Posted on 12/17/2010 5:05:17 AM PST by Making_Sense [Rob W. Case]
It is the third film installment of the Chronicles of Narnia series. The film begins in England, where Lucy and Edmund are staying with their “personality deficient” Uncle, Aunt, and trouble-maker, cousin Eustace. Eustace is very snotty, spoiled, loud, and hates his cousins. Eustace’s hatred for his cousins causes him to torment them. None too soon, when a painting of a ship on the wall starts “moving,” suddenly water starts filling up the room and Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace are from that water, transported into the seas of Narnia.
Upon arriving in Narnia, a very large, dragon shaped ship approaches them. It is the Dawn Treader, and the captain aboard that ship is King Caspian. Yet, the purpose which brings Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace to Narnia is unknown to them. Caspian didn’t call them. There is no solid villain to defeat (like there was in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” and in “Prince Caspian.”). But there is something within themselves that they take into Narnia, and a powerful evil force, in the form of a “green mist” if you will, exploits these flawed personal attributes. Lucy envies the beauty in her older sister. Edmund desires power and a Kingdom for himself (just as he did in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), and Eustace is faced with the manifestations of his arrogance, selfishness, and greed in a sort of “fire-breathing” type way. Yet throughout this journey, King Caspian, Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, and the rest of the Dawn Treader crew have to recover 7 lost swords, located on multiple islands, and lay them at Aslan’s Table so that their true power can be unleashed, and the presence of evil, which has the upper hand, can, for the time being anyway, be put in its proper place.
"To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside yourself." --Coriakin the Magician
All in all, my interpretation of this film is that it is about temptation, and keeping one’s focus on “accomplishing the bigger mission.” It chronicles the struggle between the relationship with the forces of evil and the nature of the self, while at the same time, trying to keep one’s direction focused ahead instead of the personal desires of the moment.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader also has more of a “magical” element at play than the previous two films. It is special-effects heavy, and is really a great movie for kids and adults. Kids will no doubt love the magical elements within this film, and the adults will see the overall message behind the symbolism.
I give The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 4 stars. The film is rated PG and runs 1 hour and 52 minutes.
To view a trailer for the film click Here.
For some insight of the more Christian-related aspects of this film, click Here.
To play interactive Narnia games, visit…. www.narnia.com
We’re planning to see the movie this weekend.
Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader were my introductions into Narnia when I was 11 years old and received them as a birthday gift. The Voyage absolutely captivated me!
sounds like they’re trying to change the story more than they did the second one.
I took my 12 and 14 year old girls to see it ASAP. By the end, the older was crying tears of rage. Out of all the Narnia books, this was her favorite, and the one that looked best suited for translation “as is” to the film genre. But the writers didn’t consider the real story “good enough” and “improved” it with mechanized magic and McGuffins.
I found the film to be entertaining, and worth our time (and money) to go see it...
Of course it does not follow the original book storyline to a “T”...No films really do, but I enjoyed the imagery come to life, so to speak, when this and the preceding films came out...
I have read all the books in this series when I was younger, and reading to me, regardless of the genre and content was always an escape for me...I urge the parents in this forum to get their kids to read things beyond what you or others might believe to be beyond their kids comprehension or attention span...I’ve read books many times over in my life, and when I was younger I had been told my comprehension and reading level was way over the age and grade I was currently in...
If these types of stories do nothing more than exercise the grey matter between the ears, and the more you stimulate that the better in the long run...
okay :-). love the books . . .
ping
I remember being a little girl and waking up at about three in the morning to read the series before school. I know, kinda weird. Even though the last of our kids are almost out of the house we still keep the series on the bookshelf. It will stay there as long as I am around.
I hear ya!
What is it with film makers that they mess about with the tone and the subtext from extremely well-known and well-loved fantasy novels in the name of spicing up the plot?
Take the Lord of the Rings films, for example. Peter Jackson scrupulously avoided walking into the obvious traps, but even so he managed to fall foul of it with Legolas and Gimli.
In the books, Legolas and Gimli distrust each other from the outset (being almost natural enemies), but develop a kinship through fighting side by side, and end up almost as brothers. That’s their story and it was vastly more relevant to the LOTR story in Tolkien’s eyes, than the Arwen-Aragorn relationship.
In the films, Jackson tried to make us laugh at the dwarf not being able to see over the battlements or being hampered by the orc/ogre corpses, while Legolas goes off on a one-man ninja assault.
It’s the only real misfire in that otherwise brilliant adaptation.
there are some tweaks and they did cut out some of the end details that would have slowed the movie at the end. Overall they hit the mark.
Please read it TO your nine year old. I recommend starting with book #5, The Magician’s Nephew.
Thanks Making_Sense [Rob W. Case].
I understand why they felt they had to change the story. They had to keep the plot moving, and the way the book is laid out, there is nothing there to merge the events within it. If it was filmed that way, it would probably not make any sense to those of us who haven’t yet read the books.
Yet when these changes are approved by C.S. Lewis’ stepson, who is an avowed Christian himself, I felt confident that he would make the right decisions.
I loved the books and am a big C.S. Lewis fan in general. I thought the movie was very exciting and even a little old-fashioned (like a CGI laden Ray Harryhausen film). I was a little disappointed with some of the changes they made to the story, but a lot of things they got very right (bratty Eustace, brave Reepicheep, noble Aslan, bizarre Dufflepuds, etc.). It’s really a very imaginative story.
Get out there and see this one, folks! We need to support films that actually promote a good moral message for once. If movies like this fail then Hollywood will just continue to crank out more and more garbage.
Agree. Love the books. The movie is great. Go see it!
And it’s funny. Hollywood only seems to be playing politics with Christian themed films. In many instances, they have been coming out with commitments to series that don’t rake in that much revenue (take SAW for example, especially after the third one). And that’s not the only one either. And yet, for movies like Narnia, they are going on a profit by film, step by step basis.
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