- Update 5/30/08 - This review by by Joe Carter over at The Evangelical Outpost has won me over. I hadn't planned on going to see the movie, but now I plan to see it (at some time or other).
- Update 5/17/08 - Frederica Mathewes-Green thinks the movie improves on the book! She lists other books that have fared better as movies as well. You might want to see if you agree with her! - Thomas Hibbs laments alterations the film makes from the book.
- Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, offers the following commentary:
"Caspian" is a fantasy, of course - but also a war story. Indeed, it's the tale of a just war: Prince Caspian's fight to return Narnia to its natural, Aslan-given order by driving the tyrant Miraz from power and bringing back and restoring the rights of talking animals, fauns, dwarves and other magical beings.
The tale is full of military events, councils, knights. Aslan gives a great war cry to summon and inspire his troops ("The Lion Roars"). Miraz is defeated in single combat, after which "full battle" is joined.
In fact, "Caspian" is centered on the theme of Mars, god of war.
Lewis wrote the Narnia Chronicles so that they would express the qualities of the seven heavens of the medieval cosmos, which he deemed "spiritual symbols of
permanent value." "Caspian" was his Mars book.
But he was seeking to acquaint his readers with the true, higher nature of Mars - Mars "baptized" and brought within the Christian tradition of gallantry: strength put in the service of life and growth. (Thus, "Caspian" also celebrates the pleasures of peace, represented by the green, living, Narnian woodland. Trees are key to this story and are another aspect of Mars - "Mars Silvanus," the god of woods and forests.)
Lewis fought in World War I and knew the horrors of conflict. He was certainly no warmonger. But he also thought that there was such a thing as a just war - indeed, he once addressed a pacifist society in Oxford on the topic "Why I Am Not a Pacifist."
War was terrible, he believed - but not so terrible as letting tyrants run rampant. Conflict could be a necessary way of preserving or regaining peace.
"Caspian" is not a "we're all guilty" hand-wringing exercise. But nor is it a gung-ho, Rambo-like, slash-and-burn story.
A real warrior is brave but self-restrained, Lewis believed. The noble and heroic knight frees us from a world "divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable."
"Caspian" is likely to be a hit whatever Walden does. But if the film conveys "the necessity of chivalry" (Lewis' words), then it may actually deserve to be a hit.
- Michael Ward elaborates on the movie and just war theory in this San Francisco Chronicle piece, saying:
As a believer in Natural Moral Law, C.S. Lewis thought that certain things were naturally good and other things were naturally bad. It wasn't just a question of human beings deciding what was good and what was bad. The very nature of the universe tells us something about how we ought to live.
One such thing it tells us to avoid - and where necessary to engage and defeat - is tyranny. In "Prince Caspian," Narnia suffers under a cruel, murderous tyrant, Miraz. His regime is not just an awkward political fact; it is a natural outrage. The health of each citizen and the Narnian universe is threatened by his dictatorship. To overthrow Miraz is a just act, in accordance with the true nature of things, which is why the Narnian planets foretell his downfall. As surely as fever in the human body is signified by a high temperature, so abuse of power in Narnia is signified by ominous portents in the heavens. . .
This does not mean that one kind of tyranny is replaced by another. It means that strength can be justifiably put in the service of liberty and justice to restore the natural rule of law. . .War should be a last resort, declared by lawful authority and conducted according to the natural moral law: It should be defensive, not imperialistic, and there should be limits to one's war aims, a fair chance of success, no torture of prisoners, no slavery, full personal accountability for the acts of those engaged, no intentional "collateral damage," and mercy and reconciliation after the conflict ends. These constraints define, for Lewis, what chivalry was all about - that tradition of gallantry that he felt had all but been forgotten in the modern era: the noble knight in selfless defense of a just cause to protect liberty and justice for the innocent.
The world of "Prince Caspian" is not a chaos, but a cosmos, a carefully structured world, both morally and materially, in which all individuals and events have spiritual significance. The story reflects Lewis's belief that the real world, too, is ordered and coherent, all the way up to the planets and stars. "The heavens are telling the glory of God," according to the words of his favorite Biblical psalm. It is the glory of God's natural law, he believed, to pull down the overly mighty from their thrones and exalt the humble and meek. The knight saves us from a world "divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable" - so Lewis wrote in "The Necessity of Chivalry." And the lessons of chivalry, mercy, liberty and justice from "Prince Caspian" are more than ever necessary in our troubled world today.
(HT: John J. Miller at The Corner)