The Reasons you Dislike Voyage of the Dawn Treader

[waterkid72]

So it is not secret that VDT was controversial... to say the least. Many fans disliked it, others hated it, others liked it and some loved them. But the question is why. Why is VDT so disliked? I have my own opinions but I would like to see a proper discussion where we can rarionaly point to the issues. And if you liked it feel free to tell us why! All opinions are interesting and welcomed.

Discuss Narniawebbers!

[SilverSea]

They completely deviated from what many consider to be the best book in the series. They made it a convoluted and stereotypical fantasy adventure out of VDT (and not describing the cause of the antagonist the green mist at all) instead of preserving the integrity and beauty of the book. Plus the script and the acting (save for Will Poulter and Liam Neeson) were awful.

[waterkid72]

Hmmm, I agree with sole of yor statements but i considered the acting rather solid, at least from the characters of the previous film. Skandar and Georigie did a decent job, I didn't feel they really unperformed. They are no to blame if the script was bad.

[Glumpuddle]

I think it's only fair to judge it as a stand-alone film first and foremost. Lets pretend the book doesn't exist for a moment...

I just don't care about anything happening in the movie. If the fire alarm had gone off and my theater was evacuated halfway through, I would not be thinking "dang! I really wanted to see where that story was going!" I think I would have shrugged, accepted a free ticket from the theater, and gone home.

There are number of things in the film I suspect led to my apathy (pacing, formulaic writing, cheap looking VFX, etc), but that's the problem in a nutshell: I find it very hard to care at all. This makes the whole thing a bit boring.

The fact that it's a sequel to LWW and PC doesn't help. Those films take themselves seriously on some level. Yes this is a fantastical world with talking animals, but the characters still feel like real people. Something is on the line. So I went into VDT taking it seriously... but it soon became clear it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. It's like they were just kidding around. Suddenly we're watching some super-commercial fast-tracked production with ADD 6-year-olds as the target audience. The kind of thing you would expect to find in the $3 bin at Wal-Mart.

Then you sprinkle some plot holes and cheesy acting on top of that.

[waterkid72]

glumPuddle I understand your position. As a fan of the series I cannot see the film independently from the book. At first I sad the movie not expecting much. It was Narnia and thats all what mattered back then. In hindsight, having thought more on the themes that the book has, I believe that the real problem is that they didn't try to understand the book for what it is. They tried so hard to male this film "accesible" if you want to call like that by doing a plot that is rather standard for modern fantasy films. There te real mistake.

Regarding the special affects I don't have the problem, mainly my issues is the pacing. They fly in the movie trying to say everything as fast as possible without feeling conected to this world. Wardrobe did that to me. It put me inside this world and characters, inside this place that was just as real as our world. VDT does not do this very well, because it cares to much for the plot thread than the characters and moments that make thz plot shine by itself.

[Lion's Emblem]

Plot and character development.

There's really nothing too memorable storywise in the VDT film. Really, the only scenes that stand out for me are the very beginning (particularly the scene in the bedroom with the painting and entering Narnia) and the 'End of the World'. Other than that, what happens and who really cares? Comparitavely speaking, if you look at LWW and to a lesser extent PC, after a first viewing, you can mention any scene and it's memorable (it may not be your favorite scene, but you remember it). For example, with LWW: the bombing of London, intense, but memorable. Lucy entering Narnia and meeting Tumnus, memorable. The first appearance of the White Witch, memorable. Meeting Aslan, not how many fans would of liked to have seen it as I've heard, but memorable. Etc., etc. There's just nothing really intriguing or interesting in the plot to VDT and I find myself getting bored. Not to mention a lot that is presented is so watered and dumbed down, that it's a slap in the face to even the common film-goer.

On character development, no one really grows (except for maybe Eustace of course). This almost makes the end scene less meaningful ("well, there's another adventure for you, time to go home"). And the green mist doesn't help this - it's all the mist's fault, our character's can do no wrong. This is especially annoying because it makes our heroes less real and believable. I mean, we all have our faults and make mistakes, that is why we can relate to the characters in C.S. Lewis' writings. For example, with Lucy. In LWW and PC, we see her as an innocent child, one who can believe in the impossible and is sweet and kind - almost to the point that people see her as too "perfect". In VDT, however, we get to see Lucy's struggles, her going to a "darker" side, if you will. We see that she is not perfect and has flaws like the rest of us. But, in the film, the mist made her do it, so she's still wonderful and perfect. And again, every character can make no mistakes therefore they are the "superheroes" of Narnia and save the world all on their own (need I mention Lucy's line, when Ramandu talks of the "darkness", "How do 'WE' stop it?" and again with "WE did it. I knew WE would."). The point is though, while we are meant to do things on our own, we can't do it all ourselves and need help and guidance - ahem, Aslan anyone? So, with everyone being so perfect, and only the mist doing wrong, and the whole "can do" attitude, why do we care about these characters and whether the day can be won? There's no growth and development, so how can we care.

[waterkid72]

Lion's Emblem, I think the real reason the characters didnt' have the time to develop is precisely the unnecesary changes the filmakers went theough the film. The inclusion of a villain in a story that didn't have one resulted in many unnecessary changes in the orientation of the plot. The entire poin of the plot was deafeating the mist. It was no longer a personal journey anymore. What I find baffling is that LWW and PC manage to include well displayed character development in a more classical fantasy story and VDT focused too much in the wrong things.

Take for instance the fight in the Lone Islands? Was it necessary to change it from what happened in the book? No. But it was probably more conventional and therefor they went that route. I feel that the filmakers were sometimes unsure if Narnia as it is in the books was adequate as a film adaption without trying to change it much to adapt it to more conventional storytelling in modern fantasy movies.

[aragorn2]

Oh, where to begin?
Firstly the story. The storyline completely deviated from the book. If someone had seen the film but not read the book they still wouldn't really know what the book was about. And I can take that as long as it's well done(case in point, How to Train Your Dragon). But the thing is, it wasn't well done. The script, cinematography and all around acting was very poor and the story didn't even really make any sense when you think about it.

It does have some great parts and it's not a terrible movie, just not all that great.

[Jane Bennet]

Aw, but Voyage of the Dawn Treader was so sweet.

I mean, yes it wasn't exactly like the book. The characters were very different. And the tone was very different. And... I guess the acting wasn't as good as it could have been. And there were parts I didn't think made much sense... But other than that it was really good.

I might not have liked it, but... maybe other people liked it? And if they did, I'm very happy for them.

[Fire Fairy]

Ugh. Don't get me started. My feelings toward this movie are pretty much this:

I've taken a screenwriting class, and I actually used VDT in my presentation on "Showing not Telling"...as the bad example. I could listen to the movie without seeing it and still know everything that's going on. Seriously.
(Btw, "Show, Don't Tell" is the number one rule in any type of creative storytelling). Honestly, I don't think Michael Apted was really taking Narnia seriously. He probably thought, "Oh, this is cute. The families and kids will love this." Big mistake there. I love how Andrew Adamson put it. He said (quoting Walt Disney), "I don't make movies for children. I make movies for the child in all of us." Who among us have grown out of Disney movies? None? My point exactly. Movies that are made for children can only be enjoyed by children. Movies made for the child in all of us can be enjoyed by all of us. Pixar, anyone? Now there's a movie studio that knows what it's doing.

At least VDT wasn't nearly as bad as The Last Airbender (gag me with a spoon... I'm not even going to go there...), but it's still pretty far down on my list. And I've only brushed the surface of why I dislike it.

[waterkid72]

Ugh. Don't get me started. My feelings toward this movie are pretty much this:

I've taken a screenwriting class, and I actually used VDT in my presentation on "Showing not Telling"...as the bad example. I could listen to the movie without seeing it and still know everything that's going on. Seriously.
(Btw, "Show, Don't Tell" is the number one rule in any type of creative storytelling). Honestly, I don't think Michael Apted was really taking Narnia seriously. He probably thought, "Oh, this is cute. The families and kids will love this." Big mistake there. I love how Andrew Adamson put it. He said (quoting Walt Disney), "I don't make movies for children. I make movies for the child in all of us." Who among us have grown out of Disney movies? None? My point exactly. Movies that are made for children can only be enjoyed by children. Movies made for the child in all of us can be enjoyed by all of us. Pixar, anyone? Now there's a movie studio that knows what it's doing.

At least VDT wasn't nearly as bad as The Last Airbender (gag me with a spoon... I'm not even going to go there...), but it's still pretty far down on my list. And I've only brushed the surface of why I dislike it.

I do not hate the film and I have my reasons. I do agree that the film could have been much better in terms o quality, pacing, ambience and especially as an adaptation. In fact I thinkthat its greatest problem by far is how they adapted it. The filmakers make the excuse that they needed those changes to make the film connected in its narrative so it would be less episodic. Have they not seen any episodic films? I have. They work fantastically. In VDT they failed to understand what made the book special, but I still don't fully understand why. VDT has some details that make me feel the book is there somewhere (the painting, he dufflepods, the world's end, the ending scene...), but the core of the film, its makes structure feels hollow. It is so undeveloped that it makes you wonder what were they thinking. The mist and the DaeknIsland is never developed and the character development of the books is ignored.

Oh and I am a huge Avatar fan. I really feel your pain, te film was terrible, it deviated unnecessarily from the main source. And it failed to capture the elements that made the series so engaging. At the very least I felt Shylaman liked the series, but Apted seem just doing this as a job and was not really inserested in capturing the book in the screen.

[Aslanisthebest]

The kind of thing you would expect to find in the $3 bin at Wal-Mart.

From the $5 bin, you've gone down to the $3 bin.

VDT had its plus points. The design of the credits, the transition from Lucy's room to Narnia, how they came back from Narnia and the water left but they were dry.

I was listening to the podcasts on here, and the podcastors brought up two really good points - it was tell vs. show and it wasn't subtle.
The theological points were very skewed; it was humanistic in ways the book never meant. The "There I have another name" scene was just tacked on. It had no meaning and no emotional connection.
Ah, yes, emotional connection is another thing. Because they were telling us everything and it was all fast-paced, I felt nothing. I only came close to crying when Eustace said goodbye to Reep.

But the theological points - the undragoning, the fact that Lucy was the voice of reason at Deathwater but ripped out the magician's paper, Aslan was taken out of a lot of scenes, the whole message of "Lucy, you wished yourself away!" (And she didn't. She just wanted to be pretty, but I guess the movie made it seem that she wanted to be Susan.) And then the whole "Aslan, help us." "We did it, I knew we could." "It wasn't just us." *camera pans down to Eustace*
To quote the podcast, they should have typed, "Nyah nyah nyah boo boo!" on the screen

Lilliandil was painful. "If it is a distraction, I can change forms....." I missed Ramandu being there and her and his song. "You are most beautiful." I mean... really? Her and Caspian's romance was so It's the one romance in the books, and they have to do it like that. Ramandu's Island ... it seemed like the lighting for it was really dark and gloomy. Lilliandil's cold blue glow didn't help that.
Her dialogue was like a tour guide - "Welcome to Ramandu's Island, travelers. I am your tour guide. Please step to the right. Oh, don't touch that, dear - violence is forbidden at Aslan's table. Come this way. This is where I guide you..."
Caspian: "You are most beautiful."
Um, yeah, she was just giving you directions.
Edmund's unexplained "No." Lucy rolls her eyes.
Caspian and Lilly smile at each other.
... and I feel nothing for this new character and notice nothing about her except for that eerie glow.

It was all about the swords. And the green mist... The mist used their weakness, but it was like they were little kids who could not make consecutive decisions, but were constantly pulled about. Lucy and Edmund were too grown up for Aslan. The characters were underdeveloped. Like Lion's Emblem said, they were perfect and could do no wrong. Even when they were wrong, either they were too old to interact with Aslan (Edmund) or it was still all about them (Lucy). Eustace's delayed undragoning was also a stab at his character. He was only allowed to "become a real boy!" when he turned "good" whereas Lewis makes it very clear that Eustace's interaction with Aslan caused his change of heart, he became a boy, and though his heart was different, he still had immaturity to overcome. That's a good deal more complex than the simplistic view of the movie.

A lot of things, like the sword fights and the scenes, were a bit corny. It was uncertain who their target audience was. They had some Blue's Clues-like narration, but then threw in the sea serpent for the big kids.

The pacing was either too fast or too slow, and the dialogue was wanting.

And we didn't even know who Aslan is. There was nothing much majestic about his presence being mentioned on the book. I was a bit disappointed Caspian went on the boat.

A lot of the film felt like they knew they lost some fans with Prince Caspian, so they tried to lure people back by bringing things from LWW back. The snow in the Magician's scene (though I didn't mind that too much, even though the acting was a bit overdone), Lucy's It's a Wonderful Life scene with Will and Anna.

The green mist was underdeveloped, and like the podcastors mentioned (my sister and I discovered them over spring break and listened to a lot of them, hence the references. ), the invisibility thing with the dufflepuds (coraikin did that in order to protect them) - why couldn't they have used the invisibility spell to go to "Dark Island" if the green mist could not detect invisible things?

That, and the story was changed in very unreasonable (IMO ) ways.

I agree with Lion's Emblem - nothing was memorable. I can't even remember some things from it the way I do with the other ones. Granted, I've watched LWW many times, but I've only seen PC 3 times at most, and I remember certain scenes from it, because it seemed like they were thought out and properly paced. VDT felt like all this fast action, cheesy CGI, shallow moral of the story tacked on, attempts at nostalgia, okay go home now.

That's a bit of the condensed version. Sorry if that was rambly.

[narnia fan 7]

Where to start where to start...

The green mist is vary underdeveloped and poor attempt to add a villain to the story bedsides the fact its not in the book it don't make much sense Why is it capturing people? who or what is behind it? the move never tell us

maybe its just me but unlike the first two film's with VDT don't feel a emotional connection to the characters with the of exception of Eustace I don't know why maybe its because the film's so fast paced but I don't know

their are a lot of other thing's i don't like but the biggest problem with the film is it did not capture what's special abut the book.

[jewel]

I think it was really good. Think of 150,000,000 budget and I think films can be good whether they are expensively made or not. I think some people felt like the film should have been longer. I'm certainly a fan but I agree. The longest of all the books it was made the shortest of the Walden films. I still like it though.

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

Mainly, it was poorly made and written. The spirit of the book wasn't kept. It tried to do everything and did nothing (or very little) successfully.

[jewel]

Mainly, it was poorly made and written. The spirit of the book wasn't kept. It tried to do everything and did nothing (or very little) successfully.

May I ask you friend why you think it was poorly written? And please be specific. I'm very interested to here this