YIKES...

Here's what Jeffrey Overstreet's thinking about Prince Caspian. I like Overstreet a lot and he's usually right, which doesn't bode well for my Caspian experience.
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Once upon a time, a great storyteller named C.S. Lewis sat down at the fireside, and children from all over the world gathered there with him.

He went on to tell them the second grand tale of Narnia — Prince Caspian — which was full of imagination. And while it may not have been as memorable and thrilling as his previous story, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it brought back many of their favorite characters. It introduced many more, including the skeptical dwarf Trumpkin, the chivalrous mouse Reepicheep, and even figures from ancient mythology, like Bacchus.

In what seemed a simple, charming children’s tale, Lewis gave shape to great truths about the God of the universe. He demonstrated how faith can open our eyes to the designs of God in the world around us. And he celebrated the powerful ways in which mythology, through all cultures and eras, leads to the true myth at the center.

Then one day, strangers who seemed to mean well appeared at the fireside. Welcomed by one of Professor Lewis’s closest allies, they made a proposition: “We would like to translate your tale into a play, a pageant that will be performed for enormous audiences around the world,” they said. “We will honor you and your work by doing so.”

Professor Lewis puffed on his pipe for a moment. He had met these men before, and he had some good reasons to question their abilities as storytellers. Eventually, he smiled sadly and said, ”Very well, so long as you understand the heart of my story, and respect for whom it was written.”

The visitors seemed to pay fierce attention to the tale that dear Professor Lewis spun, taking copious notes. Then, they stole away into the night.

“Do you suppose we trust them?” Professor Lewis asked, with a twinkle in his eye.

“It’s hard to say,” replied the children. “Are they like the good kings and queens of Narnia, fighting for what is good? Or are they more like the Telemarines, taking over someone else’s property and cutting down the forests for their own advancement?”

“We shall see,” said Professor Lewis. “Watch what they do. You will know them by their choices.”

The visitors went on to build similar fires all over the world, and in the light of those fires, they performed their play. Just as these performers and playwrights had hoped, people came from all around, lured by the dazzling brightness of the fire. The storytellers welcomed everyone, charging them admission of course, and making a fortune from Professor Lewis’s story. And as they collected the money, they began to tell the tale, saying it was “Based on the story by C.S. Lewis.”

Audiences cheered, for the play was spectacular, indeed. The costumes were impressive, the sets quite extravagant, and the special effects were really quite dazzling. It turned out to be a much-revised version of Professor Lewis’s story. And this was no surprise, for the story was never really designed as a compelling play.

But what was surprising, to those few who had heard Lewis’s original tale, was the fact that this whimsical story had been transformed into a story of war, full of long and vivid descriptions of spectacular battles, in which the young heroes bravely pincushioned their enemies with arrows, ran them through with swords, and even beheaded them. Viewers had never seen such lifelike centaurs, such breathtaking griffins, such valiant mice. Nor had they imagined these creatures engaged in such a cacophony of conflict.

To give evidence that this was indeed a tale of Narnia from Professor Lewis, the playwrights included many familiar names, although several prominent characters — especially High King Peter, Queen Susan, Reepicheep, and Trumpkin — bore little resemblance to Lewis’s characters.
But that did not seem to matter, even to many of Lewis’s friends and fans. In fact, so stirring were these scenes of courage that Prince Caspian won many new fans. It even inspired some to go looking for the all-powerful Aslan, the benevolent Authority in Lewis’s tales. (Yes, even in shoddy stories, Aslan’s power can still capture minds and hearts.) This was a happy effect of a rather questionable “adaptation.”

Nevertheless, this play showed that the storytellers had not met Lewis’s challenge. They had either failed to understand the heart of Lewis’s story, or else they did understand it and, disapproving of Lewis’s convictions, actively sought to conceal them. For the play was quite different from Professor Lewis’s original tale in ways that made it more exciting but less meaningful.

High King Peter, while played with passion by William Mosely, was not a very admirable king anymore; he was an egotistical adolescent. This revision certainly added more drama to the play. Peter spoke with venom about attacking the enemies “there, before they attack us here.” This may have been a well-intentioned attempt to critique the Iraq War, echoing the U.S. President’s words so boldly. But it had nothing to do with Professor Lewis’s story. And sure enough, Peter leads the forces of good into a quagmire that costs many noble characters their lives, and the withdrawl of troops is a messy affair. All of this was invented by the playwrights, filling time left open by the deletion of some of Lewis’s chapters.

The skeptical Trumpkin of Lewis’s story was deleted and replaced with a different Trumpkin, one who’s not skeptical but temperamental. While he was acted with great skill and depth by the brilliant actor Peter Dinklage, these unnecessary revisions eliminated one of the story’s most meaningful threads.

Susan, in a likeable performance by Anna Popplewell, was revised to become a swordswoman and archer, one so skilled in open war that she would scare Tolkien’s Eowyn from the battlefield. Quite a different character than Lewis’s Susan, who was forbidden to fight. Now, it’s one thing to dislike Professor Lewis’s limitations on his female characters. It’s quite another thing to decide that the way to make a woman respectable is to turn her into a resourceful killer.

And Reepicheep — one of Lewis’s most beloved and noble characters — was reduced to a wisecracking sidekick, more like a character from the Shrek franchise (which makes sense, since the director of this play also directed the first two Shrek movies).

In perhaps their most confounding and dismaying revision, these misguided storytellers deleted the culmination of Lewis’s endeavors to celebrate the sacred threads running through ancient mythology. Characters such as Bacchus, Silenus, and the “riot” of characters united by the truth of Aslan were never given their opportunity to celebrate and affirm that power.
And speaking of Aslan, these storytellers allowed for only a few appearances of Narnia’s greatest character. They’ve reduced one of his most important appearances to a dream sequence, allowing him to be seen in the real world only at the very end when he could provide a convenient rescue.

While this new Prince Caspian was a better crowdpleaser than some of the Harry Potter plays, and the fine work by these actors made it arguably more compelling than the Star Wars prequels, there was very little that could be praised as original. Instead of inventing threads that reinforce and strengthen Lewis’s story, they ripped sections out of the story and patched them with elements that could easily be converted into video games. In fact, some sequences in this second Narnia tale seem to be designed to mimic scenes from other great “second stories,” especially a sequence resembling the march of the Ents at the conclusion to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

These seemingly endless battle scenes made Prince Caspian more a story about battlefield heroics than an exploration of the “deeper magic” of Narnia. And these battle sequences transgressed the second important concern–they made the story inappropriate for its original audience… young children.

The storytellers, when questioned, talked about how stories told to such large audiences need to be abridged. But Lewis’s story was short to begin with. While the play did succeed in entertaining and pleasing audiences, and while it did not entirely obscure the meaning of Lewis’s story, it should never have been presented under the same title as Lewis’s story. Lewis’s wit, his heart for young adventurers, and the most unique insights of his story lay among the casualties strewn across the battlefields of this violent play. That’s how a G-rated fairy tale became what should have been rated a PG-13 production.

In spite of all of this, the play went on and on. Many critics rightfully praised it for what it did well, and some even rejoiced at how meaningful it was compared to the standard big-budget play.

But most reviewers failed to mention how insubstantial, shallow, and derivative the production was in view of Lewis’s original story. It’s likely that many failed to mention this because they could not be bothered to read a fairy tale writen for children in the first place. Or maybe they had grown too old, and merely forgotten the story they had enjoyed when they were younger.
The playwrights, meanwhile… were they really as sinister as Telemarines? Perhaps. It could be that they sit around a table and discuss how to subvert or downplay “Christian imagery.” But it is also likely that they, for all of their best intentions, were merely lacking in the vision necessary to properly appreciate those original tales.

Whatever the case, their play brought them great wealth and success — by worldly standards. And thus it convinced them and their financiers to go ahead and steal the next story in Lewis’s series, most likely to exploit and transform it by similar means. (And that’s a crying shame, boys and girls, because The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is one of the most imaginative and meaningful of Lewis’s series. All who love dear Puddleglum, say your prayers that he is not spoiled by presumptuous, intrusive imaginations.)

While children all around the world were drawn to the flashier fires, Lewis remained in the woods, beside his humble campfire, happy to share simple, delightful fairy tales with those few children lucky enough to find him there. These wonderful audiences did not need clamorous wars to hold their attention. It was enough for them to have inspiring characters and mysteries deep as the sea.

And so it is today. Most children will miss the quieter, subtler fire, running instead to the bright and roaring fires of a lesser tale with the same title. There, Aslan may show up and inspire them in spite of everything. But some, we can hope, fill find their way to Professor Lewis out there in the woods, find Aslan in all of his glory, and bask in a light more penetrating and beautiful.
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HT: Overstreet

Who's seen it? Agree or disagree?