Prince Caspian's Challenge to Filmmakers

Contains some book spoilers.

It's probably a mistake to read (or even reread) a book just before seeing the film adaptation, but I always seem to do it anyway. I want to see the new Narnia movie this week, so last night I reread Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis. The one review I've read was lukewarm at best, but if the movie is a little flat and disappointing, I'm not sure all the blame belongs to the filmmakers. Prince Caspian may be the slowest and least thrilling of the Narnia series.

As I was reading, I was especially interested to find Caspian's age because the film director has cast a young man who seems much older than the boyish character I remembered. While Lewis doesn't assign an exact age, he tells us that Caspian is about the same age as Peter, who is probably in his late teens. Like his younger siblings, Peter is on his way to school when they are all pulled into Narnia, but this is his last visit; to his sorrow, Peter learns that he and Susan won't come back to Narnia because they're "too old." Even though they're the same age, Prince Caspian has always struck me as younger than Peter. Perhaps it's because Peter can draw on his memories of adulthood from his last trip to Narnia, which lasted many years, whereas Caspian has only recently run away from his aunt and uncle and is still struggling to establish his authority among his followers. The most influential person in the young king's life is still his former tutor.

Although the book is named after Caspian, the Pevensie children are still the central characters. They've returned to Narnia to help Caspian reclaim the throne that is rightfully his, but it's Peter, not Caspian, who challenges the usurping king to single combat. Lucy and Edmund are remarkable for their demonstrations of faith and courage, while Susan struggles with her fears, but Caspian never seems to emerge from the shadow of these much better developed characters. He is neither an unlikely hero fighting for legitimacy or an idealistic champion battling the forces of evil. Rather Caspian seems like a boy king placed on a throne by older and wiser characters who recognize his symbolic authority and his potential (not his current ability) to be a good ruler. He never seems to come into his own by declaring his independence or even making his own mistakes. Even secondary characters like Trumpkin, the cheerfully skeptical dwarf, and Reepicheep, the valiant mouse, are far more endearing and interesting.

Prince Caspian does include one of my favorite scenes: Aslan freeing the young schoolmarm from the misery of teaching bratty little boys who turn into pigs and run away. However, this book was never my favorite in the Chronicles of Narnia, perhaps because very little happens in this book. The meat of the story is in Prince Caspian's escape from the evil uncle who killed his father, the creation of a resistance army, and the battle to restore "Old Narnia." However, much of Caspian's story is told in flashback, and we simply never care about him as much as we do the Pevensie children. For me, the book never had much value except to introduce characters and conflicts that would become important in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I found much more exciting when I was a young reader. Prince Caspian moves the series forward and provides some important foreshadowing, but it's not a particularly powerful book on its own.

Although Prince Caspian offers scenes with wonderful cinematic potential (the discovery of the overgrown castle, Lucy's dance with the tree-people, the "romp" with Aslan, and of course the battle scenes), the book also presents filmmakers with an enormous challenge: they may have to sacrifice faithfulness to the original in order to create a truly interesting and sympathetic hero.