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Prince Caspian Speaks

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Videos by Professor Howdy said...: Prince Caspian on Film:
A Victorious Return to Narnia
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This feature contains a few minor plot spoilers.

At some point near the completion of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe, the film’s director Andrew Adamson made a crucial
phone call to his producer Mark Johnson. “It was the middle of the night
when my phone rang,” says Johnson, “without introduction Andrew asks me,
‘Are we really ready to do another one of these?’”

Making a movie is certainly exhausting business with millions of struggles
and details to handle. One could certainly understand why on the heels of
his first cinematic journey to Narnia, a weary Adamson would be hesitant to
go there again. Backed by Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, they set
out to make not just a movie; they had to make a huge movie that realizes a
fully fictional world inhabited by completely imaginary characters. One that
satisfied both the rabid fans of C.S. Lewis’ beloved Chronicles of Narnia,
but also a large segment of the movie-going world that was not familiar with
these books.

Fortunately for us, their success almost three years ago with the first
Narnia film and their love for these popular stories drove them to bring the
second book in the Chronicles of Narnia to life: Prince Caspian. But like
the second movie in any series, the filmmakers knew that Prince Caspian
could not just be as good as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it had to
be better. Also like any book adaptation on film, Johnson, Adamson and the
film’s screenwriters had to make some changes to the original work. Yet the
structure of the novel Prince Caspian provided some unique challenges to the
adaptation process.

“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is so revered by so many people, you
got the sense that if you tampered with it, your were doing so at great
risk,” says Johnson. “With [Prince Caspian] when we first read it … we knew
it was going to be really tough.”

What Johnson and the others discovered, was that even though millions have
read and enjoyed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, far fewer readers had
also read Prince Caspian and the rest of the Chronicles. “So we didn’t feel
quite the same pressure, as we did on the first movie,” confesses Johnson,
“The success of the first gave us a bit more leeway to make some changes to
the second. We were very much aware of what these books mean to so many
people and want to stay true to each one them.”

Going Forward 1,300 Years

In this second part of the Narnia story, we return to Narnia 1,300 years
into the future. The land is ruled by an ignoble race of men called the
Telmarines, and their power-hungry ruler Miraz. The magical creatures of old
Narnia have all but disappeared in the face of this human tyranny, and have
not been seen in years. Upon the birth of his son, the wicked Miraz attempts
to murder his nephew Caspian, the rightful heir to the throne. During his
escape from Miraz, Caspian discovers the old Narnians in hiding and joins
with them to take back Narnia from the Telmarines. Caspian also finds
himself in possession of a magic horn—familiar to those who remember the
first film—and blows it in his “hour of great need,” pulling the Pevensie
children, the famous “kings and queens of old,” back into Narnia.

Narnia purists will note this slight departure from the book (which has
Caspian using the horn after a long argument with the rest of the Narnians
about how appropriate using the magic horn would be). Since most of Prince
Caspian’s story in the book is told in flashback, the filmmakers knew that
they had to change this bit of structure for film.

“Structurally [Prince Caspian] is not a movie,” says screenplay co-writer
Stephen McFeely. “It’s a 180-page book. When the kids get [to Narnia] and
they meet a dwarf who tells them a 60-page flashback they are not involved
in, about a kid they’ve never heard of named Prince Caspian. And they say
‘it sounds like he is in trouble ... we better go do something about that.’
So we wrote a memo when [co-writer Christopher Markus and I] first got the
job that said what we have to all agree on is that somebody is blowing that
horn really, really early—much earlier than the book—because the kids have
to get here and meet Caspian.”

For the Pevensie children, Peter, Susan Edmund and Lucy, who returned to
England from Narnia at the end of the first story, only one year has passed.
So their return to a Narnia that is more than a thousand years older is
quite jarring.

“Because they’ve been to Narnia before they feel like they know Narnia
better than anyone else,” says Georgie Henley, who plays Lucy Pevensie in
both films. “They come back to a completely different Narnia… they don’t
cope with that well until the end [of the film.]”

Prince Caspian the film also examine what life in England must have been
like for these children who had formerly been rulers of the magically land
of Narnia. Lewis, McFeely notes, did not investigate this part of the story,
all involved with the film wanted to show that life wasn’t all rosy for the
Pevensies when they returned home from their fabulous first journey. “What
happens if you are a king or queen of Narnia for 15 years, and then you walk
back through the wardrobe,” asks McFeely. “You are a kid just like when you
left and you have to go back to school for a year… before you were signing
treaties and defeating giants. Now you have to go back to doing homework. We
wanted to show the tough times. …”

Making Adjustments in Different Worlds

It is the character Peter, who seems to have the most difficulty adjusting
to both life in the real world and returning to a Narnia where he is no
longer the high king. The movie thoughtfully examines his inner struggles
with pride and the tensions between “king of old” Peter and Caspian the
rightful heir to the throne.

“Peter feels very self-entitled, and his ego gets the best of him,” says
William Moseley about the character he portrays. “He was the High King and
then he got back to England and nobody had and respect for him. The he got
back to Narnia [and again] nobody had any respect for him…”

Much like younger brother Edmund in the first film, it is Peter who now has
the most profound personal journey in Prince Caspian. And with Caspian now
in the picture Moseley feels that Peter learns a great deal of humility in
this film. “I think leadership at the end of the day is about serving other
people, and serving your country and not serving yourself. Peter had to
learn that valuable lesson…. Peter has to pass Narnia on to Caspian. There
is a strong leadership journey for him portrayed here.”

This strain between Caspian and Peter ups the film’s tension. “It doesn’t
feel like they hate each other, they’re just at each other’s throats a bit
because they’ve been through all this stuff together,” says Ben Barnes who
plays Caspian in the film. “I was pleased the way it came out.”

Adamson concurs: “For Peter [the return to Narnia] was a chance to reassess
himself, to prove himself… So he didn’t really want Aslan’s help because
that would mean he NEEDED someone’s help. He wanted to prove that he really
was the high king. So [that’s why in the story] he is sort of the last one
to come around to saying ‘ok, I need help.’”

“[Edmond] is always looking out for Peter and he doesn’t really get the
credit he deserves…” say Skandar Keynes of his character Edmund. “One
of the recurring themes is how he is helping Peter out and Peter is just kind
of ignoring him.”

And with Edmund’s character arc so severe in the first film, the writers
struggled to figure out how to handle his character in this second film.

“We were always worried about Edmund because … he fixed the most about
himself in the first movie,” says McFeely. “So it would be unfair to him and
the audience to make him a little crud muffin at the beginning of this
movie. So then what do you do, you start with a character that’s pretty
noble and has a good head on his shoulders?” Edmund instead of being a
character in need of redemption for his treachery, becomes a great little
action hero. In addition to getting a key role in the main action sequence,
Keynes gets several fun bits of comic relief that prove him to be both witty
and endearing.

Breaking Up the Action

It is the humor of Prince Caspian that breaks up the intensity in an action
heavy film. Several of the Narnians, many of them completely rendered on
computer, provide some welcome comic relief in the midst of all the intense
action and character growth. “I was actually pleased at how much the
audience laughed,” says Adamson of the test screenings he sat in on.
“Reepicheep the mouse is a great character in the book, and any time you
have a mouse say something it instantly becomes funny.” Trumpkin the dwarf,
portrayed by actor Peter Dinklage, displays a cynical sense of humor that
also works to ease the film’s tension.

Like most books adapted for film, what’s more important than the details,
are the themes of the story. Prince Caspian not only contains the amazing
special effects and action choreography you would expect in a cotemporary
fantasy epic, it also includes a poignant emotional journey for the
characters. According to Mark Johnson, a film should always be about
characters and story telling … “are [the viewers] going to be compelled to
follow these characters...? It’s not about ‘does this explosion work’ it’s
about ‘do we care?’

Added to the story, which will no doubt cause a good deal of discussion, is
an action sequence where the Narnias attack Miraz’s castle before he has a
chance to attack them.

“In the book Reepicheep suggests raiding the castle and going after the
Telmarines; [it’s] not something they do in the book but something worth
expanding on. I read to immerse myself in what the book was and see what
came out of it in the writing process. And it evolved toward a more
action-driven film [than the first],” says Adamson.

“The raid is a huge failure,” says screenplay co-writer Christopher Markus.
But we wanted to give Peter that [scene], so he can come across as stiffly
heroic … we really wanted to test his mettle and break him a little bit so
he could build himself back as a person.”

By all accounts, C.S. Lewis’ step-son and guardian of the Lewis estate
is pleased with this second film, telling Christianity Today in a recent
interview that although Prince Caspian is a poorer book than The Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe, it ended up being a better movie.

This success is largely due to Adamson, Johnson, et al and their reverence
for the themes of the source material.

Going Back and Moving on

“I grew up in Papua New Guinea and that’s a country that gone through an
awful lot of change in the last 22 years, says Adamson. “And I’ve never gone
back there in part because I know the place where I grew up doesn’t really
exist anymore. So [like the Pevensie children] I related to the sense of
lose of not being able to go back to something that you grew up with. Like
the old saying “you can’t go back to your childhood. That’s what [the
Pevensie children] are going through … the going back to a place that doesn’t
exist and having to accept it and move on. So as much as I wanted connection
I wanted the audience to feel that sense of loss as well.”

Any additions or structural changes to the story support the themes of the
book nicely, including making one famous sequence with Aslan, rendered here
potentially in a dream. Says Adamson: “There is a problem there that you can
get away with in the book because the story is told in retrospect … Aslan is
there and he doesn’t do anything. But we had a problem with that
cinematically because once you show Aslan, if you don’t have him do
something people are going to ask ‘Why is all this happening? Why doesn’t he
do something.’ It became really hard to see how this magnificent creature
came along and hung out with the kids, and not do anything to stop all this
carnage.”

At its core, Prince Caspian is about belief verses doubt, a theme familiar
to those who know the work of C.S. Lewis. The Telmarines don’t believe in
Aslan and the old Narnians. Lucy sees Aslan but her siblings don’t believe
her at first.

“You believe than you see,” says Will Moseley about Narnia. “The analogy is
there that Aslan represents God. People say every day ‘if God is there why
can’t I see him.’ Peter Susan and Edmund say the same thing, ‘why didn’t I
see him, he is an unbelievably huge lion why can’t I see him?’ Because they
don’t believe. When Peter feels remorse about his sins, then the magic
starts to happen. Almost like you open yourself up to believe than, then you
can see. I don’t think it has anything to do with aging … its more to do
with your strength in belief.”

Starring Peter Dinklage, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Ben Barnes,
Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Prince Caspian opens in theaters nationwide
on Friday, May 16, 2008. Click here for more information.

Find this article at: http://www.crosswalk.com/11575514/

***********************************************************************

The Tao of Narnia -
Understanding Prince Caspian
May 14, 2008

Many of us can hardly wait for the release of the second film in the
Chronicles of Narnia series. Prince Caspian will arrive in theaters this
Friday.

If you have read the book, or if you listened to Mark Earley yesterday on
"BreakPoint," you know the storyline: the return of the four Pevensie
children to a Narnia under the rule of the evil King Miraz. But how many of
us realize the tale is undergirded by natural law lessons?

As Tim Mosteller writes in a book titled The Chronicles of Narnia and
Philosophy, "There is a Tao of Narnia." Tao is the term that C. S. Lewis
uses to describe "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain
attitudes are really true, and others really false."

In other words, the Tao of Narnia is what theologians call natural law—the
belief that moral truths are present in the natural world that can be known
by all, which, in Narnia, includes dwarves, fauns, centaurs, and mice.

As Mosteller notes, Lewis does not argue for the Tao in his Narnia books; he
illustrates it. Accepting the Tao involves three things: "(1) A commitment
to an objective moral order that is independent of what I or anyone else
thinks; (2) an openness to moral development only within the Tao, and (3) a
willingness to follow the Tao in all situations."

The characters in Prince Caspian illustrate various responses to the Tao.
For example, the valiant mouse Reepicheep wholeheartedly accepts the Tao
and strives to live by it—even at the loss of his tail.

By contrast, King Miraz denies that loyalty to his nephew Caspian, the true
king of Narnia, is a valid moral demand. Yet, he demands unswerving loyalty
from his own men. In other words, Miraz tries to pick and choose which
elements of the Tao he wants to live by. But as Mosteller notes, this is
impossible because "all parts of the Law rest on the same self-evident moral
axioms; any moral values the picker-and-chooser may appeal to have no
authority outside the Tao as a whole."

We also have the dwarf Nikabrik, who wants to conjure up the White Witch for
help in overturning Miraz. Nikabrik is the ultimate pragmatist: To him,
moral truth is whatever works. As Mosteller observes, Nikabrik fails to
realize that the Tao is not just one morality among many: "It is the only
morality—Aslan's Owner's Manual for true success and fulfillment, for Humans
and Talking Beasts alike."

These days—as in Lewis's time—schools routinely teach that there is no
objective moral truth: Morality is subjective, a matter of just personal
preferences. And then they wonder why kids lie, cheat, and steal. As Lewis
himself observed, "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue . .
. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

Stories like Prince Caspian reveal, in the most exciting and dramatic way,
that there is an objective moral law known to, and binding upon, us all.

Which is why I hope that, come this weekend, you will take in a showing of
Prince Caspian. Take a child with you. Both of you will emerge from the
darkened theatre longing to be as brave as Reepicheep—and as noble as
the Lion.

by Chuck Colson

http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=7935

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Prince Caspian Speaks

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