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The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Liam Neeson, Warwick Davis, Ben Barnes

One of the dominant themes of this column, subtly and not so subtly at times, is that liberal Hollywood is a myth. Oh, there are the real ramifications of bringing together a lot of young, good looking people with a lot of cash and free time together and the moments on screen that your minister would not appreciate, but for the most part, Hollywood is a conservative industry town like any other. Instead of building cars or washing machines, they are selling tickets and dreams to the most Americans they can. At the bottom line it is not the beautifully slutty starlet or the director whose casting couch has to be scotch guarded due to so much use that decides what movie gets made, it is balding, middle-aged Republican banker and Wall Street types that are the final word on what blockbuster you are going to see at the cinema and if you don’t make the greenbacks, you are out of there faster than a feminist at the Playboy mansion.

Oh, there are the big dollar artsy, fartsy films award winning films that no one will go to, but every industry has those types of things, the designer home, the prototype car, those things where the industry can have a big night, get some headlines, and celebrate itself. Yet, at the end of the day, if the Benjamins are not in the coffer like any business, hit the road, because there is some wet nosed 20-something with an Ivy League education who does not know their elbow from their backside ready to replace you. It is why we have as many sequels as we have and why low rent comedies that slap whatever brain cells you have left dominant the multiplex. Still don’t believe me? Historian Howard Zinn, who wrote the wonderful “People’s History of the United States,” gave a lecture that confronted the notion of liberal Hollywood by pointing out stories that Tinseltown will never make into films because they are too liberal and challenge many of the myths that Americans tell themselves. There will never be a film on Shay’s Rebellion, The Ludlow Massacre, the oppressive policies we used in the Philippines and the dirty tactics and lies President James Polk used to start the Mexican War. There will never be a film on colorful Americans like Emma Goldman, Kate Richards O’Hare, Eugene Debs, or Mother Jones. That has been no film on the Trail of Tears, a moment where this nation came as close to ethnic cleansing as we ever have. I have seen no movie on what happened at Haymarket Square or the young women who stood up for their rights in Lowell textile mills or even a film that showed Helen Keller for the anti-war socialist that she was in her adult life, or even the Sand Creek Massacre, where American soldiers slaughtered a peaceful Native American encampment filled with women, children, and old men.

It is the very conservative nature of Hollywood that has caused it for the most part to avoid religion, which is such a part of most Americans’ lives, because they do not want to offend anyone. It is why they stripped the wonderful children’s book, The Golden Compass of most of its anti-religious overtones and thus killed what could have been a very popular franchise. Like a good Norwegian farmer, they mainly have tried to avoid religion and contemporary politics in their big budget films because all it does is lead to problems, like the protests that met The Temptation of Christ or Dogma. All touching on religion does is lead to headaches and disappointing box offices, especially when it comes to religious epics. While everyone loves Jesus, no one wants to spend 2 hours in the movie theater with him.

Then along came Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, which America’s favorite nutty Aussie had to finance with his own money. Crowds were lined up around the block. People who had not been to the theater in years sat there chewing on a little popcorn, watching Jesus get the snot beat out of him. It was love at first sight, especially since dvds were coming into their own, which meant niche marketing could come into its own. World meets faith, faith meets world, and the world wanted that sweet lass to come back again. For the most part, their efforts to woo fundamentalist America back to their dark cavern of love have failed. Yet there has been one Christian movie that has rivaled Gibson’s snuff film, Walt Disney’s biggest box office success ever, C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. It took in $744,783,957 worldwide. Not only did the Christians show up, but parents with their children and literature/fantasy fans also wanted to see it. With over 100 million copies of the books sold in 41 languages since 1950, ding, ding, ding, it is a brand that everyone knows. Three quarters of a billion dollars, that is enough money to get middle-aged doughy banker types to suddenly become very attractive to 20-something trophy wives with fake silicone mommy parts. Like that cash machine, Satan’s mop boy, Harry Potter, there are seven possible films in the franchise. That is a three cherry slot machine of Jesus-based materialism and product placement. The first movie introduced four siblings: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie, who are forced to stay in an old professor’s country house, due to the Germans’ bombing of London in World War II. They discover an old wardrobe cabinet filled with furs, leading to a magical land called Narnia under the spell of an evil white witch. The children, with the help of a lion named Aslan, ended the evil witch’s 100 years reign over Narnia.

It has taken a little longer than planned, but the second book in the series, Prince Caspian (even though it came out chronologically fourth), is ready for the big screen. The four Pevensie children are returning to boarding school when they are pulled back into the land of Narnia and are shocked to discover that a thousand years in Narnian time has passed since they were last in this world. The land is in ruins. They learn from a dwarf named Trumpkin that the old magic has been lost due to the occupation of a race of civilized men from Telmar. The old inhabitants of the land, the dwarfs, the talking animals, and other magical creatures have been driven into hiding. Prince Caspian, the heir to the evil Queen Prunaprismia, has grown up hearing the stories of mythically Old Narnia. What he does not know is that he is half dwarf and half human and the stories are true. When the Queen gives birth to an heir, she decides to kill her nephew. Dr. Cornelius, the boy’s tutor, gives Caspian a magic horn and tells him to flee the castle into the forest during a storm. After hitting his head on a tree branch, knocking him cold, the young prince is found and taken care of by a talking badger and two dwarfs. They introduce him to the old Narnians who are in hiding and Caspian agrees to be their king in the war that follows.

When things go badly, Caspian and his troops flee to Aslan’s How, the place where Aslan died for Edmund, and it is at this moment that the Prince blows his magic horn, unknowingly bringing the Pevensies back to Narnia. What happens? We all know. There are five more books after all.

It is good to see old liberal Hollywood coming around, giving us good Christian movies like this. What could be better than taking your children to a God-fearing movie about evil civilized men occupying someone else’s land and reducing it to waste… Wait a minute… evil civilized men? occupying Aslan’s, who is really Jesus, homeland by force? … I was wrong. Damn you, liberal Hollywood! Trying to sneak that poison pill into my Jesus buffet. If it was a real Christian film these civilized men would be slaughtering and oppressing old Narnia like God intended them to, forcing dwarfs to love Aslan at the point of a sword, or water torturing a few of these beasts like Jesus would want them to. I bet Caspian is really Barrack Obama or something. Next thing you know they will be telling me I have to love my enemy, instead of killing them and converting them like St. Ann of Coulter says we should. Kind of ridiculous, huh? Not anymore than notions of a liberal Hollywood.

Verdict: On Par With The First Film