The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1951)

Okay, good – the whole “green mist” thing was an invention for the movie.  I didn’t want to believe I’d forgotten such a big plot point!  While I get why the film wanted a unifying thread connecting the various vignettes, I don’t think the book needs it.  This is an enjoyable adventure yarn, and although it doesn’t have as well-formed a plot as many of the other books in the series, the characters serve it well and it offers up a number of memorable sequences.

Stuck in the country with their insufferable cousin Eustace, Edmund and Lucy are thrilled to find themselves transported to Narnia once more (less thrilled to do so with Eustace in tow.)  There, they meet up again with Caspian, now king of Narnia and leading a sailing expedition to seek out a number of lords who’d been forced to flee during Caspian’s uncle’s usurpation.  Along the way, they have a number of strange and fantastical adventures.

As I said, there’s no mysterious malevolence building to a climactic battle here, and there’s no driving plot beyond Caspian’s search to find the seven lost lords.  And really, that’s okay.  It’s not the type of book that needs it.  All it really needs is the characters, the Dawn Treader, and the series of adventures they encounter during their journey.  I wouldn’t call it the best book in the series, but for me, it’s one of the most memorable.  Vignettes like the Dufflepuds, the golden statue, and the dragon stuck with me years after my mom first read me the book and I first saw the old-school BBC miniseries. Even before checking out the more recent film, I still had crystal-clear remembrances of, say, Lucy reading the Magician’s book and Reepicheep in his coracle.

And Eustace being a colossal pain, because yeesh.  It’s funny – when I compare him with Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he’s obviously not as bad.  As Edmund remembers here, he did some horrible stuff in that book, whereas Eustace’s main crimes are basically having no imagination and generally being a self-centered complainer.  However, as big as Edmund’s actions were, and as much as Lewis doesn’t pull any punches with him, it is pointed out that he’s at least partially under the thrall of the White Witch, and even apart from that, his never personality never grates as much as Eustace’s does.  That said, he comes by his character development honestly in this book, and I buy where he ends up compared to where he started.  I’m looking forward to rereading The Silver Chair to get reacquainted with this version of Eustace with Pole.

There’s nice variety in the little tales here, adventure and intrigue with moral lessons mixed in and a little humor for good measure.  I like the sense that while, yeah, there’s the whole thing with the lost lords, this is mostly about Caspian, the Pevensies/Eustace, and the crew exploring uncharted waters because they’re there.  Great spirit of exploration and the seeking of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.  (Side note:  I would’ve appreciated the mention of more Narnians in the crew.  I get that there are still a lot of Telmarines in Narnia, but Caspian is king to all and it would’ve been nice to see more of a mix, to get a glimpse at how the various peoples of Narnia are coming together more under Caspian.)

Warnings

Brief thematic elements and some scary scenes.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010, PG)

This was the only film in the Narnia series that I didn’t catch the first time around – just never got around to it.  Seeing it now, I’d say I liked it for the most part.  While The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian have sort of complementary pros and cons, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader might fall somewhere in between both for me.  This is a series that, in my opinion, doesn’t have any real clear delineations of rank; each film has its own strengths and stumbles.

Stuck in the country with their insufferable cousin Eustace, Edmund and Lucy are thrilled to find themselves transported to Narnia once more (less thrilled to do so with Eustace in tow.)  There, they meet up again with Caspian, now king of Narnia and leading a sailing expedition to seek out a number of lords who’d been forced to flee during Caspian’s uncle’s usurpation.  Along the way, they have a number of strange and fantastical adventures, and they also discover a malevolent force that seems to have infected many of the islands to which they travel.

Right off the bat, I’ll admit that, while I remember a lot of the individual adventure vignettes from the book (the golden statue, the Duffelpuds, the dragon, the edge of the world,) I don’t remember a thing about a green mist and it all tying together leading to a final climactic battle against this intangible evil power.  It’s been far too long since I’ve read the book to remember if that’s the driving plot of the story or if that’s something the movie came up with, but I’m leaning toward the latter.  I seem to recall no unifying thread between the different island stories, more a series of individual adventures in the vein of Gulliver’s Travels or The Odyssey, but I could be wrong.  I do know there’s other stuff that gets changed here in a big way, and as with Prince Caspian, I personally think most of it is change for the better.  Like the previous film, it also touches more on some interesting theme stuff that I don't believe was explored too much in the book.  Though I think Prince Caspian is still the richest in that regard, this film pulls out some neat character points – chiefly, it does a more thorough job of setting up Lucy’s sense of inferiority compared to Susan and gives her a small arc related to this, and it explores Edmund not quite knowing where he fits with Caspian and still feeling like he’s living in the shadow of Peter’s reign (side note:  both of the latter movies continue to examine, in small ways, the lingering effects of Edmund’s dealings with the White Witch in the first film, which I like.)

It’s a tricky film, because the individual vignettes are mostly all pretty fun and well-adapted but the unifying thread (whether it was invented by the screenwriters or came from the original book) is fairly weak, culminating in probably the most generic-feeling climax of the series.  And other than Edmund, Lucy, and the newly added Eustace, the only real major characters of note are Caspian and Reepicheep, both of whom I like, but on a boat filled with characters, most of them feel pretty nameless and faceless.  That said, the holdover cast members from the previous film(s) continue to do well – I’m impressed with both Georgie Henley and Skyler Keynes as the two Pevensies, and although Caspian’s inexplicably changed his accent since we last saw him, Ben Barnes still does a nice job with the character.  Will Poulter (who more recently played Gally in The Maze Runner) is a fine Eustace, thoroughly unpleasant and yet just redeemable enough, and I really enjoy Simon Pegg’s take on Reepicheep after Eddie Izzard’s portrayal in Prince Caspian.

Warnings

Disney violence, scary moments for kids, and brief thematic elements.