movies: the chronicles of narnia: prince caspian

the chronicles of narnia: prince caspian - a new age has begunMa's Birthday Movie of choice was The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian... which I wasn't going to argue about since I've been hanging out to see it too...

And we went to see it in Gold Class... making only our fourth visit to the joy that is Gold Class... and our fourth time in exactly the same seats as well (D1 and D2... although different cinemas I think). And because we'd had lunch not that long before, we only ended up getting a little serve of Salt and Pepper Squid to share, but it was VERY tasty... and had this really nice (if a little drippy) plum (I think) sauce... yummy...

Now, before I go any further I have to get a few things off my chest...

Ben Barnes... HOT! William Moseley... HOT! Fauns... HOT!!!

With that last one I think it's the shaggy hair and the visible nipples... and maybe the horns too... the bummer being that none of the hot fauns have lines (and thus are kinda hard to look up in the cast listing), especially the one hot blonde faun that was on lookout duty and who I really want to know the name of...

So don't even get me started on the whole idea of a Caspian/Peter/Faun threeway... hmmmm... I bet there's probably already fanfic out there like that...

Oh, and a slightly unexpected one... Anna Popplewell's costumes and slightly smokey eye makeup... HOT! Especially the blue and white number at the end of the movie...

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I'm a pretty big fan of the first Narnia movie (I gave it a 9 when we saw it originally), and this one didn't disappoint as the follow-up... I will say this though... this movie is far more brutal than the first one. My first instinct was to say that it's a "darker" movie... but the longer I think about it, the more I think that brutal is the right word.

But at the same time it is a pretty spectacular movie... some of the scenery and locations (while occasionally slightly reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings movies) is just breathtaking... just the colour of the river water in a couple of the early scenes was enough to send chills down my spine. Actually there were a few early points where I got chills... not sure what that was about...

The whole plot was pretty much a surprise to me... I've only ever read the "first" book, and maybe caught bits and pieces of other versions of the stories (and I'm not sure I ever saw anything of the Prince Caspian story before)... and in some ways it was a little bit of a shock... so maybe that's why it seemed more brutal. Or perhaps it was because of instead of creatures fighting creatures, it was actually creatures fighting people... I don't know...

While I did ramble on about the collective hotness of Mr Barnes and Mr Moseley earlier, its sometimes hard to really feel for a character, no matter how hot they are, when they're being something of a self absorbed twat... and both characters suffer from that at points. Luckily there's a lot of hotness to make up for it...

Actually, the one character who I kind of thought WOULD suffer from "the twatness", but who doesn't is Skandar Keynes in his portrayal of Edward (and he could also be the hotness in a couple of years)... his character was the most twatish in the last movie, but this time around he actually has the most good character moments.

As with all these type of CGI reliant movies, the effects have improved, although at the same time, I occasionally felt like because it seemed to be lacking the same sort of "main" creature characters as the first movie (like Mr Tumnus and the centaur whose name I can't remember now), the effects where both better and also not as front and centre (or maybe just less "realistic"), and lacking just a little bit. Mostly the centaurs actually... but the satyrs occasionally looked like dudes in suits... of course, they probably WERE guys in suits at the time, but still...

Speaking of CGI though, it was nice to finally see the character of Reepicheep the mouse (voiced spectacularly by Eddie Izzard), actually played by "a mouse", even if it was a CGI mouse... instead of being a little dude in a suit like in previous incarnations...

So yeah... a slightly darker and more somewhat more "adult" story... but well worth seeing (if you like that kind of thing)...

yani's rating: 4 hot fauns out of 5

2 comments:

Monty said...

Read the bloody books!!! They are a sensational series! And The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe isn't the first book! It's the second! (although it was written first, a prequel book was subsequently written, making it the second in the series now) :-)

yani said...

Yes Mum! :P

I do indeed know that the first book isn't the first book (the publishers rather than the author rearranged them into an internal Narnian chronology instead of a publishing chronology... see, told you I knew!)... and I keep looking at the big bumper Omnibus editions with all the books in one book... I'll get my hands on that eventually...

:)