Be Excellent To Each Other

(Here you go. First draft so not particularily concise and doubtless typo-ridden, but heigh-ho.)

So, Prince Caspian was pretty good, right? In a matinee way it zipped along, had some good embellishments and some fun Spaniard power-strugling. Not a mighty film but a good precedent. How would The Voyage of the Dawn Treader fare, the film billed as a last attempt to save the (gngh) 'franchise'.

First, some background:

Ever read Voyage of the Dawn Treader? It's a jolly, rather charming read. It also does something tremendously different from the over-bearing normality of modern fantasy: there is adventure purely for the sake of adventure. When the heroes of Dawn Treader sail away in their boat, it isn't to fight an ancient evil. Nor is it to fulfil ancient prophercy. They do not set out to right wrongs, or find a lost love. They simply wish to explore and encounter. This is a dream that has been sadly forgotten in fantasy film. The film franchise successes of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter were a double-edged sword as now fantasy films have to contort to fit highly predictable quest plot-lines governed by a slavish devotion to Joseph Campbell.

Now it is a little ironic that Chrisitan America loves C. S. Lewis so much, as he is such an enthusiast of pagan Gods, symbols and mythos. He simply cannot resist them. Outside of Aslan, Narnia entirely dwells in the land of epic myth and paganism, far away from the saints and sinners of Bible lore. He recognised their superior entertainment value and his genius lay in twisting them into supporting his covert Christian tutelage. This no more so than in Dawn Treader, where a parade of sea-monsters, dragons, sorcerers and the like keep friend reader entertained right up to a curiously moving ending where a talking mouse succeeds in his fatal pilgrimage to Aslan's country. There isn't any real drive or quest to the story, the pleasure purely exists in the wit and the adventure itself. And when Lewis had a mind to, he was a master of wit. One of the sterling stand-out sequences of Dawn Treader has King Caspian leading a coup against tedious, stolid, democratic governor. Any sympathy for the governor is done away in a wonderfully humourous portrayal of a rather lazy, officious yet Machievellian type who is out-manouvred by a bluff. Caspian, suspecting that both he and his small landing party would be murdered by the threatened governor, engineers a master display of realpolitik in which he fools the island leaders into thinking he comes at the head of a huge army and navy, and wins the hearts and minds of the public with some shameless crowd pleasing antics. At the same time he defeats a bunch of slave traders who are portrayed as strangely lovable jobs-worths, even taking time to shake-down the traders for refunds for the buyers.

It's the first island adventure of many in the story and sets the tone of Lewis's writing: the utilising of highly deriative characters and plots and embellishing them with wit, charm and verve. It's not Shakespeare, it's not even Tolkien, but it's beguiling fun.

There's nothing fun or beguiling about Disney's latest Narnia outing. Each encounter unfolds with a 'will this do' shrug of the shoulders and the perfunctionary brevity of a checklist being ticked. Gone is the delightful old governor. Gone the jolly old slave traders. In their place we have a bunch of evil 'Hur hur hur, c'mere missy!' types and some cheesy blink and you'll miss it human sacrifice to a blob of green mist and a fight barely above the average Power Rangers scrap. Yup, green mist that takes people away. That's not in the book by the way, that's the first appearance of a so-thin-it's-nano-fillament plot device aimed at injecting some epic questiness. Apparently there's an evil island out there that they've got to stop. It's doing something evil you see, in an evil sort of way, which is evidenced by evil looking green mist. Well, we're told that it is an evil place. We never actually find out what it is up to, exactly. It is so vague it's almost as if our heroes are being briefed by Fox News.

Yep, our heroes. It's the Pevensie kids again. Funny thing, despite knowing what kids want, Lewis hasn't the faintest clue on how to write a compelling child character when it comes to the Peter, Susan, Edmund & Lucy. Not all is lost however, as we've ditched the duller of the four and added Eustace, an entertainingly priggish sort who is somewhat superbly played by Son of Rambow's Will Poulter. Eustace comes into his own in the following Silver Chair, aided by Jill Pole, who is also a more interesting character than Susan or Lucy. Other than that, Simon Pegg does well as the regal mouse Reepacheep, and so well does Poulter perform that the duo have a real presence together. Alas, this is the only standout of the entire film. The rest of the performances are competent but neither script or direction give any opportunity for range or subtlety. At least in Jason and the Argonauts we had the bawdy cast crying out, "Argh!" and "Behold!" at every turn. Here we have, "I sense danger," and a lot of creeping about looking anxious, or grinning and looking awestruck - and it gets old fast.

So off they go. They have to find seven swords to defeat the nebulous evil thing/place/person and conveniently find them one by one, after mastering some challenge. Lucy's challenge is to read a page of a book out loud with her mouth. Edmund and Caspian's challenge is to try not to fall into a pool that turns things into gold, and then to try to convincingly act out a sudden hatred of each other when wanting ownership of said gold-turning-thing-pool. Eustace becomes a dragon, then stops being a dragon. Each challenge - a fascinatingly played out danger in the book - is here a monumentally tedious and tiny hurdle to surmount in the film. Worst of all is when Eustace gets changed back from dragon to boy. In the book there's a real agony about the process, as he has to claw off his own skin and then immerse himself in a water that boils and strips the dragon away from him. It's a gruelling ordeal that rapidly matures him and which follows a learning experience where he finds himself more beloved and less hateful as a helpful dragon than a whiney boy. In the film he flies around a bit, fights a sea-serpent and is then changed back. It lacks any real degree of tension or emotion, no matter the efforts Poulter goes to.

Each threat by the way is in the form of a highly tempting prize, in a, "Ooh, this must be a good thing! Oh noes, wait!" sort of way. Only because the clearly evil sinister green mist appears with every occurence, one is left with the opinion that the Dawn Treader is crewed solely by idiots to be taken in by these deceptions.

Tilda Swinton pops up now and again for a few seconds in a CGI misty sort of way. Pays the bills.

That's really it. They defeat the evil island thing by chucking a load of swords together and defeating a reasonable looking sea-serpent, but who cares when no effort has been made to inject any detail, passion or imagination into the venture? The CGI is competent, occassionally impressive, but the art direction lazy. One island blends into another. Every shot has to have an impressive sunrise or sunset. The Dawn Treader itself is faithfully rendered but impersonally shot. Everything about this production is gutless, heartless. Absolutely no risks are taken, no real creativity is on display. It's almost as if it wants to sit in a corner quietly, unnoticed. This is supposed to save the film series?

And there's no detailed direction whatsover, the entire thing is horribly careless. Upon landing on a suspicious island the King and the kids decide to have a sleep on the beach, without keeping any sentries. At one point, sailing near dangerous rocks through a dangerous cave in dangerous waters, they blithely bob along without, for example, casting a lead to check the depth. Now I know these are kids films, but surely they should be made by a group of adults who take at least a modicum of pride in these things? Who aren't entirely jobs-worths? It indicates a sort of sullen, arrogant contempt. The disregard for any consitency or atmosphere, and contempt for the Narnia faithful (God, I hated typing that) manifests itself in one off-screen line at the end of the film...

The kids return from their adventures, materialising in Eustace's room. Offscreen you hear his mum's voice. "Eustace! Jill Pole is here!" Now not only does Jill not meet Eustace for the first time properly until the events of the next book, but they could never, ever be considered friends. The film at the start takes pains to point out that he is a friendless, contemptible, whiny brat. So why does he suddenly have a visitor, huh? It's a shout-out to the fans that goes desperately wrong. It's the sort of flailing, unimaginative idiocy that is the hallmark of this film.

At the end of the film you get big 3D images of the wondeful artwork found in the books. It is accompanied by a ball-kickingly wretched warbling Pop Idol song.

In a word,

Hateful.

3/10

It's been ages since I read the book, but I do remember the dragon -> Eustace bit - he described it as like tearing off a huger, all-body scab I think.

I think Will Poulter might actually turn out to be a decent actor in a few years time. He was the only half-decent think in that rubbish "School of Comedy" thing that Channel 4 tried.