Voyage is the third book in the series by CS Lewis. It is one of the most beloved and also one of the most difficult books to translate into movie form. More details to come later. The first movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, was excellent - an almost perfect adaptation of the book with a little extra flair added in. Most changes worked, though some made no sense given the Narnia fantasy world. I reviewed the second movie on this blog, so please read it at this link: Prince Caspian. In an unusual twist, I found Caspian's changes from the book were more thematically and internally consistent than the book. I'm not sure how that happened, but the movie was the more compelling piece of fiction.
Gains: +5
Eustus amazed me, from the actor selection (Will Poulter) to the acting itself. Of all the characters, Eustus brought more to the movie than the rest. As usual, Georgie Henley (Lucy) and Skandar Keynes (Edmund) gave good performances.
The movie tried to teach some values - fighting temptation, being who you are, heroism, selflessness, faith. Good for them. These are rare qualities found in movies these days.
The scenery of water-based movies carries significant difficulties. Voyage handled the sailing ship activities seamlessly. Also the sets, animation, and costuming were pretty cool.
Losses: -4
Plot, plot, plot, plot, plot. Oh, and internal consistency and mixing realism into your fantasy. But I get ahead of myself.
First of all, let's deal with the easy part that requires many words to explain. Shots frame the movie and form a line or a series of lines connecting characters to scenes and the plot and the environment. Framing shots correctly and putting them into movies in the correct order gives the audience an idea of how and why one character was in one place and got to another place. For instance, you don't need to show the audience my entire trip home. You can take things out, but if you take out too much, you lose your linear consistency. Showing the entire car ride is not necessary. Conversely, if you show me sitting at my work desk, then the next shot shows me sitting at my home computer desk, you have lost the audience. How did I get there? Why did the camera shot change? There is no transition. Sometimes you can convey this change with words or with short shots of me grabbing my coat on my way out, then showing me entering my house and sitting down. Etc. Etc. You have a myriad of options, but the point is that you have to show the audience what and why and how in some form.
In Voyage, for instance, how did Eustus get into the water after meeting Aslan and putting the sword on the other swords? All of a sudden, "Hey, guys, there's Eustus, in the water next to the ship." I counted 3 such instance in a single viewing. I'm not a professional, so when I think I could do a better job, the videography has gone terribly wrong.
Plot, plot, plot. I knew heading into Voyage that the plot of the book was fascinating but would have trouble being translated to modern audiences on modern film. When faced with this problem, producers and writers can either change the script or stay true. I believe staying true to the book is most often correct. Prince Caspian proved to me that changes can benefit a movie, so I had hope for this movie. I got suckered.
When a book has a loose plot like find 7 lords (and visit weird islands) and no over-arching plot with a big battle at the end for conclusion, then you must change the paradigm. Only one story element connected each of the islands - sailing on the Dawn Treader. So the story absolutely needed to have a little bit of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) in it. We needed to live and breathe the ocean life, with mini-adventures on the islands.
I knew something was going wrong right away. The first island is cool in the book. It is not wildly fantastical like the other islands, but the slave trade has taken over and corruption rules the populace. The option in the book was to return with soldiers to siege the city or to bluff that the Dawn Treader was just the negotiating wing of a larger army. That's the book. They bluff and win. That's so cool. In the movie, they fight, but it's like an 11 v. 11 football match. It should be 1 whole city versus 1 tiny ship. The fantasy movie instantly became disjointed from its own internal reality. In fantasy/sci-fi movies, connection to reality is paramount. Only specific laws of nature can be broken, and only if they are explained. If too many situations become ridiculous - if the simple math of us vs. them doesn't add up - people's brains register the unreality and the movie fails to create suspension. It loses the audience.
So what can bring the audience back into the movie? Character! This movie needed to be a character piece as well. It tried, but it missed on so many levels. Caspian, Edmund, and Lucy were all flat, 2D characters. Eustus was the only character that could grow in the story. The other characters seemed to be rehashing book 1 and 2 problems. Wait, was that the White Witch again? Edmund had already shown in Prince Caspian that he could resist her, so why is she back?
So the sea serpent, instead of just being a monster, is temptation incarnate and has grown it's own dark island and requires a tithe of sacrifices from nearby islands for some never-explained purpose. Somehow it controls green smoke that does something - not explained. Those sacrificed people all survived in the end, but were adrift at sea in their small row boats with only the Dawn Treader to ferry them home. But there were almost twice as many people as there were crew on the ship. The ship seemed small and cramped already. Food and water are huge sailing issues, but the movie never addresses these basic sailing aspects and the need for harsh discipline in the harsh conditions of olden-day sailing. Anyway, rambling.
Then they had something about swords that were connected to Peter's old sword that glowed blue so Edmund could stab the sea serpent, though we never saw him attempt to kill it before the sword turned blue. For some reason the swords were a critical element to killing the sea serpent. But if so, then why did the original 7 lords separate and take their swords with them. Was there a prophecy about the sea serpent and the swords? How did they know about getting the swords to the table if they didn't know about the green smoke in advance of setting sail? If the green smoke can make rowboats ships disappear, why didn't it make the Dawn Treader disappear? Were those rowboats in stasis? The people all survived. If not in stasis, how did they eat? What water did they drink? I could go on and on.
Basically, the story unraveled. Once the writers decide they don't have to explain things, then they can do anything they want - at the cost of the plot and the audience's patience.
As bad as these issues were, I'm only taking 1 point away for inconsistent plot, 1 more for lax videography storytelling, and a 3rd point for not explaining anything. I'm taking a 4th point, plus their union membership cards, for changing the book. If you cannot make interesting movie adaptations when changing the book plot, then don't change the book plot. I'd rather have the boring old book in movie form, than a boring new story that mangles the book.
Final Judgment: +1
It's not as bad as some morally and ethically defunct films. In the end this matters more than filmography, plot, or even monetary success. Still, the movie made so little sense that I couldn't bear to sit through it again.
