I just came home from watching Prince Caspian with Kathy and the girls. I’ve never read the books and I didn’t see the first installment of the Chronicles of Narnia, so I was a little bit lost as to what the context was – though I surmised that the first must have been a story about the fight between God/good (the lion) and devil/evil (the witch). What the role of the four children was, I didn’t get at all. I also didn’t get the Christian allegories in this installment. The witch showed up for a minute, and there was a short period of temptation for a couple of the characters – but that has been done ad infinitum and it’s not an exclusively Christian theme. And there was a bit about God not helping you unless you have faith. But beyond that, and perhaps some similarities between the battles in the movie and those of the Israelites, I couldn’t see anything religious. Indeed, I couldn’t see anything in the least deep. The movie, really, made very little sense. For instance, why would the Narnians be so ready to follow Prince Caspian? Why wouldn’t the regent just kill Caspian earlier and make himself king?
What the movie did offer was violence, unmitigated, ever constant violence. I felt terrible having the kids there – how much death do they need to witness? But mostly I felt bored. Battle scene after battle scene after battle scene – even Lord of the Rings had some respite between battle scenes.
So no, I didn’t like it.