3.5 stars out of 5
One thing that Hollywood does do with some predictability is turn out sequels. And usually, they are worse than the original. However, with movies based on books, there is a better than average chance that the sequels will not stink, because a real author already wrote the book, not some Hollywood hack. If you recall Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter movies, there is no drop off in quality. In fact, I believe the Harry Potter movies improved somewhat.
However, with Prince Caspian, I was somewhat disappointed. Not to ruin it, but they do take some very large liberties with the script. Granted, I remember reading the book later in life and thinking, there isn't much going on here in Prince Caspian. But the scenes and dialogue they added really took away from the spirit and message of the book. I was also thinking to myself - Wait a second, I don't remember this at all, which annoyed me.
Also, CS Lewis does not spend a lot of time on battle scenes in his book (unlike Tolkien). However, in the movie it felt like at least an hour of the 2.5 hour movie was spent in battle, which was just too much. Ideally, they could have just stuck closer to the book and settled for a 1.5 or 2 hour movie. Or if you are going to add things to make it longer, don't add them willy nilly but see if they fit with the themes of the book.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie, but I didn't care for the changes, the long battle scenes or the length of the movie. I thought they stuck a lot closer to the real story in #1, which was very good. I am optimistic they won't make the same mistake with #3 (The Dawn Treader) because the Dawn Treader has a lot of action going on to cover - no need to make stuff up.
1 comment:
i read prince caspian a few months ago to remind myself what had happened in the book and was also irritated by the liberties they took. but i also wondered how they were going to stretch the plot out into a feature length film.
why did they make caspian with a latino accent?
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