After nearly sleeping away the entire weekend, I finally got up and went to see the second of three (possible three) movies, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.  The only reason why I say possible three is because if Prince Caspian doesn’t do well in the theaters Disney may not commit to making the third film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  In Prince Caspian, we see the return of the Pevensie children to the world of Narnia called by a young prince named Caspian.  1300 years after the Narnia they knew they aid Caspian in retaking the land from his evil uncle King Miraz.  Reprising there roles as the Kings and Queens of Narina are William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley and Liam Neeson as Aslan also Tilda Swinton as the White Witch makes a cameo appearance.  Joining them is Ben Barnes as Caspian and Sergio Castellitto as Miraz.

I’ll come out and say it right off the bat, Prince Caspian is a better movie then The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe but not by much.  The epic scope of Prince Caspian is huge!  The sets, the landscape, the costumes and the action was simply beautiful.  Without any doubt filmmakers really made Narnia a beautiful world.  Wikipdia says that some of the filming took place in New Zealand just like Lord of the Rings, so it seems that New Zealand has turned into the country of fantasy movies.  The mountains, trees, oceans, rivers etc… truly makes for either a beautiful movie or a great vacation if your into those things.

Just like The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the filmmakers of Prince Caspian give us some great makeup work in some of the practical creatures effects we see, like the Minotaurs who looked especially cool.  The Dwarves also looked really amazing as well and the actor’s who played them.  Peter Dinklage plays Trumpkin who’s basically a grey character but means well in the end.  Warwick Davis (Willow) plays Nikabrik who is a descendant of Ginarbrik, the White Witch’s head dwarf.  On a side note, Davis is probably the most successful dwarf in the busniess.  The costume work is especially well done for the main characters most notably the armor for the Telmarines, a race of human pirates from Earth that conquered Narnia.

Prince Caspian also has a dark tone to it and that’s easy to tell just from the body count.  Peter (Moseley) and Susan (Popplewell) put together racked up a nice number of kills and that’s a change from what we saw in the first film.  Together even their performances is improved from the first film and I thought they were just fine in The Lion… in the first place.  A pleasant surprise performance was from Skandar Keynes who plays Edmund.  He was one of the problems from the first film and here in Prince Caspian he makes an enormous improvement to the point that he was one of the more exciting characters to watch.

The action was really turned out to be something fun to watch.  The sword work in this film was great stuff especially from Peter (Moseley) and Caspian (Barnes).  During the film there is a one on one fight between Peter and King Miraz (Castellitto) which turned out to be very well done.  It wasn’t 300 cool but it still looked pretty damn great.  The major battle scenes also were pretty great but I actually don’t think they were as cool as the first film.

One of the major problems I think the first film had was the pacing and I won’t deny that it brought the film down several points and unfortunately it hasn’t changed in this film.  The pacing in Prince Caspian for the first 25-30 minutes was horrible.  The opening 5 minutes during the introduction of Caspian didn’t bother me, it was everything else that really killed me.  Although it looked great, I was bored to tears.  At one point I found myself thinking of how excited I was to see Indiana Jones this week then I remembered that I was actually watching a movie and I needed to focus.  Another problem was a significant absence of Aslan (Liam Neeson) a character I was very much looking forward to seeing again.  The only time we really see him is when he interacts with Lucy (Georgie Henley) who, at least I think, is another problem with this movie.  Just like the first film, Henley once again performs poorly in Prince Caspian and doesn’t improve at all.  The only difference from The Lion… is that she’s a little older but every time I see her on screen I want to punch her in the face.  This is the thing that kills me most of all… If The Voyage of the Dawn Treader gets made she’ll be one of two Pevensie kids to return and that’s not a good thing, at least in my opinion.  Along with several other problems I had with this film, the last thing I’ll mention is that the Spanish accents the Telmarines had were distracting and in some cases ridiculous.  Ben Barnes is English… his attempt at a Spanish accent wasn’t very good and for that matter, why did they choose to make the Telmarines Spanish in the first place?  That however I could have lived with if the other things I mentioned were more improved.

I’ll say this for Prince Caspian, it’s a seamless tie to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and the darker tone works in this film.  Even though it’s a little darker I think kids would very much enjoy this film, if they can deal with some of the violence in which I’m sure they can.  As for my part, Prince Caspian leaves me feeling the same thing the first film did.  It leaves me feeling like something is missing and I find myself not totally satisfied even though, overall, Prince Caspian isn’t that much of a bad film.  On a scale from 1 to 10, Caspian gets a 7.5 and although better then The Lion… Prince Caspian still has it’s issues.  If your a fan of fantasy movies, then by all means head to the theater but if your just a general movie goer, you may want to wait for a DVD release.  Prince Caspian could either be here or there for you.

-Phil