussenden was still the costume designer.

This entry in the series also has a new composer for its soundtrack, David Arnold. Most of the music he wrote for it is functional but unmemorable. It does have its moments however, particularly in the last scene.

Now the first two movies each opened with a suspenseful nighttime scene of the main characters narrowly escaping being killed in their own homes. This was followed in each case by an opening credits montage of them fleeing those homes. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader doesn’t start that way. Right off the bat, we get the brief opening titles (Fox 2000 Pictures and Walden Media present The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and then launch into the first scene, which is not suspenseful or exciting. That’s not a bad thing per se. As I said, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader should be different from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. And none of the Narnia books have action-packed openings. The beginning of this adaptation is technically truer to the beginning of its source material than the other two Narnia movies are to theirs. That being said, setting aside the books and just looking at these movies as movies, I’d have to say this one has the least engaging beginning.

Anyway, we see a sign saying, “enlist now”^[7]This, by the way, represents a minor change from the book which speaks of “the war years” as being “long ago.” and cut to our old friend Edmund Pevensie (Skandar Keynes) standing in line to do just that.

“Are you sure you’re eighteen?” the skeptical intake officer (Jared Robinsen) asks him. “Why? Do I look older?” replies Edmund. As I’ve mentioned, he has a great poker face. The officer looks at his identity card-or rather the identity card Edmund hands him. “Alberta Scrubb?” he asks incredulously. “That’s a typographical error,” says Edmund, “it’s supposed to be Albert A. Scrubb.” This is a fun scene though it suffers from the fact that the actor is older than the character and it really doesn’t look like he’d be too young to enlist. Anyway, Georgie Henley’s Lucy blows Edmund’s ruse by appearing and reminding him he’s supposed to be helping her with groceries. The officer hands Edmund back the card. (Jared Robinsen does a nice job with the character. Great turns from bit players are uncommon in this movie so I’m happy to point out when there is one.) The man standing behind him in line laughs annoyingly and rumples Edmund’s hair as he departs in disgrace. “Better luck next time, eh, squirt?” he says.

Outside the building, Edmund fumes.

Edmund: Squirt? He barely had two years on me! I’m a king! I’ve fought wars and I’ve led armies!
Lucy: Not in this world.
Edmund (bitterly): Yeah, instead I’m stuck here doing battle with Eustace Clarence Scrubb. If anyone so deserves a name…

You’ll notice that this conversation is almost exactly like the conversation between Peter and Susan near the beginning of the previous movie. I admire that one for giving Peter an inverse of the character arc he went through in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe rather than just rehashing it, so I’m quite disappointed to see that this sequel has no such qualms about rehashing arcs. The sad thing is being frustrated over going back to being a kid after having been a king would be much more in character for the books’ version of Edmund than for their version of Peter. Maybe if the Prince Caspian movie hadn’t given that trait to the latter, I’d be interested to see it in the former. I should stress that Edmund never threatens to become as unpleasant in this film as Peter did in the last one. Unfortunately, that’s largely because the writing for his character doesn’t have the conviction behind it that Peter’s had.

Let’s get back to Edmund’s last line which is a reference to the opening line of the book. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.” A great line and I’m tickled that the movie includes a version of it. However, I feel like the way they phrased it makes it harder to get the joke, especially since the camera is focused on something else. You see, Lucy’s attention is drawn to a nearby soldier (Lucas Ross)) who is flirting with a nurse (Megan Hill.) Lucy absently tucks her hair behind her ear as the nurse does. “What are you doing?” asks Edmund. “Nothing,” she says, embarrassed, “Come on then.”

I’d better say a few words about Keynes and Henley who were both so great as these characters in the other two movies. They’re not great here. Keynes’s performance feels fake, compared to what it was in prior installments anyway. He’s obviously playing a character. Part of the problem may be the script by returning screenwriters Christopher Marckus and Stephen McFeely and Narnia newcomer Michael Petroni (The Book Thief.) Previously, the cinematic Edmund had been written as a pretty stoic character. Here he’s, well, basically Peter 2.0. For what it’s worth, that actually strikes me as closer to Edmund in the books in which he could be quite vocal and argumentative. But it doesn’t feel like the same character, and it does feel like a character that Keynes can’t play as easily. If he’s phoning in his line deliveries, Henley is maybe trying too hard with hers. She’s trying to portray Lucy as quiet, thoughtful and somewhat introverted, which is a great idea since she was too old by this point to convince as the perky young Lucy from the last two movies and the ending of this one will stress the character’s increased maturity. But the script doesn’t give Lucy anything thoughtful to say and barely anything thoughtful to do. It feels like the actress and the writers were fighting over the character, metaphorically speaking, and the director did nothing to combine their ideas, let alone contribute any of his own. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ends with Edmund and Lucy, like Peter and Susan before them, being informed that they’ve “graduated” from Narnia, so to speak, and won’t return. If I hadn’t read the books and didn’t pay attention to the credits saying that this is “based on the book by C. S. Lewis,” I’d assume that was written into the script because Keynes and Henley were tired of this franchise and wanted out of it. That’s certainly how it feels watching their performances. Of course, the impressions I get from their performances are far from foolproof indicators of how the actors were actually feeling.^[8]For the record, Henley has spoken of this movie with affection in interviews. But they do impact my experience of watching the movie.

We cut to the bedroom of Edmund and Lucy’s cousin, the infamous Eustace Scrubb (Will Poulter.) One of the first things we learn about his character in the book is that he “liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card,” so I’m delighted to report that there’s a whole bulletin board of such cards on the wall. There’s also a school certificate honoring Eustace for personal hygiene. That’s not from the book but it sounds like something that would have been a source of pride to him there.

There are also a number of books in Eustace’s room. We don’t get a very good look at them but I can imagine them being “books of information” with “pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools” as the book describes.^[9]Sorry if that description of foreign children offends. I didn’t write it.

We find Eustace writing in his diary. In the book, Eustace only started his diary after he became stuck in Narnia. Before that, he just used his notebook to keep track of the marks he got in school “for though he didn’t care much about any subject for its own sake, he cared a great deal about marks and would even go to people and say, ‘I got so much. What did you get?'” But all that would have cumbersome to explain in a movie, so I’m fine with the change. “Dear diary,” Eustace writes, “it is now day number 253 since my wretched cousins, Edmund and Lucy, invaded our house. I’m not sure how much longer I can cope living with them, having to share my things. If only one could treat relatives like one treats insects, all my problems would be solved. I could simply put them in a jar and pin them to my wall. Note to self: investigate legal ramifications of impaling relatives.” In the book, Eustace was actually glad to have Edmund and Lucy stay “For deep down inside him he liked bossing and bullying; and, though he was a puny little person who couldn’t have stood up even to Lucy, let alone Edmund, in a fight, he knew that there are dozens of ways to give people a bad time if you are in your own home and they are only visitors.” However, it’s very much in character for Eustace to write in his diary that his visitors are a pain while really enjoying the chance to torment them. I’m not sure if that black comedy about impaling relatives is in keeping with his character in the book but it’s funny. Hearing Lucy’s voice downstairs, he stashes the diary in his sock, hides the candy pile from which he’s been eating under his bed and heads down.

OK, my comments about this movie have been pretty dismissive so far, so to make up for that, I’m going to write about what is one of its biggest assets even though that’s not immediately apparent with this scene. Will Poulter’s Eustace is one of the greatest things in any Narnia adaptation, far outshining any previous portrayal of the character. In the words of one critic, “Many child actors play jerks like they know they’re supposed to be jerks, but Poulter plays the role with gusto, and convinces you that he believes he’s in the right.” Eustace is also one of the most quotable and entertainingly written characters in these Narnia movies. Sheesh, his comedy bits might even be funnier than their counterparts in the book! And this despite the fact that he’s only featured in this, the one with the weakest overall script. It’s downright bizarre, I tell you!

Downstairs, Eustace’s father sits in his armchair and reads the newspaper. “Hello, Uncle Harold,” says Lucy as she carries the groceries to the kitchen. “I tried to find some carrots but all they had were turnips again.” (The Scrubbs were vegetarians in the book by the way, so that tracks.) “Should I start making soup? Aunt Alberta’s on her way home.” Uncle Harold just coughs and turns the page in response to Lucy’s attempts to get his attention. He doesn’t get any dialogue, and his wife is only an offscreen voice in the movie’s final scene. (Neither actor is even credited anywhere online.) This is reasonable enough since the book told us a great deal about their characters without ever really depicting but it’s somewhat unfortunate as I think those two characters would benefit from expansion.^[10]This is controversial coming from a Narnia fan but I’m not crazy about C. S. Lewis’s satire of “very up-to-date and advanced people” in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which … Continue reading

Edmund rolls his eyes and sticks his tongue out at his uncle. “Father! Edmund’s making faces at you!” Eustace calls from the staircase. He then hits Edmund with a spitball. Edmund starts to chase him upstairs. Yeah, this is kind of a dumb scene^[11]I did say that Eustace’s greatness wasn’t immediately apparent. but Lucy distracts with the announcement that they’ve received a letter from Susan.

We flashback to Susan (Anna Popplewell) writing the letter in an American hotel.^[12]I guess I was wrong about Aslan’s resurrection being the only example of a flashback in the Narnia movies. On her desk, there’s a little figurine of a lamppost and one of a treasure chest. The latter might be a reference to the ancient treasure house in Prince Caspian.^[13]I don’t need to explain the former. There’s also a photo of her and her siblings at the train station in that movie. It’s a nice touch though I wonder when they would have taken it as they all look much happier than they did in either of the scenes there. (In reality, of course, it’s a promotional behind-the-scenes photo that’s been repurposed.)

“I do wish you were here with us,” writes Susan, “It’s been such an adventure! Though nothing like our times in Narnia. America is very exciting except we never see Father. He works so very hard.” In the book, by the way, Mr. Pevensie had a job lecturing in America. The implication here is that he’s doing military work. In her room at the Scrubbs’, Lucy reads the letter aloud to Edmund. “I was invited to the British consul’s tea party this week by a naval officer who happens to be very handsome. I think he fancies me. It seems the Germans have made the crossing difficult right now. Times are hard. Mother hopes you won’t mind another few months in Cambridge.” Edmund visibly reacts to this news. Lucy’s reaction is…less visible. “Another few months? How will we survive?” she says, and I honestly can’t tell if she’s genuinely devastated or if she’s sarcastically mocking Edmund. (See my previous comments on George Henley in this movie.) “You’re lucky,” he tells her, “At least you’ve got your own room. I’m stuck with mullet mouth.” Lucy goes over to a mirror to study her reflection. “Peter and Susan are the lucky ones, off on adventures,” she says. “Yeah, they’re the eldest and we’re the youngest,” gripes Edmund, “We don’t matter as much.” I should mention that this is pretty close to the spirit of the book. There, the reason Susan was the one who got to go to America was that “grownups thought her the pretty one of the family and she was no good at schoolwork (though otherwise very old for her age) and Mother said she ‘would get far more out of a trip to America than the youngsters.'”^[14]Peter was staying with Prof. Kirke from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at this point in the book, preparing for exams. The professor would have been happy to have the other Pevensies too, but … Continue reading While Edmund obviously doesn’t try to enlist in the book, he and Lucy are implied to envy their older siblings, and Lucy is implied to resent the attention Susan receives because of her appearance, which subtly sets up later events in the story. The setup is less subtle here and, given the ages of the actresses, the attention Susan gets that Lucy wants is naturally from guys more than from grownups, but this all reasonably close to the source material.

“Do you think I look anything like Susan?” Lucy asks Edmund. “Lucy, have you seen this ship before?” he says, looking at a painting on the wall. “You didn’t answer my question,” she replies. Actually, no, that’s what she should reply but weirdly doesn’t. Edmund groans before asking about the ship, so maybe the implication is that she asks about her appearance so often he’s sick of it. Either that or he’s too wrapped up in his own problems to hear her and she’s too embarrassed to repeat her query. “Yes,” she says looking the old painting of a ship at sea, “it’s very Narnian looking, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, just another reminder that we’re here and not there,” Edmund grouses. They hear a voice coming from the doorway behind them.

Eustace: There once were two orphans who wasted their time believing in Narnian nursery rhymes.
Edmund: Please let me hit him!
Lucy: No!
Edmund: Don’t you ever knock?
Eustace: It’s my house! I can do as I please. You’re just guests.

To reinforce his point, Eustace walks into the room and sits down on Lucy’s bed. “What’s so fascinating about that picture anyway?” he asks. “It’s hideous.” To this, Edmund responds, “You won’t see it from the other side of the door.” That’s pretty close to the dialogue from this scene in the book. Eustace also made fun of his cousins’ belief in Narnia via poetry in the book too though his poem there was different. “Edmund, it looks like the water’s actually moving,” says Lucy as she stares at the picture. She says something similar in the book but there it was in response to Eustace asking what it was she liked about the art style. Here it kind of sounds like she’s drunk. (See my previous comments on Georgie Henley in this movie.) “What rubbish!” says Eustace. “You see? That’s what happens when you read all those fanciful novels and fairy tales of yours!” That definitely sounds like the sentiment Eustace would endorse in the book.

Edmund counters with his own poem. “There once was a boy known as Eustace who read books full of facts that were useless.” Lucy gives this a pity laugh. I think it’s supposed to be a pity laugh anyway. (See my previous comments on…well, you know.) “People who read fairy tales are always the sort that become a hideous burden to people like me,” says Eustace, “who read books of real information!” Now Edmund’s dander is really up. “‘Hideous burden?'” he repeats. “I haven’t seen you lift a finger since we’ve been here!” Seeing that Edmund is becoming threatening, Eustace tries to make a hasty retreat, but Edmund blocks his way and closes the door.

Edmund: I’ve a right mind to tell your father it was you who stole Aunt Alberta’s sweets!
Eustace: Liar!
Edmund: Oh really? I found them under your bed. And you know what? I licked every one of them!
Eustace: Eww! I’m infected with you!

OK, that’s stupid but while those two have been arguing, something magical has been happening. The painting on the wall has come to life. I love how it starts slowly. First, the waves appear to move subtly.^[15]Not as subtly as possible but it’s subtle for this movie. Then there’s a little trickle of water coming from the frame. Then it’s unmistakable.

“Edmund, the painting!” cries Lucy. Wind issuing from the frame blows in her face and salt spray splashes her. Edmund and Lucy turn to see water pouring from the picture onto the floor. “What’s going on here?” Eustace demands. “Lucy, do you think…?” Edmund says. “It’s some kind of trick!” declares the frightened Eustace. “Stop it or I’ll tell Mother! Mother! Mother!” In the book, by the way, Eustace called his parents by their first names. I wish that was another little detail this adaptation could have preserved but I understand it might have been confusing for newcomers to the story. When Alberta doesn’t respond to Eustace’s bawling, he says, “Oh, I’ll just smash the rotten thing” and tears the picture off the wall. That’s what he does in the book or rather tries to do and Edmund and Lucy, having more experience with magic, try to stop him though none of them succeeds.

Here, Eustace does pull the picture off, but the force of the water is too much for him and his cousins combined and they have to drop it. By now, the entire room is flooded and in a matter of minutes, the water is well over everyone’s head. When they manage to resurface, they’re no longer at Cambridge but inside the painting. This is a little different from the book’s description of the scene which implies the character stumbled into the picture but it’s a cool transition in its own way. It actually reminds me of surreal images of Chris Van Allsburg’s picture books, such as Jumanji, The Wreck of the Zephyr or The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.^[16]Incidentally, Van Allsburg also created cover art for the Narnia books in 1994. Part of me wonders how come the water doesn’t go under the door and flood the rest of the house but the movie’s final scene will (kind of) address that.^[17]And to be fair, the book’s version is pretty surreal too. When this film first played in cinemas, it was in 3D since that was all the rage back then. 3D gives me a headache and I would have gladly gone without it, but I will say this was one scene where the device really added to the experience. Just as the water appeared to be shooting out of the painting in the movie, it also appeared to be shooting out of the screen. I may not find this movie’s visuals to be as beautiful as those of the other two Narnia films, but I’m happy to say they can be fun.

Next Week: On Board the Dawn Treader

Bibliography

ON THREE WAYS OF WRITING FOR CHILDREN (scu.edu.tw)

Lewis, C. S. (1952) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. HarperCollins Publishers.