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Narnia 3 aka Voyage of the Dawn Treader - Grade,Review,Speculate

What grade do you give Voyage of the Dawn Treader?

  • A

    Votes: 16 37.2%

  • B

    Votes: 21 48.8%

  • C

    Votes: 3 7.0%

  • D

    Votes: 1 2.3%

  • F

    Votes: 2 4.7%
  • Total voters
    43
  • Poll closed .
The mist and the island were creative changes in the film if I recall correctly, used to represent the evil corruption which took a different form completely in the book. Someone else who has read the book can help me out there. Lucy has always been shown to wholly embrace her trips to Narnia and her enthusiasm in returning I believe is true to who the character is. Georgie's performance as I mentioned along with Skandar's in my original post I think were the best from these two in all three films.
 
suarezguy said:
In the book his perspective felt ironically distorted and flawed rather than flatly, very unlikably wrong.
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Nah, Eustace is definitely presented as a wholly unlikable character until his adventure on the Dawn Treader. That's something the movie got just right (although I do kinda wish his transformation back to a boy had been given more attention instead of being part of a longer climactic scene).

suarezguy said:
Those regions were linked to a specific entity and weren't evil in themselves, though they were physically threatening. Evil being a force, of sporadic strength, felt inconsistent with the prior stories and implausible; if it was so effective, it would have been known about from the beginning of or before the film.
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Not necessarily. As Admiral_Young mentioned, these were creative changes (not the presence of Dark Island itself, but its centrality), but you have to remember that the Dawn Treader is setting out on an exploratory mission after a long time of being out of contact with the Lone Islands, among other points east. Prince Caspian was focused specifically on what was happening back in Narnia proper, and at that point the Telmarines avoided the woods and the sea.

And with Prince Caspian taking place some 2000 years (or some extremely long time anyway) after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, its entirely possible the mist of Dark Island appeared in that intervening time.
 
Kestrel said:
And with Prince Caspian taking place some 2000 years (or some extremely long time anyway) after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
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Prince Caspian takes place 1300 years after the events of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe actually. :p The Voyage of the Dawn Treader then takes place three or four years after Prince Caspian.
 
A large number of schools across North America were still out on Monday so Narnia 3 managed another good Monday weekday with $1m+ bringing its total to $88m now.

I expect it'll have a fairly harsh percentage drop tomorrow but this movie should cross $100m in the next two weekends.
 
I actually liked how the elements were rearranged to tie the sea-serpent to the dark "island", and how this was made the over-arching and ultimate challenge of the film. It gave the story a sense of purpose, whereas the book itself seemed directionless, and a straightforward adaptation would've felt pointless, IMO. I also like how the serpent wasn't portrayed as a simple projection of fear, although it can obviously be summoned by it. No, this was a flesh and blood satanic entity, that was apparently the cause, not a symptom, of the corruption. Consider, the island dissipated only after the swords of the 7 lords empowered the high king's sword to strike the killing blow to the beast. Quite a fitting tribute to the themes Lewis was fond of covering, I wager he couldn't have written it better himself.
 
^ And the serpent didn't dissipate into mist when it was killed. We saw it fall lifeless to the sea floor.
 
On the subject of the sea serpent, Jesus was that thing disgusting. I don't know where they got the idea for its late-state transformation, but after seeing it, I figure anyone who has concerns about the The Thing prequel using CGI for the titular creature has nothing to worry about. Gave me the heebie-jeebies (in a good way, though.)
 
^ I did think the rendering of the design for the creature was terrific. The CGI for the entire film was spectacular in my opinion. I still think that is one of the best dragons I've ever seen in a film. I can't wait to see what Smaug looks like in "The Hobbit".
 
In its 5th week of release Narnia 3 officially sees that the Holiday season is over. After 4 weeks in the top 5 it dropped to 11th for the weekend. I really hate Yogi jumped back over it after VOTDT was beating it in the weekdays but I digress.

It did manage to pull in another estimated $4.7m to bring it's total to $94.6m domestic. It's overall worldwide total is now at $308m.

Narnia is going to need some good weekdays but may need 2 more weekends now to break $100m domestic. Green Hornet and The Dilemma are going to take some attention this coming weekend.
 
C

There were parts I liked (Eustace in general, Eustace as dragon come to mind quickly), but a lot of the movie felt blah to me.

I found myself somewhat unenthused with the more child-friendly aspects of LWW, and really enjoyed the darker and more adult tone of Prince Caspian (I'm still not entirely clear on why people don't care for it...but then IMO the divergences from the book are a positive aspect). This felt like a step back towards a more kid-friendly movie, and that just wasn't something I really wanted.

As someone who also isn't particularly a fan of the Christian allegory aspects of the series, the ending in particular was painful. For that matter, a lot of the dialog and speeches just failed to affect me (Caspian rousing the crew before they reach the Dark Island stands out as an example of this).

I really liked Caspian and Edmund in PC, and it seemed they somehow had less to do here. Seeing Jadis -again- just felt like...well, actually it felt somewhat like shoehorning Worf into the TNG movies, but with even less reason to do so...as though the movie couldn't stand on its own without including her. I also thought PC did a great job of showing Edmund getting over his issues with Jadis, which made this feel, again, like a step backwards. Lucy seemed horribly one-note ("I want to be Susan!") and since I was never really clear on what would be so awesome about being Susan to begin with (hey, I'm a gay guy and the oldest kid in my family) it just got very tedious (a girl-friend I saw this with agreed on that).

Didn't care for the depiction of Aslan (appearance I mean) this time, and at first I wasn't even sure it was Liam Neeson doing the voice.

The effects were great as always (mostly), though given the general kid-friendliness I thought this movie had, the sea serpent seemed like a step in the other direction...kind of paradoxical. Again, Eustace, whether as a kid or dragon, I found entertaining, and I'm glad the dragon got more coverage in the film (I'm re-reading the book now actually). Reepicheep was cool as always. I don't know why Caspian's accent changed, but the acting in general I thought was fine...though I am bothered by the fact that none of the new actors/characters made any impression on me.

I'll add that I saw this on a weekday, so I may have been tired from work and less prone to being impressed.

Overall - a fair amount of stuff to like, but too much that left me cold or felt like a step away from the aspects that I'd been enjoying.

Going forward - I'm scared. Silver Chair didn't impress me as a story, and I'm not sure it could be made into a movie I'd find appealing. I'd like to see The Magician's Nephew or The Last Battle, but I wouldn't count on ever seeing either. All that being said, I think whether I see any future Naria film may depend on what Rottentomatoes has to say on the subject.
 
Yeah dropped out of the top ten for the first time since it's release last month. Maybe my prediction will come true after all and it will be removed from theaters before the end of this month. Understand I'm not pulling for this to happen, it's just a prediction based on new films coming out and the need for room. The fact that it has dropped out of the top ten might justify this action from theaters. I guess we'll see.
 
^ Agreed. I'm sure Dan Ackroyd and Timberlake are good and I watched the cartoon when I was a kid but have zero interest in this film. If this was done in traditional animation I might have a totally different opinion but it's not. It's not surprising that this and "Little Fockers" are doing well. People like these types of movies, no substance and cheap jokes. I shudder to think what kids are being taken to and enjoying in theaters these days, so different from what I went to see when I was small.
 
Dawn Treader broke through the $95.1m mark with Tuesday totals. It'll likely make another $500k before going into the weekend. I don't see it hitting $100m till probably Tue or Wed of next week. If it makes $4.5m over the weekend that would be an amazing bump.

It's worldwide total is now at $338m. The chances of Silver Chair get better every week then there's DVD sales of course.
 
Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader crossed the $100m mark domestically this weekend in it's 7th weekend of release.

Congrats, it's a small consideration but an accomplishment all the same. When the film opened it didn't seem it might make this much.

Hoping that it might yet hit $400m worldwide and that that might be encouraging to FOX studios to make another Narnia film, The Silver Chair.
 
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