Review of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) by Alun W — 15 Apr 2017

On its own terms, this would be a routine fantasy adventure film. As an adaptation of C S Lewis's book it is a travesty, the only redeeming feature being the portrayal of Eustace, who is recognisably the same person as in the book, particularly in some of his scenes with Reepicheep.

Although most of the elements of the book's plot are vaguely present albeit mostly in the wrong order, they are distorted almost beyond recognition in order to up the quotient of action and opportunities for CGI.

In the process all the Christian symbolism of the book is lost and transmuted into bland new age messages, and even more unforgivably, numerous loose ends and inconsistencies not present in the original are introduced into the story.

When I watched Prince Caspian a few weeks ago, I thought it was pretty far from the original, but compared with this misconceived recasting of the most episodic of the seven Narnian books into a computer game-like quest Prince Caspian was a model of fidelity.

Very disappointing.