Friday, March 1, 2013

The Adaptions Keep on Coming...

Watching adaptions is starting to become an extremely bad habit, because usually I don't like what I see. I thought it would be different with the third in the Narnia film series, because I loved the adaptions of the first two books. Like the "Lord of the Rings" series the movie versions of "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" and "Prince Caspian" were decently done. As with all adaptions there were flaws but they were relatively minuscule and the movies were fairly true to the story without being boring. This was not the case with "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", Michael Apted (the director of this particular adventure) turns what is essentially a road trip story into what seems to be a weird mix between a quest, a road trip, and a adventure movie.

The quest, is Prince Caspian, the two youngest Pevensie kids (Lucy and Edmund), their cousin Eustace, and the crew of the Dawn Treader, going out to sea to find the lords of Prince Caspian's fathers court. The road trip and the adventure story, is how they get to the different islands and what they do out at sea and on said islands.

 What makes this movie so bizarre is the addition of a villain who doesn't seem to have any goals, distinct shape, or the ability to achieve those non existent goals. Said villain is a shape shifting black miasma, with absolutely no reason to exist. Said clouds life ends pointlessly as a sea serpent. Basically what I'm saying is that if you're going to add a villain to a story without one, at least make them make believable. 

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