Random Acts of Fandom: Prince Caspian
May. 20th, 2008 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombatI did say I'd natter more on this subject.
First I should note that I grew up with these books and have loved them for as long as I can remember, so I was predisposed to like the movies. It would take a really awful adaptation to alienate me, and the adaptations of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian are not awful, so I approve of them in general. But I do have a lot of fangirl nitpicks. Some of them are about silly minor details that don't mean anything, but some of them, at least in the case of Prince Caspian, are about broader characterization issues.
I should also mention that of all the protagonists of the various Narnia books, Peter is my favorite, so I'm more inclined to be nitpicky over his characterization than, say, Susan's.
I do have issues with Peter's characterization in Prince Caspian. The choice to make Caspian an adult instead of a kid was accompanied by a decision to include some alpha male dominance battle friction between him and Peter, which does make a certain amount of sense: Caspian has spent a bunch of time preparing to be king, and the Narnians have been accepting him as their king, and then Peter turns up and steps back into his role as High King and friction is only to be expected.
Especially given that the film makes more of the difficulty in adjusting to normal life after returning from Narnia the first time. I was very startled when the first we see of Peter in the new film is him having a fistfight with a bunch of other guys in the train station, but it actually makes a certain amount of sense: Peter misses Narnia, and he's still getting over being a kid instead of High King Peter the Magnificent.
But I wish that the movie had made it a bit less about Peter missing having the authority of High King and more about missing Narnia, because my understanding of Peter from the books has always been that he considers being High King to be about responsibility rather than power. Peter should never go on power trips.
And it doesn't help that, in the friction between Peter and Caspian in the movie, Peter tends to be the one in the wrong. The assault on King Miraz's castle which is inserted into the middle of the movie is Peter's idea and it's a bad call, and Peter is a bit of a jerk about it. If it weren't for William Moseley's ability to really sell how much the consequences of his bad calls hurt Peter, I might have ended up actually disliking him, and that would have been really sad. As it was, it kind of hurt to watch.
My biggest complaint about Peter's characterization in the movie comes from shortly after that inserted battle, when Peter blames their defeat on Caspian, because Peter in the books does not do that. When he makes a mistake or a bad call, he acknowledges it; he doesn't try to save face or shift blame. You see it in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, book and movie, when Lucy is proved right about the existence of Narnia, and you see it in the book of Prince Caspian when Lucy turns out to have been right about which direction they were supposed to go. So it was really jarring to have him turn on Caspian like that, whatever responsibility Caspian might have had for what happened.
Fortunately they did get past all that nonsense eventually, and Peter was much more himself in the second half or so of the film. One side effect of the movie making more of Peter's difficulty adjusting to normal life in England after LWW was that near the end of Prince Caspian, when Caspian sees Peter and Susan walking with Aslan, although you can't hear what they're talking about it was obvious (at least to me) that Aslan was telling them how they wouldn't be coming back again. And I started tearing up.
Moving on from that: the insertion of Caspian's little crush on Susan was even more random, but kind of cute. I have no complaints about Ben Barnes as Caspian, for all that he's considerably older than the character in the book; it made a reasonable amount of sense.
I was surprised to find Lucy a little bit annoying in a way I don't remember having reacted to the character before. It may have been a reaction to Peter's increased fallibility, since Lucy is pretty much Always Right... although since she's still too young to take part in the action scenes, she's got to have something to do. Likewise, Susan participating in combat up close and personal was a little weird, but it made sense that they wouldn't want both of the girls to be noncombatants, and again, Lucy couldn't very well do it.
Skandar Keynes continues to impress me as Edmund, which I think can't be an easy role to play. He did a great job in LWW, and though he didn't have as much to do in Prince Caspian, what he did, he did well. I especially liked his weighing in on the subject of 'did or didn't Lucy see Aslan?' with, essentially, 'I don't know about you guys, but I'm not going to be this much of an idiot a second time'. I hope whoever they get for Eustace for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is at least close to as good as Keynes; that's going to be a similarly difficult role.
More things I did really like: Reepicheep was badass, and I think was one of two points on which the movie actually improved a bit. In the book he's a bit of a comical figure, and the other characters keep edging carefully around how to keep him out of trouble without insulting him, but in the movie, he is hardcore. His first appearance and his initial interaction with Caspian, with Caspian going O_O '...I don't want to die, kthx,' is priceless. Eddie Izzard is, of course, fantastic as his voice.
The other thing that I really thought was done better in the movie was the scene in which Nikabrik and his cronies try to resurrect the White Witch. I loved that the Wer-Wolf's speech was mostly lifted directly from the book, and Tilda Swinton's brief appearance, and Peter charging in, and Edmund striking the last blow because, let's face it, he earned that.
The Telmarines being fairly obviously descended from Spanish pirates was also pretty cool.
Overall, I did enjoy it, despite little nitpicks like "would it have killed them to have Peter say 'It is my sword Rhindon. With it I killed the wolf.'?" I'm very much looking forward to seeing what they do with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (especially since they won't be able to insert any big army vs. army battle scenes into it, haha).
On an unrelated note: God help me, I really kind of want to write an epic multi-chapter Avatar: The Last Airbender futurefic focused on Zuko and Sokka, with Zuko as Fire Lord and Sokka as a full-fledged member of the Order of the White Lotus, and a secret plot against Zuko by dissatisfied members of the Fire Nation's old guard and surviving Dai Li agents which Sokka ends up uncovering, and augh.
First I should note that I grew up with these books and have loved them for as long as I can remember, so I was predisposed to like the movies. It would take a really awful adaptation to alienate me, and the adaptations of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian are not awful, so I approve of them in general. But I do have a lot of fangirl nitpicks. Some of them are about silly minor details that don't mean anything, but some of them, at least in the case of Prince Caspian, are about broader characterization issues.
I should also mention that of all the protagonists of the various Narnia books, Peter is my favorite, so I'm more inclined to be nitpicky over his characterization than, say, Susan's.
I do have issues with Peter's characterization in Prince Caspian. The choice to make Caspian an adult instead of a kid was accompanied by a decision to include some alpha male dominance battle friction between him and Peter, which does make a certain amount of sense: Caspian has spent a bunch of time preparing to be king, and the Narnians have been accepting him as their king, and then Peter turns up and steps back into his role as High King and friction is only to be expected.
Especially given that the film makes more of the difficulty in adjusting to normal life after returning from Narnia the first time. I was very startled when the first we see of Peter in the new film is him having a fistfight with a bunch of other guys in the train station, but it actually makes a certain amount of sense: Peter misses Narnia, and he's still getting over being a kid instead of High King Peter the Magnificent.
But I wish that the movie had made it a bit less about Peter missing having the authority of High King and more about missing Narnia, because my understanding of Peter from the books has always been that he considers being High King to be about responsibility rather than power. Peter should never go on power trips.
And it doesn't help that, in the friction between Peter and Caspian in the movie, Peter tends to be the one in the wrong. The assault on King Miraz's castle which is inserted into the middle of the movie is Peter's idea and it's a bad call, and Peter is a bit of a jerk about it. If it weren't for William Moseley's ability to really sell how much the consequences of his bad calls hurt Peter, I might have ended up actually disliking him, and that would have been really sad. As it was, it kind of hurt to watch.
My biggest complaint about Peter's characterization in the movie comes from shortly after that inserted battle, when Peter blames their defeat on Caspian, because Peter in the books does not do that. When he makes a mistake or a bad call, he acknowledges it; he doesn't try to save face or shift blame. You see it in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, book and movie, when Lucy is proved right about the existence of Narnia, and you see it in the book of Prince Caspian when Lucy turns out to have been right about which direction they were supposed to go. So it was really jarring to have him turn on Caspian like that, whatever responsibility Caspian might have had for what happened.
Fortunately they did get past all that nonsense eventually, and Peter was much more himself in the second half or so of the film. One side effect of the movie making more of Peter's difficulty adjusting to normal life in England after LWW was that near the end of Prince Caspian, when Caspian sees Peter and Susan walking with Aslan, although you can't hear what they're talking about it was obvious (at least to me) that Aslan was telling them how they wouldn't be coming back again. And I started tearing up.
Moving on from that: the insertion of Caspian's little crush on Susan was even more random, but kind of cute. I have no complaints about Ben Barnes as Caspian, for all that he's considerably older than the character in the book; it made a reasonable amount of sense.
I was surprised to find Lucy a little bit annoying in a way I don't remember having reacted to the character before. It may have been a reaction to Peter's increased fallibility, since Lucy is pretty much Always Right... although since she's still too young to take part in the action scenes, she's got to have something to do. Likewise, Susan participating in combat up close and personal was a little weird, but it made sense that they wouldn't want both of the girls to be noncombatants, and again, Lucy couldn't very well do it.
Skandar Keynes continues to impress me as Edmund, which I think can't be an easy role to play. He did a great job in LWW, and though he didn't have as much to do in Prince Caspian, what he did, he did well. I especially liked his weighing in on the subject of 'did or didn't Lucy see Aslan?' with, essentially, 'I don't know about you guys, but I'm not going to be this much of an idiot a second time'. I hope whoever they get for Eustace for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is at least close to as good as Keynes; that's going to be a similarly difficult role.
More things I did really like: Reepicheep was badass, and I think was one of two points on which the movie actually improved a bit. In the book he's a bit of a comical figure, and the other characters keep edging carefully around how to keep him out of trouble without insulting him, but in the movie, he is hardcore. His first appearance and his initial interaction with Caspian, with Caspian going O_O '...I don't want to die, kthx,' is priceless. Eddie Izzard is, of course, fantastic as his voice.
The other thing that I really thought was done better in the movie was the scene in which Nikabrik and his cronies try to resurrect the White Witch. I loved that the Wer-Wolf's speech was mostly lifted directly from the book, and Tilda Swinton's brief appearance, and Peter charging in, and Edmund striking the last blow because, let's face it, he earned that.
The Telmarines being fairly obviously descended from Spanish pirates was also pretty cool.
Overall, I did enjoy it, despite little nitpicks like "would it have killed them to have Peter say 'It is my sword Rhindon. With it I killed the wolf.'?" I'm very much looking forward to seeing what they do with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (especially since they won't be able to insert any big army vs. army battle scenes into it, haha).
On an unrelated note: God help me, I really kind of want to write an epic multi-chapter Avatar: The Last Airbender futurefic focused on Zuko and Sokka, with Zuko as Fire Lord and Sokka as a full-fledged member of the Order of the White Lotus, and a secret plot against Zuko by dissatisfied members of the Fire Nation's old guard and surviving Dai Li agents which Sokka ends up uncovering, and augh.
