The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

The third in the series and quite probably the last, after Disney canned it and Fox decided to have a go. Much like the other two film there's something very hollow and empty I find about this one. Admitantly this is probably the hardest of all the books to adapt because it's so episodic and they have changed a lot of things to try and streamline the action and invent an overarching villain.

What I do like about the film is all the cool fantasy locations. I was listening to the director and producer commentary this time and it was a little disheartening to hear they never once filmed out at sea with the Dawn Treader, it's all faked. But I guess that's just a testament to all the invisible effects work in the film.

In fact the whole commentary was basically spent saying, oh that's just digital set extension, we didn't make any of that, this is all digital, none of that is real, etc. It then becomes a little frustrating to hear about all the hard work of the few hundred crew on set filming and absolutely no time spent talking about the thousands that did all the hard work getting the majority of the film actually made in post production. Some of the stuff in this film is incredibly tricky and not all of it works either but it seems to be so foreign to these ageing filmmakers that they wouldn't even know where to begin discussing it. It also probably wouldn't interest anyone but me.

I didn't really like the 3D post conversion so It was good to see for the first time at home in 2D. Surprisingly the first thing they talk about is the aspect ratio. I din't remember the cinema release format but I'm pretty sure the home release is fuller. I certainly noticed some effects that didn't go right to the top of the frame which makes me think they cropped it for widescreen and then didn't bother to add back in some fx for the bluray.

There's a lot of great technical work, creature design, prosthetics and fx work done in this series. Dawn Treader features a very cool dragon vs sea monster battle I particularly like. But for something that looks so expensive it never feels grand. Everything about the series is so calculated and factory made it seems to lack the heart it so desperately needs to succeed.