Review of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) by Filipeneto — 19 Feb 2018

This movie is the adaptation of a C.S. Lewis book. In this film, Lucy and Edmund Pevensie return to Narnia, for the last time, accompanied by an inconvenient and annoying cousin named Eustace, to assist Caspian to find seven lords of Telmar who disappeared at sea.

Directed by Michael Apted, it has screenplay by Michael Petroni, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. The cast was headed by Georgie Henley (Lucy), Skandar Keynes (Edmund), Ben Barnes (Caspian), Will Poulter (Eustace) and also features the voices of Eddie Izzard (Reepicheep) and Liam Neeson (Aslan).

"Chronicles of Narnia" is a trilogy that started badly and ended worse. If the first two films were bad due to the inability to properly explore the original books and the incompetence of the director and writing team, they knew at least compensate it: the quality of the actors and their performances, the costumes and extraordinary scenery or the bright and colorful picture were aspects that granted a certain beauty for these movies that managed to forget the mistakes and made them into something good. Well, if they were not completely good, at least they were acceptable or reasonable. This film does not. This film ran over C. S. Lewis with the force of a train and just rewrote the story. I was not there to see it, but I bet that was Michael Petroni's fault because, back in 2002, he had done much the same thing in "Queen of the Damned", which I consider the worst vampire movie ever, even worse than the Hammer's B movies of the seventies. So, I believe Petroni loves to destroy books in the movies... but, if Petroni is relapsing into this crime, the remaining writers are, at least, accomplices in "literary murder", as the director, who would have certainly done better if he had made another movie with monkeys! In addition to the rewriting of the history, this film has other flaws: the special effects are unconvincing and the climax of the film is an unusual fight against an evil island, which makes no sense because the film does not explain anything or put things in context.

This film, however, we need to recognize the quality of the sceneries and wardrobe, and above all the excellent performances of the actors. Ben Barnes, in particular, greatly improved his Caspian, now without that weird accent and a greater psychological depth. Absolutely amazing was Will Poulter, who made a superb interpretation and has shown that it may prove to be an excellent actor when he reaches his maturity.