The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Movie Review
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a 2010 fantasy adventure film which is the third installment in the Narnia franchise and undoubtedly the weakest one.
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“You know, extraordinary things happen to extraordinary people.“
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I was immensely disappointed in this adaptation. I adore ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ and it is one of my favorite Narnia novels. But this movie adaptation fails on many levels and rarely succeeds at bringing this wonderful source material to the big screen. Now, the book is so wonderfully adventurous, but the movie isn’t. It is much more boring and slower than the novel and despite a couple of great sequences, most of it is uninspired and ruined.
The movie fails in terms of the character development. By bringing this ridiculous green mist, they sacrificed the true drama of the novel in favor of some stupid fantasy exposition. In the novel, all of the characters are on an ordeal and they have to conquer their worst tendencies and become better people in the progress. But here some of it is only present, but most of it is done in a supernatural manner which leads me to believe that the filmmakers didn’t even understand Lewis’s work.
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It was absolutely ridiculous to me that Edmund of all people gets to battle his inner demons the most when he should be the calmest and most sane person of the group as he had already conquered those doubts and fears in the first book and movie. Lucy is better developed, but even she isn’t as great as she was in the book. Caspian has his moments, but is boring. The only ones who weren’t destroyed here were Eustace and Reepicheep who are both terrific. Eustace is excellent and, though most of the actors were weak, Will Poulter was pretty good and was brilliantly cast. All of the drama surrounding him was very well put to use and he remained a dragon much more in this movie and that is the only change that is done even for the better as it strengthened his relationship with the mouse who was here as memorable as in the book.
The ending was emotional as in the novel and I loved Aslan’s role and how everything ended. The movie also starts well, but everything in the middle is very unfortunate as it tended to focus on action instead of adventure. Yes, the sea serpent is memorable, but that action sequence is awfully prolonged and boring and to me they ruined this material and presented it is in the worst blockbuster fashion. Almost none of it is as magical as it should have been and even Coriakin and Dufflepuds were too me weakly put to use.
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Now frankly, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader does look good. I imagined it even better as the descriptions were so vivid, but they mostly managed to make it right with good special effects and some pretty solid scenery. The ending and the boat in particular looked fine. I liked that the running time wasn’t as extended this time around and although somewhat slow, the film isn’t boring and is even more engaging than sometimes pretty dull ‘Prince Caspian’. But having in mind how the book was simply magical, the charm was lost in this very disappointing adaptation.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader does look good, Eustace and Reepicheep are very well utilized and some scenes are moving and great, but this is mostly a very disappointing and weak adaptation that is more likely to please those not familiar with the source material, but to me it was such a problematic adaptation of a great novel with a poor focus, very badly interpreted message and a tendency to focus more on action instead of adventure. It is okay as it has its moments, but it is never as magical as it should have been.
