Peter vs. Caspian

Looks like I'm jumping in with both feet here, but I've been following this thread for nearly a week, and since I can post now, I'm putting in my two cents.

First of all, yes, movie!Peter was completely inferior to book!Peter. He was more arrogant, selfish, and ultimately insecure. I think there are a lot of factors contributing to the exaggeration of Peter's weaknesses.

First, was the changing of the plot. In the book, Peter had his moments of doubt and then his repentance much sooner because he met Aslan much sooner. He had already repented and re-embraced his role as High King BEFORE he met Caspian, and thus was better equipped to be the mentor Caspian needed.

In the movie, however, more and more time passes without Peter ever seeing Aslan, so his doubts and insecurities grow larger and larger as the Pevensies draw closer to Aslan's how. By the time they get to Caspian, Peter encounters a boy his own age who is already commanding an army, and who has already been fighting skirmishes against Miraz (and this is canon to the book as well). He hasn't dealt with his own personal insecurities yet, and then he has to try and assert his authority to Caspian and to a group of Narnians, many of whom believed him as much a fable as the Telmarines believed Old Narnians to be. The two issues together result in a much more antagonistic Peter.

Second, the ages of the children are not the same as in the novels. Peter and Caspian are 14 and 13 in the novels. Because so much time had passed between the first and second movie, William Mosley was about twenty by the time they filmed his part. While he looks younger than his age, he certainly can't convincingly play a 14-year-old boy, so the movie-makers had to portray the personalities and angst of older teens. A sixteen-year-old is much more likely to be stubborn and selfish and angsty than a fourteen-year-old because they have more of a need to assert their independence and adulthood. This is compounded in Peter, because he WAS an adult for fifteen years, and suddenly now he isn't. He has memories of being a man, of being respected, and obeyed, and (in some cases) feared. Now he's been back in England for a year, being treated as a child, and he's taken it very personally that Aslan didn't called them back into Narnia sooner.

Add to that the absolute horror of having to live your teenage years TWICE. Someone said above that they wouldn't mind getting thirty years shaved off so they could be in their twenties again, but I'm going to go ahead and say that going from middle-age to young-adult is NOT comparable to going from adult to child. I'm in my mid twenties, the same age Lucy and Edmund would have been at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I guarantee you, there is absolutely NOTHING that is appealing about going through puberty a second time, even if I did get to retain all of the knowledge and wisdom I've gained along the way. The loss of independence and respect alone would be frustrating, and I've never been royalty. So for an adult, a king no less, to go back to being a peasant child without even the slightest twinge of frustration just doesn't make sense. Aslan brought them to Narnia in the first place, and he's the one who let them leave. It's only natural for Peter to be angry at him.

Third, Lewis wrote Prince Caspian before The Horse and His Boy. At that point, Lewis just summarized what the Kings and Queens did during their reign, so we just had Peter reprising his role as the ideal and Noble High King. Later, Lewis went on to explain that of the four children, Peter was the main warrior. It was Peter who went up and trounced the Northern giants while Ed and Su were being diplomats, and I believe there was mention of him having to go out and reconquer the Lone Islands at one point as well (though I could be wrong on that). While this was mentioned in LWW, Lewis hadn't yet made the distinction between which children took on which roles. Tirian also says during LB that Peter has the face of a warrior. The movie-makers clearly are taking events in the other books into account (Susan's overall reluctance to believe, the fact that she likes pretty things and that boys fall in love with her, the carvings on the Wardrobe, Prof. Kirke's apple-shaped tobacco case, the empty seats in Miraz's council that probably belong to the seven lords from VDT), and I saw a lot of Peter the Warrior King in the movie's portrayal of him. Since he hadn't met Aslan and had his moment of repentence, it seemed reasonable that he would draw on his past moments of glory and (like Lucy said) forget who gave him the strength to win all those battles.

Fourth, the Peter in the PC movie built on the personality he'd established in the LWW movie. Edmond repeatedly accuses Susan and Peter of trying to act too grown up, and it's clear that they keep going about it in all the wrong ways. In the LWW movie, Peter tries far too hard to be just like his father. In the PC movie, he's trying too hard to be the High King everyone follows rather than establishing Caspian as the leader.

Overall, the things they did to Peter's character made sense to me. After all, in the book, he was the last one of the children to believe Aslan was really leading them. Even Susan believed it was Aslan, she just pretended she didn't because it was more comfortable that way. But Peter sincerely disbelieved Lucy and threw his vote in with Susan and Trumpkin because he thought he knew what he was doing and that he could lead them on his own.

AT THE SAME TIME, I'll admit that in some scenes the directors took the rivalry too far. Peter and Caspian should NEVER have drawn their swords on each other after the failed castle raid. Caspian should have deferred to Peter more, as the Pevensies are Caspian's sovereigns. Caspian should have followed all of Peter's orders regarding the castle raid. He shouldn't have challenged Peter's decision when Peter said that waiting out a siege meant certain death.

However, given the change in plot, and the fact that Peter didn't meet Aslan until the end of the movie, it was good that he wasn't the good and noble high king all the way through. If he had been the noble High King we all know he is BEFORE his repentence, that would have undermined the whole theme, which was that the Narnians needed to put their faith in Aslan even when they couldn't see him. After all, the fact that Peter went back to Narnia at all meant that he still hadn't learned everything he needed to know -- namely that he couldn't just have faith in himself.

Clearly, the solution to all of this was to have Peter meet Aslan before he met Caspian. The rivalry could have been avoided and then the only major complaint would be the ridiculousness of the Caspian/Susan romance.
 
Greetings, MRW! Your insightful entry demonstrates your sharp intellect; it also demonstrates your knowledge of syllogistic logic. Logic requires both the prior existence of premises, and an ability to proceed _from_ the premises to that conclusion which the premises demand. Much of what you say about the downgrading of Peter is really showing that the Walden writers made up their own premises, and then proceeded logically from there.

But if the _premises_ are faulty, the _conclusion_ will be faulty--"Garbage in, garbage out." If I were making a movie that was supposed to be about the life of rocket scientist Werner von Braun, and I began by saying that he lived in the 11th century and was a native of Egypt, I could write a script which had all events flowing _very_ logically from these premises....but it would NOT be a biography of the 20th-century German Werner von Braun. What Walden did to Peter was hardly any less destructive of what Lewis intended than my 11th-century Egyptian setting would be to the biography of the rocket scientist.

Part of the reason why Walden changed Caspian into a teenager was because the movie industry assumes (not without some justification) that teenage audiences are _infinitely_ more interested in characters their own age than in any characters who are either older or younger. But there's a chicken-and-egg phenomenon here: the movie industry in some measure has helped to _create_ this mental segregation of the generations from each other.

It took a long time for Hollywood to overcome _other_ forms of segregation--decades, for instance, before any movie could get away with showing a normal and legitimate romance between a black person and a white person. But they have simply replaced one kind of mental segregation with another kind, putting teenagers metaphorically in a separate space-time dimension where any adult involvement in their lives is minimized. Thus, while they couldn't eliminate the adult Cornelius from the story entirely, they greatly reduced his role in the story, in favor of pumping in more highschool-locker-room rivalry nonsense. (Glenstorm the Centaur, who can also be considered a positive adult figure, also had his importance reduced.)

Since you're new here, I beg the tolerance of older members while I repeat for your benefit something which others know I have said before. I am waiting with apprehension to see what Walden will do specifically to ONE scene in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader." So far, in two movies, they have managed to avoid committing themselves to agreeing with Mr. Lewis' well-known and indisputable premise that Aslan IS Almighty God, the Second Person of the Trinity merely assuming a different material shape. But VODT will confront them with a go/no-go choice on this very issue; you will already realize what scene I am talking about.

Here is what I am dreading--that the crucial exchange at the end will be rewritten, thus:

EDMUND: Are You there too, Sir?

ASLAN: Yes, I am there; but there I am known by MANY NAMES--Jupiter, Zeus, Odin, Amon-Ra, Brahma, Krishna, Kali, Amaterasu, Gautama Buddha, Buddha Amida, Ahura-Mazda, Allah, Baha'ullah, Gandhi, Meher Baba, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi....

I think you know as well as I do that the dominant mindset in today's Hollywood would consider this a glorious _improvement_ over Mr. Lewis' "narrowminded" view that Aslan is plainly and simply Jesus Christ, and that Tash plainly and simply IS NOT the same as Aslan. So there will be a powerful temptation for the Walden executives to demand exactly this "little" change--"little," the way an assassin's bullet is little. And if they DO commit this ultimate betrayal, expressly contradicting what they perfectly well realize was Mr. Lewis' intent, they will have lost MY support permanently, and they will _never_ get it back.
 
Copperfox said:
Greetings, MRW! Your insightful entry demonstrates your sharp intellect, etc.
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Thank you. :)

Copperfox said:
Part of the reason why Walden changed Caspian into a teenager was because the movie industry assumes (not without some justification) that teenage audiences are _infinitely_ more interested in characters their own age than in any characters who are either older or younger.
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True. The HUGE success of the Harry Potter movies has spawned a rash of "Let's adapt all the Young Adult fantasy that's ever been written!" and frankly, it's being overdone and not always done well (I still refuse to watch The Dark is Rising). However, I still maintain that 20-year-old William can't be a convincing 14-year-old Peter. :P

Copperfox said:
Here is what I am dreading--that the crucial exchange at the end will be rewritten, thus:

EDMUND: Are You there too, Sir?

ASLAN: Yes, I am there; but there I am known by MANY NAMES--Jupiter, Zeus, Odin, Amon-Ra, Brahma, Krishna, Kali, Amaterasu, Gautama Buddha, Buddha Amida, Ahura-Mazda, Allah, Baha'ullah, Gandhi, Meher Baba, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi....
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I've actually been wondering what they'll do about that too, though I have a feeling that they'll cut the exchange altogether rather than completely rewrite it that way. While it is completely antithetical to what Lewis was intending, I expect them to dumb down the Aslan = Jesus aspect, just because it's Hollywood and they're trying to reach as broad an audience as possible. After all, look at how they downplayed the anti-Church aspects in the movie of The Golden Compass because they were afraid of the potential backlash.

Again, this doesn't make it right, and the Christianity in Narnia is only obvious if you know the mythology well and are actually searching for it, so there is no reason to dumb it down to reach a broader audience. I've read on other literature forums that readers didn't even notice the Christian themes until someone pointed them out. And regardless of how obvious the religion is, there's no reason to change it that much just to appeal to a non-Christian audience. The fact that Narnia is such a mainstream classic should speak for itself. Additionally, I don't think that "There I am known by another name" is too pointed. Viewers can already interpret that however they like.

I keep reminding myself that Douglas Gresham is one of the movie producers, and I don't think he'd allow them to change his step-father's vision that much.
 
As broad an audience as possible? Well, it is often so; but in filming "Prince Non-Caspian," they were, as I have described, artificially NARROWING their audience demographic.

While we're waiting to see about VODT, let me revert to what many here know is my habit: the shameless plug!

Since you have read ALL the books, this will have a meaning for you. Almost two years ago--how time flies; my second wife Janalee still was down here with me in the Shadowlands then!--I decided to take advantage of TDL's Writing Club section to depict in fan fiction my own guesses as to (1) how early generations of some Narnian creatures might have spread beyond the borders of Narnia proper, and (2) how the Calormenes might have originated, since it strains credulity to suppose that THEY were all descended from King Frank and Queen Helen with NO other human-genetic input. The result was a book-length story titled "Southward the Tigers." (If you read it, you'll see what one reader meant in remarking that one of my Talking Beast characters was like the character of Weston in "Perelandra.")

My good forum buddy Timbalionguy, who is a zookeeper in real life, was pleased by my effort to depict convincing behavior by Talking Beasts; and, lions being his favorites, he particularly liked one of my characters who was a mortal Talking Lion. So Tim asked whether I would mind if he wrote a related story revolving around my lion character. I said it was fine with me.

Thus, also in the Writing Club section, you can find Tim's not-yet-finished novel, "The Lion's Share." His story begins at a time some 16 years before my story begins, though Tim plans to "catch up" and then run concurrently. I knew his plan before I had finished my own story, so I made some accommodation by arranging for a "crossover"--with one of the supporting characters actually moving from one story to the other and back again. Kind of like when "Star Trek: Voyager" had characters from "Star Trek: the Next Generation" appear in guest roles.

If you choose, you can read all the so-far-existing text of Tim's lion story, then read my tiger story, and you'll find them forming one continuous narrative. I joked to Tim that, since we both were keeping the Christian meaning of Narnia firmly in place, we could call the total work "Lions and Tigers and Prayers." Note that, in case it falls out of sight on the queue, my own story is reachable by clicking the tiger picture on any post of mine--a graphic that was kindly designed for me by a member called Lost Dreamer.
 
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Copper, your dirty shirt analogy was great. There are more shades of gray than of black and white. You don't have to completely muddy a character to make him flawed.

MRW, for the most part, I agree with your analysis of Peter in PC. However...

"It was Peter who went up and trounced the Northern giants while Ed and Su were being diplomats, and I believe there was mention of him having to go out and reconquer the Lone Islands at one point as well (though I could be wrong on that). While this was mentioned in LWW, Lewis hadn't yet made the distinction between which children took on which roles."

They had all been diplomats, but at the time, yes, Susan and Edmund were being diplomats in Caormen, but later in the book, Edmund and Lucy did go to battle against the Calormene army. As for Peter and the Lone Islands, he never had to conquer or reconquer them. Caspian asks if he did, but Edmund explained that they were part of Narnia before their reign.

While Lewis only had a vague idea of who the adult Royal Pevensies turned out to be, he did provide a short description in their titles. Peter was known as "The Magnificent" because he was a great warrior. Edmund was "great in council and judgement" thus becoming known as "The Just. Lucy and Susan were not really given descriptions regarding their titles.

"in the book, he was the last one of the children to believe Aslan was really leading them. Even Susan believed it was Aslan, she just pretended she didn't because it was more comfortable that way. But Peter sincerely disbelieved Lucy and threw his vote in with Susan and Trumpkin because he thought he knew what he was doing and that he could lead them on his own. "

Peter was not the last to believe Aslan. Susan was the last to believe as she was the last to actually see Aslan. Peter did not disbelieve Lucy, he said, "I know Lucy may be right after all, but I just cant help it." Susan would not let herself believe it was Aslan while Peter had to make the deciding vote and went against his favorite sister in spite of his better judgement.

Here is what I am dreading--that the crucial exchange at the end will be rewritten, thus:

EDMUND: Are You there too, Sir?

ASLAN: Yes, I am there; but there I am known by MANY NAMES--Jupiter, Zeus, Odin, Amon-Ra, Brahma, Krishna, Kali, Amaterasu, Gautama Buddha, Buddha Amida, Ahura-Mazda, Allah, Baha'ullah, Gandhi, Meher Baba, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi....

And I would sincerely be upset if one of those names isn't Bob! :p But seriously Copper, I doubt they will change the exchange by pluralizing the word "name." You just wait until TLB. They definitely have Emeth to make the spiritual message more inclusive.

"I expect them to dumb down the Aslan = Jesus aspect, just because it's Hollywood and they're trying to reach as broad an audience as possible. After all, look at how they downplayed the anti-Church aspects in the movie of The Golden Compass because they were afraid of the potential backlash. "

Actually MRW, there wasn't much anti-Church, or atually much of the idea of a dogmatic, authoritarian Church in Golden Compass. Yes it is first introduced in that bok, but the Church really gets bad in the final book, The Amber Spyglass. The movie did nothing to downplay the role of the church from the book. It simply was missing from the book.

MrBob
 
Actually MRW, there wasn't much anti-Church, or atually much of the idea of a dogmatic, authoritarian Church in Golden Compass. Yes it is first introduced in that bok, but the Church really gets bad in the final book, The Amber Spyglass. The movie did nothing to downplay the role of the church from the book. It simply was missing from the book.
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True. However, I didn't think the movie made it clear that the Magisterium (which was clearly the villanous organization) was under the Church's authority. At least not as clear as the book. In fact, I don't remember the Church being mentioned at all in the movie, and I'm certain that it was in the book.

While Lewis only had a vague idea of who the adult Royal Pevensies turned out to be, he did provide a short description in their titles. Peter was known as "The Magnificent" because he was a great warrior. Edmund was "great in council and judgement" thus becoming known as "The Just. Lucy and Susan were not really given descriptions regarding their titles.
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True, he did give a vague idea of their roles, but my point is that it wasn't really fleshed out until the later books, thus Peter's reputation as a warrior wasn't set quite as strongly. The movie seemed to be drawing on that information from the later books.

Peter was not the last to believe Aslan. Susan was the last to believe as she was the last to actually see Aslan. Peter did not disbelieve Lucy, he said, "I know Lucy may be right after all, but I just cant help it." Susan would not let herself believe it was Aslan while Peter had to make the deciding vote and went against his favorite sister in spite of his better judgement.
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Yes, Su was the last to see Aslan, but after she does she tells Lucy:
I really believed it was him -- he, I mean -- yesterday. When he warned us not to go down to the fir wood. And I really believed it was him tonight, when you woke us up. I mean, deep down inside. Or I could have, if I'd let myself. But I just wanted to get out of the woods.
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Which sounds to me like she initially believed Lucy more than Peter did, but was just being stubborn as usual. And then when Lucy convinced everyone to follow Aslan, Susan got even more bad-tempered because she knew she was going to be found out. Susan couldn't see Aslan because she didn't want to see him.

Peter, on the other hand, did want to see Aslan, but he didn't have enough faith to trust Lucy. Lucy says "But I know [Aslan] was [there]," and Peter responds with, "But we don't." And then he votes with Su and Trumpkin because he knows that while it's possible that Lucy is right, he can't help not having enough faith to trust her judgement.
 
"I didn't think the movie made it clear that the Magisterium (which was clearly the villanous organization) was under the Church's authority. At least not as clear as the book. In fact, I don't remember the Church being mentioned at all in the movie, and I'm certain that it was in the book."

The problem, MRW, with the naming of the church was the fact that Pullman gave a brief history of the church in the book that was impossible to do in the movie. With that alternative history, the book more easily was able to make the connection between this very diffferent church and our Church. By just giving the name "Magesterium," the filmmakers were able to both connect it with the church wihtout having to explain it.

"The movie seemed to be drawing on that information from the later books."

It was also ignoring information as well. Yes, we know that Peter was a great warrior king. But in knowing that, they allowed him to make straegy that he never would have done as king. He did not know much about the political scenes and knew very little about the enemy other than the fact that they were more numerous and stronger. With that in mind, a poor strategy was a raid on the castle. Yes, it should have succeeded, but failure resulted in a strengthing of his enemy.

This is where bok Peter was better. He knew that his side was inferior so the first thing he does is to stop the fighting. That is what Peter should have done if he was such a Magnificent king in battle.

"Which sounds to me like she initially believed Lucy more than Peter did, but was just being stubborn as usual."

To me, it sounds like Susan just had more to beg forgiveness for. She was the worst to Lucy both when she voted to go down the gorge and then when Lucy woke them up. Peter had the hardest decision to make. He had to cast the deciding vote and had to take Lucy's insistence that she saw Aslan with what looked like common snese way to get out. He simply chose the latter, never doubting his little sister at all.

To me, doubting your own beliefs is a weaker than believing but not following those beliefs. Susan was the doubter while Peter just chose a different path than what his mind (Lucy) was saying.

Now for something not related to MRW at all:

I was just on IMDB discussing the Peter issue and had two thoughts (I may have already touched on these two things before). First, when he is in England, he talks about wanting to go back to Narnia, in fact, nearly being owed another trip, but nowhere, not in the first movie nor in the books does it ever imply that they will go back. The only person they have to talk with about Narnia only went once. Why should Peter have any thought that he would go back?

Second, Aslan was only with Peter in one battle, his first one, and even then only at the end. He spent about two decades making peace and battles without the aid of Aslan. Why would Peter have expected Aslan to come to his aid in the movie? He was experienced enough to go to battle and know what should be done to win, and attacking a superior army's headquarters with an inferior army, without knowing all of the political ramifications of a failure.

For Peter to constantly long for Aslan to come to his aid was against his growth as a warrior and his experience. Why was Peter so adamant about needing Aslan's help?

MrBob
 
He had to cast the deciding vote and had to take Lucy's insistence that she saw Aslan with what looked like common snese way to get out. He simply chose the latter, never doubting his little sister at all.
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If he didn't doubt Lucy at all, how is not following Aslan when He wanted them to common sense?

Why should Peter have any thought that he would go back?
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I noticed that too last time I watch the movie. The only thing I can figure is that they're drawing from Prof. Kirke's words to Lucy in the short scene during the credits. I don't remember the exact quote, but he says something about how Lucy probably can't get in by the wardrobe again, but that she may get back in someday when she's not expecting it. However, that's not concrete enough that Peter should EXPECT Aslan to call them back again.
 
For all movie!Peter's flaws, I found Caspian to be much more grating. I didn't find him humble enough to be king, and I didn't see why he didn't have the sense to at least be polite to the High King. And in the end, as everyone else has pointed out, it was his mistakes that screwed things up, not Peter's.

MrBob said:
Yes, we know that Peter was a great warrior king. But in knowing that, they allowed him to make straegy that he never would have done as king. He did not know much about the political scenes and knew very little about the enemy other than the fact that they were more numerous and stronger. With that in mind, a poor strategy was a raid on the castle. Yes, it should have succeeded, but failure resulted in a strengthing of his enemy.

I was just on IMDB discussing the Peter issue and had two thoughts (I may have already touched on these two things before). First, when he is in England, he talks about wanting to go back to Narnia, in fact, nearly being owed another trip, but nowhere, not in the first movie nor in the books does it ever imply that they will go back. The only person they have to talk with about Narnia only went once. Why should Peter have any thought that he would go back?

Second, Aslan was only with Peter in one battle, his first one, and even then only at the end. He spent about two decades making peace and battles without the aid of Aslan. Why would Peter have expected Aslan to come to his aid in the movie? He was experienced enough to go to battle and know what should be done to win, and attacking a superior army's headquarters with an inferior army, without knowing all of the political ramifications of a failure.

For Peter to constantly long for Aslan to come to his aid was against his growth as a warrior and his experience. Why was Peter so adamant about needing Aslan's help?

MrBob
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I really do think that there is a lot of general common sense missing from the movies--with Peter and Caspian, definitely, but with the other characters as well. Peter shouldn't have needed to wait for Aslan at all, let alone bitterly, and Lucy should never have needed to tell him to wait (what was the line from the book? Something along the lines of "Hi, I'm King Peter, I've come to fix things. Aslan's around with my sisters, and I have no idea what he's up to; he'd want us to act as we can", wasn't it? I would look it up, but my book's upstairs and I can't get it without disturbing the dog). And I never figured out why movie!Caspian wasn't smart enough to step aside for a man who had fourteen years of battle experiences--including one against an evil witch and at least one against giants. I mean, the rivalry was interesting, I suppose, but it didn't make sense when I thought it over later. (A lot like Edmund and Lucy's comments after the kiss, actually--they're funny, until you realize that they lived into their twenties in Narnia and so...should understand.)

I think some of the issues brought up in the film were interesting. I was quite curious to see some explanation of how being in Narnia might affect the Pevensies. Unfortunately I didn't really buy any of it (so, yay in theory, not so much in practice), and it seemed like they shoved it in and took out all the really cool things (Peter's general awesomeness, with or without Aslan there; Lucy's...whole character; the whole romp through the forest) to make room for it.
 
Animus, you are ever so

RIGHT

that the movie's Caspian was grating. What makes this _realization_ still more grating, is the further realization that the Walden writers actively _desired_ Caspian to be grating, instead of grateful. Serenely confident that they knew how to tell a story better than Mr. Lewis, they changed the well-meaning, well-mannered young hero of Lewis' writing into a sulky, moody, self-absorbed teenybopper, in order to pander to an expected audience of self-absorbed teenyboppers.

The movie's Caspian was so _lacking_ in humility that, when the movie was nearly over and the damage had already been done, his _finally_ kneeling before Aslan rang false: where DID he finally find some humility? And yet, even with all that had gone before, the scriptwriters could even now have repaired some of the damage by an extremely simple gesture; in fact, if they cared anything about the most essential themes of Narnia, they could _still_ do this damage control with a tiny insertion for the expanded DVD.

They need only get Ben Barnes back in costume for a close-up shot which would be inserted between his saying he feels insufficient, and Aslan's reassuring response. In the close-up shot, requiring less than ten seconds, Caspian would say, "It was my fault the attack on the castle failed. I left my part undone because I followed an impulse; that was irresponsible of me, and it cost many lives." Just this much added would _both_ restore some plausibility to Caspian's belated modesty, _and_ make some amends to Peter for the degrading treatment the script gave him.

What I suggest here would be easy to do; it would greatly reduce the insult committed against Mr. Lewis even with _all_ preceding scenes remaining as filmed. It would make perfect sense....and _because_ it would make perfect sense, I'm sure that the Walden revisionists would rather have all their teeth pulled out with no anaesthesia than to do it.
 
Copperfox said:
They need only get Ben Barnes back in costume for a close-up shot which would be inserted between his saying he feels insufficient, and Aslan's reassuring response. In the close-up shot, requiring less than ten seconds, Caspian would say, "It was my fault the attack on the castle failed. I left my part undone because I followed an impulse; that was irresponsible of me, and it cost many lives." Just this much added would _both_ restore some plausibility to Caspian's belated modesty, _and_ make some amends to Peter for the degrading treatment the script gave him.
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Can we get him crowned under Peter, while we're at it? And not just because Peter is, you know, High King and all, but because it's needed twice more, isn't it? Once so Edmund can remind Caspian that he's under Peter and should therefore listen to Edmund (how would that work if Caspian isn't technically a subject of Peter's? Would they just let them have it out on the basis of Edmund being demanding?), and once so he can command Tirian to speak, which is totally one of my favorite bits of Last Battle.

I really don't understand why so many people felt that Caspian was the better man, when he, um, ruined the raid and didn't have the sense to step aside for a man/boy with years more experience at these things than he had!
 
Copperfox said:
What makes this _realization_ still more grating, is the further realization that the Walden writers actively _desired_ Caspian to be grating, instead of grateful. Serenely confident that they knew how to tell a story better than Mr. Lewis, they changed the well-meaning, well-mannered young hero of Lewis' writing into a sulky, moody, self-absorbed teenybopper, in order to pander to an expected audience of self-absorbed teenyboppers.
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You keep making comments about how Walden purposely changed the story to undermine Lewis' message. I've been wondering: do you actually have evidence (from, say, an interview with the cast/crew) to support this, or are you just strongly speculating? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious to know if you got this "from the horse's mouth," so to speak, or if you're just drawing your own conclusions.
 
"If he didn't doubt Lucy at all, how is not following Aslan when He wanted them to common sense?"

Meg, I didn't say it was common sense, I said it looked like common sense. Trumpkin's suggestion was to follow the Rush downstream where it would likely cross at a much lesser altitude so they could cross it. Aslan wanted them to go the opposite way, upstream where there didn't seem to be any way down the precipice.

"And I never figured out why movie!Caspian wasn't smart enough to step aside for a man who had fourteen years of battle experiences--including one against an evil witch and at least one against giants. I mean, the rivalry was interesting, I suppose, but it didn't make sense when I thought it over later."

Like Copper, I agree with you, Animus. Even if he was younger in the book or movie (Peter was younger than he was at the end of their reign, but he really was about a thousand years younger than he should have been), Caspian still should have respected the experience of someone who had so much experience. Of course, as I said, that experience should have taught Peter better battle skills.

As for comparing the two, I found Peter's flaws to be worse simply because he was the returning character who was portrayed so well in the first one and then just completely changed in this to antithetical to his true character. They better do something better to Caspian to redeem him in VotDT.

MrBob
 
MrBob said:
"And I never figured out why movie!Caspian wasn't smart enough to step aside for a man who had fourteen years of battle experiences--including one against an evil witch and at least one against giants. I mean, the rivalry was interesting, I suppose, but it didn't make sense when I thought it over later."


MrBob
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That's because movie writers write about what's popular, not about common sense and what's right!
 
Dragonchild said:
Maybe because Peter didn't look like a man of experience superior to his own and, as I pressume C-F would confirm, neither did he act it.
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So? No, seriously--so what? He doesn't look like a man with experience and he acts like a jerk. That doesn't matter. He clearly is a master swordsman; they're clearly The Kings And Queens Of Old. A good leader would step aside for him, knowing his experience at strategy is better. He might grumble about it privately, he might be coldly polite, but he would step aside.

MrBob said:
As for comparing the two, I found Peter's flaws to be worse simply because he was the returning character who was portrayed so well in the first one and then just completely changed in this to antithetical to his true character.
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Actually, I think I agree with you there. Peter is the returning character we know has the ability to be awesome, and he's a High King and has been one for a decade and a half; maybe he needs to be held to a higher standard than Prince Caspian.

A good friend of mine recently reread the series and saw the latest movie, and she had this to say: "Also it felt like one big battle--I felt like the book was a lot more about Caspian learning about his Narnian roots than about this endless warfare. I think--and this is where the girls come in again--it's much more about the healing and restoration of Narnia than battles for its defense." And I think in some ways that is a really interesting point--the writers (for whatever reason; I think they were really trying to get into the "more savage Narnia" idea) made the vast majority of the plot about fighting and proving oneself and angst and that sort of thing, and I think they shoved the Peter/Caspian rivalry in to fit with that theme (which explains the Susan/Caspian romance, and the warrior!Susan thing, because of course Lucy is young and unangsty and a healer, so she doesn't fit by herself anymore than the girls' original role does). Does that make any sense, do you think?
 
Actually that makes a lot of sense to me.
The fact that the whole `Aslans Romp` sequence is missing from the film is one of its biggest weaknesses to my mind.
In the book the duel and the subsequent battle are not much more than a diversion to keep Miraz and the Telmarine lords occupied while Aslan and the girls are off waking up the trees, subverting Telmarine society and restoring the old Narnia.
While I suppose they just changed things in order to make the movie more action orientated, I cant help wondering if the deletion of most of it and the reduction of the `river god` to a LOTR style, Fords of Bruinen magical special effect has something to do with the quasi pagan elements present.
Perhaps Walden/Disney didnt want to upset those people who insist in interpreting the Narnia books solely as a Christian alegory.
 
AsbelMctalisker said:
I cant help wondering if the deletion of most of it and the reduction of the `river god` to a LOTR style, Fords of Bruinen magical special effect has something to do with the quasi pagan elements present.
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That's really interesting! I think that makes a ton of sense actually. And you're right, I think they thought that the action/fighting focus would make it more interesting, but it just made me kind of bored. :/
 
Peter for Sure!

Ok in the movie yeah Caspian was hot, in the books yeah Caspian was hot (my imagination ran wild) but come on Peter is just plain ol' better. I mean he's got the same kinda passionate, adventurous heart that Lucy has and (in the movies and my imagination) he's hotter.:) plus ya know Peter has that whole High King thing.
 
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