By Neil Smith
Entertainment reporter, BBC News |
 Prince Caspian, the second instalment in the Chronicles of Narnia series, has "more grit" than its 2005 predecessor The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Barnes plays a heroic prince fighting to claim his rightful throne |
That is according to its New Zealand-born director Andrew Adamson, who said the magical world of Narnia has "more weight and depth" this time around. "The story in itself is a little more Shakespearean," he told the BBC News website. "You start with a young prince escaping for his life, so it definitely starts from a fairly dramatic place." "The Narnia in the second film is over a thousand years later," agrees Ben Barnes, the 26-year-old British actor who plays the coveted title role. "The magic has kind of been sucked out of the land." Fans of CS Lewis's mythological saga, though, have no reason to fear. It is not long, after all, before the screen is awash with talking badgers, horned centaurs and a swashbuckling mouse voiced by comedian Eddie Izzard. Formidable It is not all fun and games, however. The Pevensie siblings from the first film - Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy - have a formidable adversary in King Miraz, an evil usurper who has driven Narnia's kindly creatures to the brink of extinction.  Adamson (r) also directed the first two films in the Shrek series |
And there is also the White Witch (Tilda Swinton), dormant and incarcerated but still able to exert a powerful influence from her icy prison. All in all, Prince Caspian promises the same mix of fantastical elements that saw The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe gross a whopping $744m (�377m) worldwide. With its clear divisions between good and evil, the significance of faith in the narrative and the Christ-like figure of Aslan the lion, it is also abundant in overt religious symbolism. The perceived Christian imagery in the first Narnian Chronicle was a major talking point when the film was released in December 2005. Now the dust has settled, Adamson admits he is pleased this does not seem to be as much of an issue with Prince Caspian. "The whole idea of religion and allegory within film became a topic in the media," he told the BBC News website, citing Mel Gibson's 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. 'Relief' "My concern was it kind of overshadowed the film and CS Lewis and the book - it became a separate issue. "It is a relief people are just concentrating on the film and not what it means to this or that person.  Liam Neeson again provides the voice for Aslan the lion |
"Ultimately, I think that's up to the audience members to decide." A third Chronicles of Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is already scheduled for release in 2010. Adamson, though, will not be in the director's chair, having handed the reins over to British film-maker Michael Apted. Barnes will reprise his Caspian role in the next instalment, something he predicts will be "an interesting challenge". "I think he will have changed an awful lot," says the actor, who appeared last year in comic fantasy Stardust. Asked how he hoped audiences would react to Prince Caspian, Barnes said he wanted each viewer to "come away with something different". "I've seen it a couple of times myself and each time something else strikes me, whether it's the humour, the symbolism or the political and historical context." The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is out in the UK on 26 June.
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