Customer Reviews

Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader [VHS]

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3 star:		(1)
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The new Dawn Treader movie is not yet available for DVD. An older version being sold to unwary shoppers in a cover VERY like the new series. BE CAREFULL. Check the cast members! Don't be ripped off. The old series is NOTHING like the new one...not even close to the same quality.

I haven't bought this DVD, but just got home from seeing the movie in 3D. The new director has done a BEAUTIFUL job of weaving the original story together in a more unified way. Eustace's redemption is beautifully done. Lucy's temptation is presented so universally and applicably. The sword fighting is infrequent wholesome sparring instead of violent excess. Much improved over Prince Caspian, and back in the spirit of the Lion/Witch/Wardrobe. A few added elements for more scriptural, spiritual depth for those watching that way. Bravo!!! CS Lewis would be delighted.

This latest episode of "The Chronicles of Narnia" is bringing to an end a generation of children who have been confronted to that magic world. In the present context the original meaning of WW2 is put aside, particularly for children.

For children it is first of all a magic world where animals speak and can be your friends, where children can become heroes and fight fundamental battles for a better future for everyone. These adventures are dangerous but marvelous and the final destination of these adventures is to liberate the world of evil forces.

The objective is to defend Narnia against external menaces but in this film, maybe even more than in the previous films the menace against this marvelous world comes from the inside of those who want to defend it. The evil forces are over there far away in some distant island but they have no power by themselves and they find all the power they need to dominate the world in the greed, envy, jealousy and other negative attitudes that reside and develop in the minds of the defenders of Narnia.

That is the main lesson for the children: you have to learn how to dominate these negative feelings you nurture day after day in your egotism.

Then all the rest is nothing but adventure and its dangers are not real dangers, at the worst they are temptations. But in this world there are some guides you have to follow, a blue star like a blue fairy in some other old story, the lion Aslan who can intervene to save a lost situation at the very last minute, the mission and its objective of bringing the seven swords of seven old knights to the table of Aslan, and the goal of that mission which is to liberate people who have been taken hostages by the evil forces. But these forces don't have any human or physical form, at best a vapor in the air and an image that springs from our own phantasms.

The trick of the story is to put it upside down from beginning to end. The grouchy unwilling participant at the start will become the hero who saves the situation. He will take the form a dragon, an allusion to Siegfried's dragon Fafner, but a good dragon, an allusion to other dragons in many stories. His worst enemy is a mouse at the beginning who will become his best friend at the end.

That's the second lesson for children. One day comes with that important change you must accept: not to be children any more and to assume the responsibilities the world has entrusted you with or is going to entrust you with as adults. A sad change but inevitable.

For adults this film, like the original story, has to be put in perspective with T.S. Eliot and his "Murder in the Cathedral" where he denounces human evil forces, the fascists and Nazis and calls us to fight against them, and with H.G. Wells who develops a Marxist form of social Darwinism in which the working class becomes an underground species that are the predators of the bourgeoisie that has become another species on the surface. The answer of H.G. Wells to that evil is a severe eugenic policy eliminating all racial and social groups that may endanger the balanced development of civilization. C.S. Lewis believes we are all different, each one of us must accept what they are and what all others are. Differences are the richness of this human vision.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

I did not like this movie at all, but loved the first two. To me it was boring,boring. Seems they could of picked a better movie to make into a movie!