Prince Caspian

It was the late days of the 1980's when a guy by the name of George Lucas tried to buy the film rights to 'The Hobbit' in order to make a film of it. Being unable to do so, he instead made the film 'Willow', which was remarkably similar in storyline to the Hobbit. At the time, it was hailed by the Little People of America as a breakthrough for using the most amount of people who are differently-sized vertically. This film also put the actor Warwick Davis on the map.

Prince Caspian is the second film based off of the Chronicles of Narnia by Clive Staples Lewis. The storyline revolves around the four Pevensie children as they try to help Prince Caspian reclaim the throne that is rightfully his. The storyline strays quite far in certain places from the book, even adding in a whole other battle scene. This film no longer needs to establish the whole idea of Narnia or to introduce the characters, as that was all done in the first film. Because of this, it was unfettered and was able to focus more on action and storyline, which it does very ably. However, this comes at the price of characterisation, and the people in the film seem strangely two-dimensional still.

In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Weta Workshop was still cutting its teeth on special effects and costumes and creatures. In this film, one can see how much they've advanced since then, with the effects being much less uneven than in the aforementioned trilogy. However, we at FilmQuest still have issues with talking animals, and this still proves to be a sticking point for this film. There is just no good way to have animals talk in a believable manner.

At any rate, the film is still good and definitely enjoyable to watch, especially so since it has Warwick Davis in a very against-typecast role as the dwarf Nikabrik. We give this film a very solid 7 out of 10 stars.