Haven't taken the time to read this entire thread because I just didn't care enough about the movie to do so, but a few thoughts:

- The movie definitely needed some trimming. 2:00 would have been a good run time, 2:20 was overdoing it.

- The ending is the most overtly religious of any recent mainstream movie, and anyone who doesn't acknowledge that is being willfully blind. This was part of Lewis' intention in writing the thing, for starters. After the mass baptism in the river, when the Peter Dinklage dwarf character kneeled to Aslan, my friend turned me to me and whispered, "Umm...did he just get saved?" He sure did!

- Georgie Henley (Lucy) was seriously under-used in this one. She was the heart and soul of the first movie and there was (deserved) Oscar buzz for her in the Supporting Actress category that year, though it didn't pan out in the end.

- The entire "storming the castle at night" sequence was fantastic - thrilling, suspenseful, expertly choreographed.

- This movie suffered drastically from the lack of Tilda Swinton, who played the most fascinating character in the first movie and was really the best thing about it. It's no accident that the one brief scene involving her in Prince Caspian is one of the best, and certainly one of the most exciting.

- Speaking of which, I think the story of this one suffered greatly from the lack of a good, interesting villain.

I read the book many years ago and didn't remember a thing about it. After seeing the movie, I remember why I didn't remember. Overall, I was just about bored to tears.

Just so you know, as far as I can remember from the book, The White Witch (Tilda Swinton) wasn't even in the book. Jadis took the form of the old hag. I may be mistaken but I think the movie took some liberties and inserted The White Witch character into the movie when it wasn't in the book. Also the storming of the castle sequence wasn't in the book either.

I'm not saying that changing the book was bad. Some people just go crazy when a movie is even slightly different from the book. Just pointing that out.

And just to reiterate, of course the ending was religious in nature. If the filmmakers changed that aspect of the movie then they should have changed the name of the movie as well. If the movie didn't contain religious aspects then it couldn't be called a Narnia movie. It's a religious movie with talking animals and anybody that's offended by that or doesn't want to see religion in movies definitely should not see this or any other Narnia movies.

Too much is being made of the Christian allegories. There is easily more greek mythology in the films and books than people recognize. Yes the author was a famous apologetist but the books are meant to be enjoyed regardless of viewpoint. If the Greek mythology isnt distracting, the Christian themes shouldnt be either.

The river scene involves the 'River-god' and the evil guys were drowned in it (they hated water--a theme from the book that wasnt explained in the movie). It wasnt a 'baptism'. Breaking the bridge, symbolized a returning to nature and reviving the natural elements back into Narnia (the River-god called the bridge a 'chain'). In the book the Dwarf spent lots of time doubting the existence of Aslan, so the roar in his face made more sense if you read it. The returning to nature is the biggest theme at the end of the book--it takes time to describe people letting their hair down, the trees coming back to life, lots of revelry and dancing in the woods etc.

When they went through Beruna, Telmarines who accepted the new life with nature, kicked off their shoes and joined in the party, while others were afraid of 'wild beasts' and eventually were given a way to return to where they came without harm. They werent 'converted' into 'narnians' by returning to the human world. I dont know what religion this is supposed to resemble, but it wasnt 'saving' them or anything of a religious nature (saving them from narnia?).

I actually liked the main villains. the main villain treated his general and counsel members like trash so when he was wounded in battle his own people finished him off and took over. the fight between peter and the other guy was amazing. If peter and susan didn't believe lucy when she said she seen aslan, wouldn't that mean they needed to be in narnia more. since they didn't believe. great movie that should've pulled in more $ but it should still do over $200m. I enjoyed it more than indy and a tad better than iron man.

Very well said Ferris. I'll just reiterate what I said above. People are overtly looking for religion/Christianity, when it's not even there, just to have something to bitch about.

Yep, while Lewis was foremost a Christian, he was extremely well-read and a huge fan of Greek mythology, and his love of anthropomorphic animals was an enduring fascination from his childhood--and Lewis' understanding of Christianity didn't require him to jettison those things from his work, but rather to just put them in perspective.

On to the movie, I enjoyed it overall. I was having trouble getting drawn into the narrative for the first 45 min. or so---when Caspian made his way to Narnia, and the Narnians were going to kill him, and then suddenly ready to follow him---that felt way too rushed for me. But I felt they brought things together better in the second half, and I got more into it. Loved Peter's marathon sword duel, and I really liked Lewis' themes of the potential for redemption and change exemplefied by the fact that Ed's judgement and ethics were a bit sharper than Peter's in this movie.

I did have a gripe that some of the CGI shots looked a tad shoddy here and there---and at this point, they're capable of making them all look great if they're willing to take the time and spend the money.

As far as fantasy movies go, I find the Narnia series to be a bit weightier and more substantial than the Harry Potter movies, but not quite up to Lord of the Rings movies. Although maybe that's not a fair comparison, as Tolkien was dealing with a more epic and grander-scale setting and story than was Lewis.

saw the 1st movie on Sunday and then saw the new last night... enjoyed the 1st movie.. thought the 2nd was a big letdown.

So, did you still go on the date?

I saw this a second time in non-digital sound and I have to say I was completely underwhelmed, the 5.1 soundmix I saw with the DLP presentation initially was amazing - here though every sound aspect seemed restrained, the voices were hard to hear, very little surround envelopment, the battle scenes didn't pack a wallop as they should have - I'm felt kind of bad for my friend, since I felt this was a technical letdown, it was a beautiful flawless 35mm print, visually, but for some reason it wasn't encoded or decoded in any of the three audio codex' (Dolby Digital, DTS, SDDS).

yep.. just instead of going to the movie on friday, we did dinner and then did the movie last night

someone mentioned in the other thread that the movie was much better on a High Def. screen.

That's the biggest problem with the remaining books as well, except for THE LAST BATTLE, which is pretty nifty. But I honesty see no way Disney is going to successfully release all seven without changing the stories. Not only are Peter and Susan gone now, but I think Lucy disappears after DAWN TREADER until the final book (someone can correct me if I'm wrong).

I think most people would cheer the loss of these kids in the franchise, I know I will

No way Disney makes any more after Dawn Treader...it's returns are going to be even worse than Caspians IMO.

Wasn't me, but the Digital presentation was astounding.

The best movie Ive seen since Return of The King. I loved this flick.

I also found it weird that they were fighting so hard to restore a monarchy.

But that's in a lot of stories.

They were fighting to usurp a usurper.

Regarding the children in The Last Battle:

If you're going to oversimplify and misinterpret things, dont forget to mention how the jesus-lion saves the muslim in the end because he was a good muslim.

Pretty funny article about Disney's excuses for the box office of PC From /film.com
"Disney CEO Robert Iger is now claiming that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian isn’t performing as well as expected at the box office because the May 16 release date was “too competitive”. It probably had nothing to do with the fact that a large portion of moviegoers were

A. disappointed by the first film, and/or
B. Not excited by the trailers and prerelease advertising for the second film.

Yeah, it probably has NOTHING to do with either of those factors. It’s a good thing that Disney moved Prince Caspian from it’s original Christmas 2007 season release out of fear that The Water Horse would be targeting the same audience. Because we all know what kind of HUGE hit The Water Horse went on to become… To be fair, Disney might have made the move due to Walden Media, who was both their production partner on Prince Caspian and the production company behind the Water Horse. Besides, the footage shown at WonderCon in late February was in such an uncompleted state that I double a 2007 release would have been possible.

It should also be noted that The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is scheduled to hit theaters on May 7th 2010, only a week after Iron Man 2. So it looks like they’ll be able to use the same excuse next time around as well."

So you don't think being sandwiched between Iron Man and Indiana Jones was a factor at all? It may not be the only factor but probably the biggest one.

Really funny how at the start of summer most of the estimates had this in the top 3 at least for the season. Going to be quite a blow to continuing the series past #3 (which I do hope gets made, as it's the best of the books easily.)

I can honestly say that I truly enjoyed the first movie, however I am agreeing with the Disney execs on this one. I saw Iron Man opening week, wasn't able to see Prince Caspian the following, then saw Indy. With nothing truly worthwhile coming out the next couple of weeks I may try and see Caspian now.

Actually I kinda do. I think it would have done more if it came out in December as was orig. planned. I think it could have made $200 million if released then. But then again it would have been sandwiched between I am Legend and National Treasure 2 so maybe it would have suffered then as well.

Just saw this, and have to agree with the DVDTalk review. About a 4/10 from me. Overlong, generally unpleasant, lacking in "magic", generic villain (I was rooting for Tilda Swinton just to have a character that was interesting pop up), generic Prince. Maybe I've been spoiled by movies like LotR, but just the presence of massive fantasy CGI battles isn't enough. I need a movie to have more, and this didn't do it for me. I'm pretty astonished this didn't merit a PG-13, given the body count. And a couple stupid things had me shaking my head:



Not surprised that this is underachieving at the BO. Christmas would've been a better time. But more than a few people have turned cold to the series. I'm not familiar with the book series, so I don't know if the stories become more engaging (what I've heard hear suggests that won't help). I agree with suggestion offered by Richard Roeper on his show - to have a chance at going on, this series needs someone good (if not great) to take over the reigns at writing and directing.