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So there's these Narnia movies. I saw the first one on good faith, and it sucked, partly by trying to apply a Lord of the Rings big ol' war vibe to a kid's book with Santa and talking animals in it. Partly because the source material is a lot weaker than I remembered it being under the cold light of day. Then I saw Prince Caspian because oh hey, this tone is actually appropriate for this book! Still sucked. Now here's Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the best book in the series, and... I have no reason to suspect this won't just be completely terrible. Let's find out if it sucks in amusing ways though.
We... start off with Edmond trying to enlist in the movie. I'm almost positive that wasn't in the books, but it does remind me of one of the most @$#%ed up things about the end of the series. Everyone else gets marched into heaven when the metaphor is eventually dropped, but Susan got a boyfriend, so she can go burn in hell. Seriously, what the hell. I think everyone else has done worse than... have vaguely implied consensual sex once. This is also the book that says, through a REALLY thin metaphor that Islam is secretly devil worship. So... yeah, C.S. Lewis beats out Orson Scott Card by a long shot on the whole wrote fun kids books then preachy sequels, then just got real weird and bitter front. Also, wow. This right here? This is not an acceptable costume. This is apparently supposed to be a Minotaur, but it really just looks like someone in a bad minotaur costume. Not even a bad minotaur costume from a movie. Like a bad amateur halloween costume. It's basically just this lumpy suit made of black carpeting with horns stuck on top and a weird CG face. Also, isn't Eustace supposed to be kinda chubby? He's scrawny here... and blond which also seems wrong to me. Reepicheep's OK at least.
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So yeah, we're still trying to force this Lord of the Rings vibe, with Caspian in particular looking really grim and serious and pointing a crossbow at anything that moves and... here's a big fight scene breaking out on the first island. Also, wow, I totally forgot about this whole looking for seven lords hiding out bit. Mainly because it doesn't really amount to much. And... OK.... the mist we're sacrificing people to is... this tiny little green cloud thing that just kinda pops out of the water and eats people. That's.... not right. And I think just now that minotaur didn't have the top half of his costume tucked into the belt right.
Having a sword fight against a mouse, it turns out, doesn't look very plausible on film. Still the best looking thing in this movie though. The suck is astounding, it really is. Also, wow, these invisible dudes have pretty noticeable footprints while nobody else seems to have any. I realize I'm not being much for plot summarizing on this one, but I just kinda have to assume everyone has read the book. And yeah, that's not snow, those are very visibly feathers. And oh hey, here's a pretty horrible scene that we have to blame on the book with Lucy and the spellbook here. Oh dear gods. How did I forget the weirdos with the one giant foot each? I guess the overblown footprints get a free pass now.
Also wow. Eustace denying everything he sees is pretty freaking stupid isn't it. Anyway though yeah, Lucy with the spellbook. She finds a spell in it to make you look good, which is totally played up as like, horrible corrupting evil, which would make her look like Susan. And she rips it out of the book, despite it being like, a single easy to recall sentence. Which ties back into what I was saying earlier. Anyway, we're kinda trying to make some kind of point about self-confidence here but... this whole scene just doesn't work. Neither does this one, where Ed and Caspian are going all "With this magic pool that turns things to gold, we could rule the world!" Yeah, maybe you forgot, but YOU ALREADY DO. Anyway, now Eustace turns into a dragon. Off camera, trying to keep the audience in the dark about it. Because that way we can have this big grim war movie dragon "attack" scene. So yeah. This whole scene probably gave a bunch of kids some weird dragon fetish in the book. Now that I stop and think of it, I could probably point to some specific cases. And... wasn't there this weird vaguely pervy description of Aslan peeling his dragon body off him and leaving him naked or something? And now everyone's talking about eating him. All of this in a book aimed at kids/young teens... yeah. I'm surprised it's not a more common fetish.
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And then oh yeah, very next island they drop the whole find the "7" lords "Link" bit and just kinda dump the rest on the next island. Along with a lame deus ex machina. You could probably make a drinking game of those really. And huh. This scene is pretty much like the end of Ghostbusters. Whatever you think of, the evil mist here will become. And then Ed thinks of the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man. Or... this giant eel monster I guess. Which, really, is a pretty random thing to think of. Nice looking though. Apparently they gave this thing more of the special effects budget than anything else. Weird mouth. Honestly, all the rendered stuff looks OK, it's just costumes that are deplorably shoddy looking. Well, Aslan looks pretty lame. And yeah, we totally cleaned up the change-back scene. Seriously though, this sea monster doesn't belong in this movie at all. Or this genre even really. Fortunately, it's killed by another deus ex machina. Well, OK, not quite, but Aslan is involved, and a big death beam comes out of something convenient to give Ed a lightsaber to one hit kill it with.
Now we're just skipping directly to rowing off the edge of the world in a dinky little raft. Except... it's not a big dropoff, it's a sandbar with this big wave tower ing over it. Seriously, they just cut directly to it after that no explaining about not being able to take the ship... which incidentally I don't think is ever actually referred to by name. And oh hey, here's the little speech from Aslan where he explains how no, he isn't an allegory for Jesus, he's Jesus' fursona. Also... Reepicheep kinda kills himself to prove his faith... which is pretty messed up really. And now here's illustrated end credits, which flip Ed and Eustace's hard color around to look correctly, and REALLY INAPPROPRIATE AND TERRIBLE MUSIC. Dear gods! It's like, I am the Wind bad! Actually these illustrations look really familiar... was the original book illustrated? Also... Reepicheep's voice was Simon Pegg? Really? That's pretty random, and I'm impressed I didn't place the voice. Acting! But anyway yeah, that sucked and the plot doesn't make any sense at all if you haven't read the books because they skipped over all the exposition and just strung the weird island features together with no context. Next in the series I believe is A Horse and his Boy which... yeah, even the book was pretty unbearable for that one. I'm kinda curious if this ill-advised movie series is willing to go there. Don't think I am. Unless of course they actually do The Last Battle. That one would be enough of a train wreck I'd really need to see it.
