Both times I watched the film, I did like Edmund well enough while watching. It's only after I came home and mulled over the characterization that I grew frustrated, disappointed, and sad.
While reading Mere Christianity's chapter "Counting the Cost", I gathered that Lewis' ideal theology was that as we grow in our walk with God, Jesus is continually transforming us into a mirror image of God
as we allow Him to. That as we yield ourselves to the Lord and allow Him to transform us, sins we struggled with one or two or five or ten years ago have less and less of a hold on us. That doesn't mean we won't have individual temptations with those things, it just means that we don't struggle so much with those sins and they won't rule our lives. We'll be freer to be the people God is calling us to be.
In Wardrobe, Edmund's sin is usually typed as gluttony over the Turkish Delight, but that is only the surface sin. He was struggling with a lust for power since he resented Peter for bossing him around. He wanted desperately to be a king and have power. One of the most amazing things about Ed's redemptive arc isn't that he loses his desire to rule after speaking with Aslan, but I think that Aslan's love
transforms Edmund's desire to rule from a selfish one into a self
less one. Edmund goes from wanting to boss people around for his own gain to being the "just" king--the one who was wise and known for sound counsel. I imagine the subjects of Narnia asking his advice on important matters. Not only did Aslan take a sin and get rid of it, he transformed that part of Edmund into a strong point.
I was writing my thoughts on this a week or so ago, and I came upon a thought. Goodness isn't the suppression of evil, but rather the eradication of it. In order to be sons of God, we must first lose our identity as sons of the world. Being good does not mean suppressing sin within ourselves--the sin must be completely removed before we can truly be good. I absolutely loved Edmund's arc in Prince Caspian because it seemed that his experience in LWW had really changed him. The evil and lust for power in his heart had been eradicated and he had been made new.
Basically, the opening scene, Deathwater, and the appearence of the witch make me think that Edmund is not only being tempted, he's struggling with a problem with power.
Again. In the book, I always saw Deathwater as Edmund's loathing for injustice. He always speaks his mind and when someone says or does something he thinks unfair, he speaks up. He felt that Caspian was being unfair and so he spoke out. I do think he fell into sin because he did it in too strong of a tone, but I don't think it was because he was experiencing some huge problem with power. At the end of the book, we see him once again confront Caspian, this time in a more level-headed way. Edmund is in no way perfect and I do think he may sometimes be tempted to use his authority as king in the wrong sense, but
he does not have a problem with power-lust. This is something he dealt with in LWW.
The Dawn Treader film ruins Ed's development in PC by saying he was simply suppressing his desire for power. He never even really deals with it fully in VDT. What happened to his redemption? I would be OK with the change if it wasn't for the fact that I think Lewis was trying to write something of role models with the characters. They aren't perfect, but they work through their problems in a determined way and always improve with each story. I don't see Edmund being in anyway better from PC to VDT. I just see him being far less mature or wise.