My Caspian Wish List
A Narnia expert, somewhat disappointed with The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, has a few suggestions for director Andrew Adamson regarding the upcoming Prince Caspian.
by Devin Brown | posted 1/02/2008
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The trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is out, stirring up all sorts of reactions from Narnia fans awaiting the movie's release on May 16.
With the filming now finished, director Andrew Adamson—who also helmed The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe two years ago—must now turn to the editing process, deciding what to keep and what to leave on the cutting room floor. I realize I'm a couple weeks late for a Christmas wish list, but nonetheless, here are a few things I hope Adamson will address as he puts the finishing touches on Prince Caspian, the movie.
Apologies, please
First, please don't forget the apologies this time. In C. S. Lewis's original version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the scene where Edmund is reunited with his siblings begins like this: "Edmund shook hands with each of the others and said to each of them in turn, 'I'm sorry,' and everyone said 'That's all right.'" For reasons we can only speculate about, Andrew Adamson's film adaptation left out Edmund's brief but vital statement of remorse.
Lewis's protagonists are not just fallible, they are often very fallible. Like us, they can and will make mistakes, and when they do, Lewis is quite clear that there is a proper way to reconcile afterwards, one which begins with true repentance and a genuine apology. In the book version of Prince Caspian, after making mistakes, Trumpkin apologizes to the four children, Peter apologizes to his siblings and to Trumpkin, Lucy apologizes to Aslan, Susan apologizes to Lucy, and Peter apologizes to Aslan. And each of these apologies is the real deal—no excuses, no blaming someone or something else, and no false contrition as in "if my actions offended anyone, I am sorry they were offended."
Make Aslan awesome—literally
Second, please include the awe. Before the children's encounter with Aslan in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Lewis has Susan, who is always a bit too concerned with her own well-being, ask Mr. Beaver whether Aslan is safe. "'Course he isn't safe," the Beaver replies. "But he's good." Later in Lewis's narrative we get the famous line, "People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time."
Adamson's Aslan, while commendable, was not quite as good as Lewis's and was nowhere near as terrible.
It is not that in the first film Aslan was cuddly—when he roared, he really roared. But overall he was always a bit too safe. His terrible side, which we saw only briefly, needed to be present all the time. Narnia expert Paul Ford has pointed out the occurrence of "simultaneous awe and delight" which Lewis conveys in the Chronicles, a unique experience Ford labels as "numinous." While there was sufficient delight associated with Aslan in the first movie, he failed to generate the same level of awe found in the novel, and for book lovers, this was a significant loss.
In Prince Caspian, when the children finally meet Aslan, the narrator tells us that they feel "as glad as anyone can who feels afraid, and as afraid as anyone can who feels glad." This kind of awe, this profound mixture of feelings, will be a high standard for the next film to aim for.
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