The Chronic Slaughtering of Narnia

Who has read the Narnia chronicles? Yes, the books. No, watching the first Narnia movie doesn’t count. No, it doesn’t. No one? Really? Well that’s ok, because the movies will tell you just about everything you never wanted to know about Narnia.
Narnia is another world that’s not our world. Check. Four English children somehow got into Narnia from our world. Check. Narnia is ruled by a giant CGI lion blessedly not created by Peter Jackson. Check. The CGI lion is supposed to be Jesus. Wait, what?
I will say this for Prince Caspian – it’s a better movie than The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was. And it, like its predecessor, very kindly summarizes its plot in its own title. There is no other good that comes from watching Prince Caspian. There is nothing else that makes sense. The rest of the movie leaves you with so many small, nagging questions that by time the movie ends you don’t even care what it's trying to accomplish. By the time the movie ends, you’re dead inside.
Narnia was once ruled by the White Witch (who was defeated by the CGI lion/Jesus), then by the four English children (who essentially abandoned it when they accidentally found a way back into England by literally going back through the way they came in), and is now ruled by a race of people with inexplicably Spanish accents. Prince Caspian is the Prince of Narnia. His father is dead. His uncle rules in his stead. Somewhere, Shakespeare cashes in a check for yet another Hamletesque plot. When the uncle’s wife gives birth to a son, Prince Caspian is wisely advised to leave the castle before the token henchmen can come shoot their token weapons at him. Which they do. Because the plot is that transparent. The Prince runs away to the Forbidden Forest that houses scary magical creatures, and J.K. Rowling puts in a call to her agent. The Prince is rescued from the token henchmen pursuit by dwarves and a rather large talking badger. Because the book requires him to, the Prince blows a horn before passing out from no injury whatsoever. The Prince’s uncle then convinces the Narnian legislature (which is comprised of approximately 10 men that neither the audience nor the characters can tell apart) that Prince Caspian has been abducted by Narnians. We now know that Narnians are comprised of dwarves, talking animals, centaurs, faun, and trees, and not these Spanish-accented men. Unfortunately, we don’t quite care.
Meanwhile, in England, the four children/turned Narnia kings and queens/turned English children wait in the Underground with their school bags. There is a fight between Peter and some random hooligan, and right before Peter gets beaten up, he and Susan exchange a knowing look that would be more fitting between husband and wife than brother and sister. There is some obligatory exposition and set-up of a conflict that, while utterly ridiculous, will continue to pervade the entire movie; namely, Peter misses being a grown-up and all the respect it entails, and wants his family and everyone else to treat him as the 50-year old wise king he no longer is. The walls then begin to crumble around them, and the four are magically transported from an Underground station to a Narnian beach. They immediately jump in the water with all their clothes on, because they’re children.
What follows is an hour-long interspersion of short dialogue and landscape shots. Here, a Narnian cliff. There, a Narnian ruin. Look Peter, our old castle. Look Lucy, your old clothes. Nonfunny nonbanter about Peter making a torch out of a stick and bits of his shirt when Edward already had a flashlight in his backpack. These kids have made no great strides in their acting range since the first movie, and it’s doubtful that they will in the next. Once they realize quite improbably, and with absolutely no help from anyone else, that thousands of years have passed in Narnian time since their last visit, they save a dwarf from being drowned by a couple of soldiers. Yes, it really is that silly. Luckily, this dwarf knows where Prince Caspian is and knows that the four must meet him in order to save Narnia from…itself? The Spanish people? The bear that tried to eat Lucy after she stupidly decided to talk to it while it was hunting for food? It’s not really certain.
There is a strange scene in which Peter and the dwarf argue over Narnian geography, with Peter claiming that there is a river HERE and the dwarf claiming that the river is THERE. It is unclear whose geography is superior, but what does become clear is that Lucy claims that she saw the lion and he told them to cross the river HERE, but the rest of the children and the dwarf don’t believe her and want to cross the river THERE. Lucy is the only one who believes in and can see the lion. Lucy is also right about where to cross the river. Lucy has Faith and the others don’t, but there is no reward for her or punishment for them. It, like the rest of the movie, just is.
The children meet up with Prince Caspian. He and Peter engage in an idiotic swordfight before realizing each other’s identities, and Susan tries to make flirty faces with both of them. Because Anna Poppelwell can’t act, she only manages to look vaguely constipated. The children, Caspian, and the gathered Narnians make a pact to fight together against the Spanish people to free their land from…? It is still unclear. In the meantime, Caspian’s uncle has succeeded in convincing his band of 10 merry senators that manifest destiny requires them to fight Caspian and the Narnians. They gather their massive forces and spend most of their time building a bridge from a meadow to the Forbidden Forest, across a small brook, for no reason whatsoever. Mel Brooks dashes off an email to his agent about being on the east bank, and then on the west bank, because this ain’t exactly the Mississippi river.
Peter convinces the gang that they need to invade Caspian’s uncle’s castle. All except Lucy, who wants to sit tight and wait for the lion, agree that this is the best course of action. They invade the castle, and things naturally do not go well for them, because they don’t have the Faith. A band of talking mice tie up a sleeping cat for supposedly comedic purposes. Caspian confronts his uncle and learns that his uncle killed his father for the throne; Shakespeare gives himself the thumbs up and smirks. A creature with a huge buffalo head and tiny gazelle legs loses his life trying to hold open the gate during the gang’s retreat. Lucy fails to say I told you so.
The gang’s next brilliant plan is to offer the Spaniards a one-on-one deal. The uncle will fight Peter to the death in single combat, and the side that doesn’t end up with a dead leader gets Narnia. Peter predictably beats the uncle, and predictably does not go in for the kill, instead giving Caspian the honors. Caspian, also predictably, refuses. The uncle is then stabbed (in the back, no less) by one of his interchangeable senators. The Spaniards fail to hold up their end of the deal (predictably) and war begins. There is fighting. There are swords and arrows. Lucy, who for some reason was in the woods looking for the lion while her brother was fighting Caspian’s uncle, succeeds in her quest. The lion gently reprimands her for not riding into the woods to look for him earlier, then roars and all the trees come to life. The trees use their CGI roots to beat up the Spaniard army, and the army retreats back across the bridge from forest to meadow. Unfortunately, Lucy and the lion are in the way. The lion roars again, and the brook god rears up to wash away the army into what is now apparently a CGI ocean. The Narnians cheer. The lion grows the talking mice’s king a new tail to replace his injured one, because the lion is Jesus. There is peace in Narnia once again.
The rest of the movie is a steady dénouement into even more boredom. The lion informs Peter and Susan that they can no longer come to Narnia, because they’re too old. Edward and Lucy get to have more adventures in the summer of 2010. Also, the lion reveals that the Spaniards are from our world; somehow, their entire civilization found its way into Narnia and conquered it many centuries ago. Susan, who has barely spoken three words to Caspian, tells him apropos of nothing that it would have never worked out between them because she’s 1300 years older than he is. Caspian wisely fails to tell her that he’s actually about 43 to her 17. They for some reason kiss, and Caspian gives the audience a shrug because cradle-robbing is in his contract. The four kids and a couple of Spaniards go through a hole in a tree to return to our world. The kids end up right back on the Underground platform from whence they began the movie, and the lion even has the foresight to return them to their school uniforms, thus sparing us from “jokes” about why those funny-looking kids are wearing chainmail. What we are not spared from is wondering why anyone who knows a book about this very story already exists (please check your local library for Prince Caspian, any of the Harry Potter books, or Hamlet) bothered to make this movie in the first place.