The Chronicles of Narnia: Live Action Films (2005-10)

The Chronicles of Narnia: Live Action Films

Dirs. Andrew Adamson (Films I + II) / Michael Apted (Film III)

01. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). Aside from a few minor changes and a couple of newly written action scenes — because it's Hollywood and they just can't help themselves — the WMG + Disney version of C.S. Lewis' beloved children's novel is better than I expected it to be.

The first third is excellent, including each of the young actors. Lucy (Georgie Henley) is particularly good, in that she successfully embodies the sense of wonder that a child should feel after finding another world in the back of an old wardrobe.

Things only really begin to slide when the talking CGI animals appear. The great lion Aslan should have a splendour that eclipses all else, but his being rendered in boring CGI most of the time means that he might as well not be there at all.

The unnecessary use of such across the board is a stain on what I feel is otherwise the best filmed version of the novel, to date.

02. Prince Caspian (2008) is set one Earth year after the previous film. It begins hurriedly and gets steadily worse. Jumping directly into an action scene may have pleased the producers, etc, but it was detrimental to the story. It robs the Prince of some much-needed characterisation and relationship building, specifically with Miraz and Doctor Cornelius, and it robs the viewer of the time needed to understand why we should even care and/or sympathise with the young noble. Those two things could've been addressed subsequently, but that doesn't happen nearly enough.

Thereafter, the basic events of the original novel are referenced from time to time but there's so much new stuff plastered on top that at times it's barely recognisable as Lewis' Narnia. The world is pretty to look at, but has none of the magical feeling of the first film.

Perhaps the darker tone is a quick and lazy depiction of maturity. If so, they could've contrasted that with giving equal attention to what was lost. As it stands, the new additions aren't just at odds with the source - they actively change the entire tone of the piece. It's an almost complete travesty in which original and new utterly fail to gel. They even cocked-up Reepicheep! Being a mouse means his POV is low to the ground, and the camera angles at those times are genuinely good, but he's just another CGI furry with the voice of a comedian. I really hate Disney.

War featured heavily in the book. But was it necessary to add even more battles? At times it seems like all Peter wants to do is fight; maybe because he's written so limp in every other way.

I suspect many people will be upset at Susan's role in the last third, but, objectively speaking, it was one of the few things that made contextual sense with the rest of the new stuff. At the very least, it can be seen as a visual interpretation of the emotional bond that she felt to Narnia.

The saving grace is once again Lucy and her attachment to Aslan, even though it's severely weakened and Aslan's inclusion in Adamson's script feels like obligation or afterthought.

And finally, the change in Edmund references the guilt he still feels at his actions in the first film. Mindful self-reproach can be a powerful motivator for good. There's a valuable lesson there.

03. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) is set three Narnian years after events in Prince Caspian. It follows the children as they search the wider realm for seven missing lords.

The film's depiction of the return to Narnia is an indication of things to come: it's mostly good again - at times it even seems like the production was engineered as a direct response to what they did wrong in PC. And, happily, Reepicheep is better!

Anyone familiar with the story will recognise how it sails away from the source text, with a number of omissions and non-Lewis penned inclusions. The missing scenes definitely weaken the narrative overall, but the new stuff mostly works in context to what the filmmakers kept intact, so, in that regard, it's a kind of success. Things could've been much worse.