Disney is making one drastic mistake when it comes to their Chronicles of Narnia films – they appear to be under the assumption these films are as big or as engrossing as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and the overabundance of special features on this Blu-ray release seems to reiterate that point.
First for the film, a feature I was rather kind to upon its theatrical release and gave it a “B”, which seems to fall in line with the majority view of the film. It was certainly an improvement on the first film, which I cannot even get through from start to finish, and I think I became overly wowed by the fact Prince Caspian had throat-slitting mice and actual beheadings in a supposedly PG-rated film. I would have loved to be there when parents had to explain why the cute little mouse was killing everyone to their five-year-old, but I guess when it’s Disney the MPAA comes down a little kinder. However, the second time around it is impossible to maintain interest in this film as I constantly found myself wandering my apartment and checking my email as the film played on. And coming in at just under 2 hours and 30 minutes it is just too long to ever return to.
On Blu-ray the film does, however, look and sound phenomenal. Even with Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, the one thing that stood out above all others was the impressive set and production design. Narnia looks like a place you would love to escape to, even if the snowy lamp post in the first film is far more inviting than the forest in Prince Caspian. Both are extremely beautiful and the Blu-ray picture certainly does it justice.
On top of the feature film, the first disc includes an audio commentary with director Andrew Adamson (and the little kiddies) and an interactive feature they refer to as “Circle-Vision” taking a look at the Castle Raid scene. The “Circle-Vision” feature is where this release begins to get ahead of itself as it is just too annoying for the value it offers. What you get is a pretty cool 360-degree recreation of the castle set and as you navigate around it you can get factoids and behind-the-scenes featurettes discussing the making of the scene. You will learn nothing that seems remotely new, especially if you have explored the vast amount of behind-the-scenes goodies available on the Lord of the Rings extended editions, or if you ever watched the bonus features on the first Narnia release and this trend continues onto the second disc.
The best way to describe the majority of the disc two features is to say they are “too long” and they all feel as if you have seen them before and can predict what everyone is going to say. “Inside Narnia”, a typical making-of feature runs 34 minutes and offers nothing new to folks that watch special features on a regular basis. “Sets of Narnia” runs 23 minutes and acts as if a castle set is something new. The problem is that while the castle in Prince Caspian is technically new, it isn’t new to the point that folks go, “Wow, now that is a cool castle.” Instead they see a castle, as they should, and the film becomes about what happens in the castle. In the case of Caspian none of it is interesting enough to enjoy more than once. The locations, on the other hand, are quite impressive, but they are all in the movie and hearing about how they found a beach is hardly interesting.
The “Big Movie Comes to a Small Town” feature is mildly interesting as they take the search for a river and approach it from the point of view of the small town neighboring it, which turns out to be the Soca river in Bovec, Slovenia. This means bringing in crews of nearly 1,200 people into a small picturesque town where nature is preserved. It’s interesting for about two minutes, but at 23 minutes I really don’t know what they were thinking. Do the people that watch these have nothing else to do? It’s my job, what’s your excuse?
Then the features get trimmed down a bit with a 10-minute look at the pre-vis, a mind-numbing 5 minutes where the cast and crew talk about their favorite talking creature, ten deleted scenes with introductions from Adamson, a three minute blooper reel in which lines are flubbed and Minotaurs trip and three other generic featurettes looking at “the duel” and a pair of makeup features. It’s your typical bag of making-of features when it comes to fantasy film releases, if you have seen one you’ve pretty much seen them all and this one is no different.
Overall I am sure Narnia fans will scoop this up and enjoy every minute of it, but I can’t imagine them getting too excited about anything more than the film itself since not enough is offered outside of the film to make this release all that special. Prince Caspian certainly isn’t special and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has become a blip on the radar following its triumphant $291 million theatrical run, a run that garnered Prince Caspian a measley $141 million in comparison.
