Kicking Aslan

My relationship with the Narnia books and, by extension, the Narnia movies is an odd one. There is as much in the stories that I like and much that I dislike. I have told people for many years that I am not a fan of the books and I actually consider the movies to be an improvement, mainly due to their visual imagination and cool action sequences. As I was watching the newly released Prince Caspian, I was wondering what it was that so bugged me about these stories and then it just came to me.

My animosity toward Narnia comes from the fact that so many of its characters are major league dicks. Narnia is just chock full of dickish beings who, when not performing dickish acts, constantly try to rationalize their dickishness in a way that makes it seem like they were actually being noble and principled when they were just being dicks.

The story opens in Narnia 1300 years after the end of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. Narnia is now ruled by a group of humans called the Telmarines. The Telmarines have dark skin and exotic accents so you know they are bad guys. Except, that is, for Prince Caspian. He is better looking than the other Telmarines which apparently gives him the power to overcome whatever it is that makes the other Telmarines evil. Caspian's extra-evil uncle, Lord Miraz, wants Caspian's throne so he orders his men to shoot approximately 8000 arrows into Caspian's bed as he sleeps. What he doesn't know is that Caspian's tutor and Santa Claus look alike, Professor Cornelius, has warned Caspian that he must flee. The tutor also handed him a magic horn to be used, "only in the time of dire need." Caspian manages to avoid dire need for all of two minutes before runs into a couple of Narnian dwarves who have no love for Telmarines but help him against the assassins chasing him since Caspian is much less swarthy than they are. Before he gets knocked out, Caspian blows the horn which summons the four Pevensie children from the last movie back to Narnia.

Since the Pevensies are the only thing that can restore peace and goodness to Narnia, one has to wonder why people waited 1300 years to blow that stupid horn, but no matter. The kids find out that Narnia has gone to hell in a hand basket since they left. They meet a very surly dwarf named Trumpkin (played wonderfully by Peter Dinklage) who leads them to Prince Caspian. After this, Caspian and the oldest Pevensie boy, Peter, unofficially start a contest to see who can be the biggest dick. Peter has an edge since he started being a dick back in our world as he didn't understand why no one respected him for having been a king back in Narnia. Peter reinforces his dickish credentials by listening to all the reasons that launching a siege on Mariz's castle is a horrible idea and then promptly ignoring all that good advice. Caspian decides that Narnia shall have no bigger dick than he so, instead of following Peter's carefully laid out plan to take the castle, Caspian basically abandons his post to go and rescue his tutor.

I'll warn you now that this next part of the review will go a little further into plot exposition than I normally like to go and will contain some spoilers of things that happen close to the end of the movie. More about generalities of the plot than specifics and I think you could still read this and enjoy the movie, but you have been warned. I hope you're still reading since those of you who are even mildly familiar with the plot of the Narnia stories may have noticed one major character who has not yet been mentioned, a character who is also the movie's biggest dick. That, or course, could only be the god-like lion, Aslan.

In the previous movie, Aslan had a worthy foe in the White Witch. She was a figure of such power that it took Aslan a century to break the curse she had put on Narnia. In Prince Caspian, he doesn't have that problem. Oh sure, Narnia is under the harsh rule of a merciless king who commands a mighty and ruthless army who nearly exterminated all the non-human races, but he has nothing that could stand against Aslan's Deep Magic. Upon reading that, you may now be thinking that I've been making stuff up while writing this article but no, apparently Aslan was watching a 1300 year long Star Trek marathon before finally deciding to lift a paw against the Telmarines. Even then, he allows the Pevensie children and Caspian to leads many Narnians to their death in battle against Mariz' army until one of them tracks him down and begs for his help*.

And those, folks, are the actions of a world class dick. You can watch Prince Caspian and enjoy the talking animals and cool battle scenes and all is cool at the end as no one really notices that maybe Aslan could have shown up a little sooner. The kids aren't even mad when they get their butts kicked out of Narnia so the audience really isn't mad either.

That's about it. I recommend Prince Caspian even though I just spent several paragraphs mainly concentrating on what I didn't like about it. Despite all that, it can be an enjoyable fantasy and is worth at least a DVD rental when that comes out in a few months.

Dick. Sorry, just had to say it once more.

*You could say that, to gain his aid, they had to kiss a little Aslan.