Movie Review: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Acting, effects, scenes from the book captured well

Cons: Added plot lines take away from the overall story

The Bottom Line: 

The need to add plot

Way over complicated things

Will disappoint fans

The Temptation to Mess Up the Book was too Great

I loved the first of the recent Narnia movies.  I felt like it kept the spirit of the story while changing things only to make the movie stronger.  The second one disappointed many fans, and I must admit the liberty they took with the book was a bit disappointing.  I was hoping they would stick closer to the book for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Sadly, they went even further from the source material, making a bigger mess of things.

Edmund and Lucy (Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley) are staying with their aunt, uncle, and cousin while the rest of the family is in America.  Sadly, this isn't a happy visit, especially since Eustace Clarence Scrubb (Will Poulter) is a horrid boy, always provoking them and then tattling on them.

Then the three of them are transported to Narnia via a painting in a bedroom.  They find themselves joining King Caspian (Ben Barnes) on his quest to find out what happened to the seven lords his uncle banished.

But they've just begun their quest when they find out that an evil green mist is threatening Narnia.  And the only way to stop it is to find the swords the seven lords had and place them on Aslan's table.  Will they face temptation and their fears to complete the quest?

I reread the series this year, and when I was rereading this book, I realized just how hard the story would be to translate to a movie.  Basically, it's a collection of short stories loosely held together by the search for the seven lords.  And to properly tell each adventure while not making a mammoth movie would take some serious work.

So, how did they handle it here?  By adding a green mist which wasn't in the book at all.  As soon as I found out about it, the Narnia geek inside me was ready to dislike it, but I tried to view the movie with an open mind.  Sadly, it didn't convince me that this added layer of plot added anything at all to the story.  Furthermore, they put in two extra characters that aren't developed at all, so we don't care about them and the outcome of their sub-plot.  Again, that's time that could be spent on the real story to tell it better.  And, their green mist plot made no sense on many levels, like why it's news to everyone from Narnia if it's about to take over the land.  And there were multiple things that didn't work for me in the climax of this plot thread.

Now, I do get what they were trying to do with the green mist.  If there is any underlying theme to the book, it's the power of temptation and how dangerous it can be.  They still could have played that up without needing to introduce any of the green mist.  As it was, the scenes involving the temptation and the consequences were some of the best in the movie, even if they didn't completely follow the book.  They could have done a great job with this without adding the green mist.

If I sound like I didn't enjoy it at all, that's wrong.  There was plenty to love here.  They managed to include all the side trips here.  The order was changed, although it still worked for this story.  The Dufflepuds especially were the riot I expected them to be from the book.  They got the character of Eustace right, too; he was appropriately annoying without ruining the film.

The acting was great.  Ben Barnes was much better here than he was in Prince Caspian.  Frankly, the entire cast was great.  My lack of emotional investment in a few scenes wasn't due to lack of acting ability but due to the rushed nature of the storytelling.  I was sorry to see that Eddie Izzard wasn't back as Reepicheep.  The mouse didn't have quite the same bite to him as the in the last movie, although Simon Pegg filled the part well.

The film is full of special effects, and they were amazing.  I especially loved how they played the first and last scenes, although there was a pretty awesome fight with a sea monster and a very believable dragon as well.

I saw the movie in 3D at a midnight showing.  While it was fun and a few scenes were spectacular that way, I'm not sure it was worth the extra money.  It would have been just as good in 2D.

One final note.  The books drop the World War II references after the first one.  I find it interesting that they have kept them around in the films.  They certainly fit the England timeline of the stories.  And fans of the books will find a nice shout out to the next story in the last few seconds of the film.  Plus the credits use the original illustrations.

I have a feeling if I didn't love the books so much, I would have enjoyed this movie more.  It certainly isn't bad.  But I just can't separate the book from the film, so I will keep wishing for what The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader could have been.