By The Chronicles of Narnia series should be money in the bag. It’s an insanely well known series of children’s books, it has Christian underpinnings (no Golden Compass-like protests here), it’s high fantasy and it has a talking lion. Seriously, these movies should be making bank. Yet here we are and the last film, Prince Caspian, performed so below expectations that it was dumped by its production company and the series had to be picked up by 20th Century Fox with its budget slashed in half.
Now, much of the second film’s failures can surely be attributed to the fact that it wasn’t very good, so the question becomes is Voyage of the Dawn Treader a good enough childrens movie to breathe life into the struggling franchise (there are still more books to go) or has the series met its end? The answers you seek are below.
The Chronicles of Narnia series should be money in the bag. It’s an insanely well known series of children’s books, it has Christian underpinnings (no Golden Compass-like protests here), it’s high fantasy and it has a talking lion. Seriously, these movies should be making bank. Yet here we are and the last film, Prince Caspian, performed so below expectations that it was dumped by its production company and the series had to be picked up by 20th Century Fox with its budget slashed in half.
Now, much of the second film’s failures can surely be attributed to the fact that it wasn’t very good, so the question becomes is Voyage of the Dawn Treader a good enough childrens movie to breathe life into the struggling franchise (there are still more books to go) or has the series met its end? The answers you seek are below.{{page_break}}
To begin with Voyage is simply a better story than Caspian and easily on par with the first film, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. While Caspian was literally a battle in one place, Voyage is an adventure on the high seas involving dragons, sea monsters, swashbuckling and magic. Right out off the bat you have the makings of a better movie simply through its story.
The story brings back two of the children from the first two films, Lucy Pevensie (Georgie Heneley) and Edmund Pevensie (Skandlar Keynes), who return to Narnia and land in the middle of the ocean where they are scooped up by Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) as he sails towards undiscovered waters with his crew on the Dawn Treader in an attempt to find the seven lords who were cast out of Narnia during the previous film’s long war. However, Lucy and Edmund do not come alone. This time their stuck-up cousin Eustace Scrubb (Will Poulter) gets sucked into Narnia with them. Upon entering a world of talking animals, sword fights and other such amazements he promptly grumbles and stomps his feet and complains. Someone has to learn a life lesson, right?
It eventually falls to the crew to sail into uncharted waters in order to defeat a great and nameless evil using their faith in Aslan (voiced again by Liam Neeson) and a lot of terribly convenient plot twists. But this is children’s fair after all, and none of the holes in the story are large enough to ruin it. The only thing that could put some people off if they aren’t terribly religious is the fact that this is by far the most obvious of the films in dealing with the Aslan/Christ thing. Whereas the previous two films danced around it at least a little, Aslan pretty much comes out and says he’s a metaphor for the Holy Trinity in this one. I have no problem with this as I’ve always seen the books as representing the positive sides of the lessons of Christianity (and the films as well), but just to forewarn those who might have issue.
If, like me, you could give two craps less about Christian metaphors and basically watch the movies as fantasy (P.S. that’s what your child is doing) then you’re in for a pretty good time. Despite a cut in budget the action is actually pretty amazing. A battle with a sea serpent is incredibly tense and the film never allows much time to get bored despite being decently long for a movie directed at children. It definitely has some issues in pacing, and resolves some of those character flaws a bit too easily here and there, but that’s nothing you won’t forget about during the next action sequence. All of this can be viewed in retrofitted 3D, by the way, which is utterly useless and not that great looking.
It also should be noted that the casting of Poulter as the bratty Eustace was a fantastic choice. If you’ve saw Son of Rambow you’ll know that he’s quite impressive and from the first scene he steals the show from the other child actors. It’s too bad that due to a certain aspect of the plot he’s not on screen for more of the movie.
Can Voyage of the Dawn Treader save the series? If any of the already released films were going to do it then this would be the one. It’s definitely my favorite of the series, and brings in at least one character in Eustace that I’ll be glad to see return. It’ll definitely be an uphill battle, and we’ll have to see how the movie performs over the weekend, but if Fox plans on improving the series more and more as they did with this one I’ll stick around for the rest of the ride.
7.05 – Good. (7s are good, but not great. These films often have a stereotypical plot or are great movies that have a few minor flaws. Fans of this movie’s genre might love it, but others will still enjoy seeing it in theaters.)
The best of the three Chronicles of Narnia films so far Voyage of the Dawn Treader is action packed and doesn’t slow down. While it’s got plenty of plot holes to pick at, for kids and adults looking to have some fun it will suffice. No need to pay extra for the 3D, though, it’s pointless and poorly done.
