I have not yet seen Prince Caspian, the Narnia movie that opens on Friday, but the early reviews look encouraging. Here’s Dirty Harry at Libertas:
With Iron Man I was sure the best film of the summer was already behind us. I do love it when I’m wrong.
It certainly promises to be a movie for our times. Of the seven Narnia books, Prince Caspian is the most militaristic. There’s a big battle scene in the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, of course. Yet it’s a relatively small part of the book–it takes up roughly a single paragraph. Prince Caspian is different. One of its major themes is just warfare, and there’s plenty of fighting–Narnia scholar Michael Ward has made this point.
If Hollywood wants to make a mint at the box office, it will produce a Black Hawk Down-style film about Marines in Fallujah. Americans will flock to buy tickets. But Hollywood refuses to meet this demand. Instead, we’re bombarded by a series of anti-war flicks that few people want to see. On occasion, however, we get excellent films such as 300, which appreciates the importance of martial valor. Here’s to hoping that Prince Caspian is equally subversive.