I recently took my wife to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Growing up, we both read the books and the prospect of seeing them turned into movies excited us, especially after the successful adaptation of The Lord of the Rings to film. The first Narnia movie, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, was a reasonably good depiction of the book. The writers and producers seemed to stay true to the essence of C.S. Lewis' characters and seldom departed from the book's themes. When Prince Caspian arrived on screen a few years later, many gave it poor reviews and die-hard fans eschewed it. Its box-office success stifled, some wondered we would ever see Dawn Treader, especially after Disney withdrew a great deal of support. Once Fox stepped in to help distribute the film, things seemed to be back on track, bringing us to the showing that Rachel and I saw on opening weekend.
There are two ways to evaluate The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: as an adaptation of a book, or as a movie. Critics often lambasted the movie for how it departed from the book (the same charge leveled against Prince Caspian), and only secondarily against its flaws as a film. I am only nominally sympathetic to the first kind of critiques for the following reason: the medium of film is a different category from the medium of written word. Simply put, one cannot tell the same story on screen that he can tell with written words. I can set down a book and return to it later, but no movie theater will let me leave and return to finish the film whenever I choose. Filmmakers, then, must constantly hold the attention and interest of the viewer in a way that an author does not. The pace of the story and the virtues of the characters are the two biggest obstacles facing any adaptation of a book into movie. To this end, I find many of the objections to Dawn Treader (and Prince Caspian) annoying. The most die-hard fan would find a page-by-page adaptation of any book worth reading terribly boring. Thus, for the sake of telling a story in a 2- or 3-hour format, producers and writers make choices to cut, add to, or alter the original narrative. King Caspian sailing to the end of the world just to see what is there is a poor premise for a movie, and while the motives that Lewis gives for the events of his book are much more nuanced and complex than that, telling a 2- to 3-hour story requires a much simpler impetus for the narrative. Having a problem or quest for the characters, especially one of immense existential danger, makes for a good narrative. So, is the movie a faithful adaptation of the book? Somewhat. I give it a passing "C" or "C+" grade.
The second way to look at Dawn Treader is as a film, which is where a serious review it must begin and end. As a film, it was rather average. I have seem plenty of worse films than Dawn Treader in many respects: the characters in Dawn Treader have far more depth than those depicted in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith or Avatar. Edmund, Lucy, Caspian and Eustace all have serious, internal conflicts greater than any Anakin Skywalker or Jake Sully ever show. The flow of the narrative in Dawn Treader is decent. While it is not as good as Inception, the story does not drag, but keeps movie on. Part of this is due to the nature of the story in the book. There are shorter episodes within the larger story as the Dawn Treader stops at various islands and the crew has a series of smaller adventures amidst the larger one, harking back even to the classical epics like The Odyssey or Aeneid. The weakness in the narrative is the ending. In the same way that Peter Jackson & Co. did not know how to end The Return of the King, it seems that Michael Apted did not know how to end Dawn Treader. Our heroes vanquish the evil threatening Narnia, then suddenly find themselves at the end of the world where they see Aslan, who drones on for a while before sending the characters on their respective ways. The playing out of the resolution in Prince Caspian was far more satisfactory. The acting was fair, although nothing exceptional. In fact, the word "fair" seems to summarize the movie: it is not exceptional, nor is it awful.
There are some movies I enjoy re-watching: Ghostbusters, Chistopher Nolan's Batman movies, and most Pixar films. There are other movies that I can happily live with never seeing again: Spiderman, Avatar, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This does not mean that regret seeing Dawn Treader or that it is not a safe, enjoyable family movie: it simply means that it is not excellent. Thus, my final verdict is that if even slight departures from the book bother you, do not see this movie. If you are tolerant of mediocre acting and stories that are "safe" (no gore, swearing or licentiousness), then by all means, go see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
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