We finally got to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader today, with Atalia. She spent most of the movie with her 3D glasses off (which made everything a bit blurry) because she was determined to be scared of everything. So much for her impressions of the movie.
Mine were more positive. The first impression was that this is an absolutely spectacular looking movie. The 3D worked quite well, adding a feeling of depth (which is, of course, what it's supposed to do) without being distracting. I've heard some criticism of the 3D in this film and frankly, I'm not really sure why -- it seemed fine to me (much better than Toy Story 3's weak 3D, for example). But far more impressive was the beautiful work on two important things for the story: the Dawn Treader itself, and Reepicheep the noble mouse.
I should note -- I'm assuming that you've already read the book. If you haven't, and you don't want to know anything about the story, you might not want to read this review.
First I should say that I saw, and was very impressed with, the actual, full size prop of the Dawn Treader when we visited Movie World last Christmas. So I knew what to expect, and wasn't disappointed. But I was very impressed with the way they filmed her -- wide sweeping, aerial shots perfectly merged with the surrounds. The Dawn Treader is almost a character in C. S. Lewis's books, and while the film dotes on her a little less, she is nonetheless a visual triumph and makes a big contribution to the feel of the movie.
Reepicheep, of course, isn't a prop, but rather a work of CGI. And at last CGI has come of age. This is the first flawless CGI work I have seen. Reepicheep has courage in his eyes, a bounce in his step, and interacts perfectly with his surroundings (at one point Lucy hugs him -- a difficult effect to pull of given Reepicheep's long fur -- and it looks perfectly real). Simon Pegg adds to Reepicheep's veracity and appeal with an excellent vocal performance.
The other visual effects are all superb, too. Of special note are the dark island -- a mere bank of fog in Lewis's story -- here a frightening, vast, contortion of root-like smoke-pillars. Eustace as a dragon is wonderfully animated, but he never seems quite as real as Reepicheep (perhaps because dragons aren't real). The gold pool's effects are nicely done, and Ramandu's daughter (the star who Caspian later marries) looks appropriate star-like. Oh, and Aslan looks as real as a talking lion can (and much better than in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe). I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where the various scenes were shot, since much of the movie was shot on the Gold Coast while we were there (last year). However, that was a complete waste of time -- much of it was shot in the studio, and what wasn't was perfectly merged with CGI backgrounds so there was no way to tell where it was shot -- it just looked like another world. The only part that looked like the Gold Coast was a brief scene where Lucy sees herself as Susan in America (except America looked like the Gold Coast -- there were even mangroves in the background).
So, visually a triumph. What about in other ways? Well, the acting is solid -- the returning actors playing Edmund, Lucy and Caspian do their jobs, with perhaps Lucy the standout here, although I've always sympathised with Edmund, and found myself doing so in the movie, too. Peg's Reepicheep was a standout, and Gary Sweet's Drinian (the captain of the Dawn Treader) has a certain presence. Newcomer Will Poulter actually does a pretty good job with Eustace, although he gets very little time to show Eustace's reformed character (since he isn't transformed back from the dragon for quite some time, and the dragon can't speak). Still, he makes good use of the time he gets, and we understand something of Eustace's journey, although it's much better done in the book, of course.
The story has been tweaked a bit, not as much as Prince Caspian, and chiefly to give a more urgent purpose to the questing. This makes for a more spectacular climax (it's actually quite scary). The only real victim of these changes that I noticed was the point of the Dufflepud episode. Lewis used these invisible, silly creatures to portray vanity and willful ignorance. In the movie this is simply lost, although Lucy's lesson in vanity is not (fortunately). Overall the movie is a faithful to the story as it is possible for a movie to be, and carries through most of Lewis's simpler themes. Can it compare to the incredible richness and depth of the book (the Dawn Treader is one of the most theologically rich of the Chronicles)? No, of course not. Movies are capable of conveying only extremely crude, simple stories, although they can do that very powerfully (think of something like A Simple Plan). They are very poor at conveying multiple levels of meaning, and when they attempt to do so you end up with something horrible like Pi, or something inaccessible like the colours trilogy (Red, Blue, and White). The best you can hope for is two levels, which the movie of the Dawn Treader manages.
Of course, movie makers will swear that this is not the case, as will the educated movie critics. But the common element that both of them share is that they spend enormous amounts of effort on a single work, which is what is required to extract more out of a movie. Books are different. With a movie you need to put very little effort in to get a rewarding experience at two levels: the surface story/character level and the thematic level. To get more out of a movie requires intense study and effort. Books, on the other hand, reveal their layers in a more evenly progressed manner. Perhaps that is because books convey their story and characters via words, which are the same means we use to convey ideas and propositions. Movies use vision and sound, which require far more interpretation to divine their propositional content. For example, Eustace's de-dragoning is a searingly powerful scene in the book, but in the movie it's mostly just a visual effect, with most of the impact only conveyed to us later by Eustace's recounting it. (As for the theological implications of that episode, well, you're never going to guess at them from the movie, but they're quite clear from the book.)
Anyway, given those limitations inherent in the medium, the Dawn Treader makes a decent attempt. Perhaps the music could have been better and the performances given a little more room to breathe, which could have made it more moving. Still, it's definitely worth seeing, and will transport you into another world for a couple of hours.