There is even a youthful kiss for Susan that is so innocent even Miley Cyrus wouldn’t have had to apologize for the situation. The Pevensies are there to help, all four of them, including still-cute-as-a-button Lucy (Georgie Henley), the brooding Edmund (Skandar Keynes), the ace archer Susan (Anna Popplewell) and High King Peter (William Moseley).īut, just as if Narnia was an adjunct to high school, conflicts break out between Peter and Caspian about who is big man on campus. Which is where Prince Caspian, the victim of a power grab by the evil Miraz (Italian actor Sergio Castellitto) flees to save his life. The castles the kids knew are in ruins, the great Aslan has not been seen in a thousand years and the savagery of the ruling humans called Telmarines has driven the O.N.s (Original Narnians) deep into the woods. Narnia, once the Ps get back, has changed a ton - no surprise, given that 1,300 years in Narnia time have passed in one human year. Who wouldn’t be? It’s no surprise that Lewis’ fantasy premise of ordinary kids being kings and queens in another world has massive appeal among feeling-underappreciated young readers. When Caspian blows on a magic horn to summon them, the Ps are back in wartime London, mired in their tedious everyday lives and dreaming of Narnia. And of course there is the dishy Prince Caspian (British stage actor Ben Barnes), he of the omnipresent billboards, the heir to a throne who needs the kind of assistance only the Pevensies can provide. There’s Trumpkin, a grumpy Red Dwarf (“The Station Agent’s” excellent Peter Dinklage in a yak hair wig), as well as the computer-generated Reepicheep (engagingly voiced by comic Eddie Izzard), the Errol Flynn of sword-fighting mice. Like a teenager having trouble finding its place in the world, “Prince Caspian” rights itself in the end but doesn’t always have an easy time finding its balance.Īnd though it still features the four Pevensie siblings and their adventures in that alternate universe, “Prince Caspian” brings forth a number of new characters, both human and otherwise. Though the film makes sure that nary a drop of blood is shed in those battles - remember, this is the land of PG - all that fighting does make for an occasionally off-kilter mix with the kinder, gentler parts of the endeavor. Using a cast and crew of close to 2,000 and some of the best special effects houses in the world (including Weta Digital in New Zealand) to produce more than 1,600 CGI shots, “Prince Caspian” is very much the kind of adventure epic that believes you can never have too much galloping. In line with that mood, “Prince Caspian” provides not one but two elaborate battle set pieces that, taken together, make up a noticeable chunk of its 2-hour-and-18-minute length, pitting the polyglot Narnians, including dwarfs, centaurs, minotaurs, wonderful flying gryphons and intrepid fighting mice, against the endless hoards of an evil group called the Telmarines. Though it retains a kid-friendly PG rating and is directed with a surer hand by the returning Andrew Adamson, this film is noticeably darker in tone, even beginning with the piercing scream of a woman in childbirth.
#FILM NARNIA PRINCE CASPIAN SERIES#
Lewis’ seven-volume Narnia series to be filmed by Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, “Prince Caspian” is both like its predecessor and different from it. The sequel to 2005’s hugely popular “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” which was the first of C.S. “THINGS never happen the same way twice,” Aslan the all powerful says in “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,”:-prince-caspian and although the lion king is referring to the ways of the world, he might be talking about this film as well.