Like most books adapted for film, what’s more important than the details are the themes of the story. Prince Caspian not only contains the amazing special effects and action choreography you would expect in a contemporary fantasy epic, it also includes a poignant emotional journey for the characters. According to Mark Johnson, a film should always be about characters and story telling … “are [the viewers] going to be compelled to follow these characters...? It’s not about ‘does this explosion work’ it’s about ‘do we care?’

Added to the story, which will no doubt cause a good deal of discussion, is an action sequence where the Narnians attack Miraz’s castle before he has a chance to attack them.

“In the book Reepicheep suggests raiding the castle and going after the Telmarines; [it’s] not something they do in the book but something worth expanding on. I read to immerse myself in what the book was and see what came out of it in the writing process. And it evolved toward a more action-driven film [than the first],” says Adamson.

“The raid is a huge failure,” says screenplay co-writer Christopher Markus. But we wanted to give Peter that [scene], so he can come across as stiffly heroic … we really wanted to test his mettle and break him a little bit so he could build himself back as a person.”

By all accounts, C.S. Lewis’ step-son and guardian of the Lewis estate is pleased with this second film, telling Christianity Today in a recent interview that although Prince Caspian is a poorer book than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it ended up being a better movie.

This success is largely due to Adamson, Johnson, et al and their reverence for the themes of the source material.

Going Back and Moving on

“I grew up in Papua New Guinea and that’s a country that has gone through an awful lot of change in the last 22 years," says Adamson. “I’ve never gone back there in part because I know the place where I grew up doesn’t really exist anymore. So [like the Pevensie children] I related to the sense of loss of not being able to go back to something that you grew up with. Like the old saying 'you can’t go back to your childhood.' That’s what [the Pevensie children] are going through … going back to a place that doesn’t exist and having to accept it and move on. So as much as I wanted connection I wanted the audience to feel that sense of loss as well.”

Any additions or structural changes to the story support the themes of the book nicely, including making one famous sequence with Aslan, rendered here potentially in a dream. Says Adamson: “There is a problem there that you can get away with in the book because the story is told in retrospect … Aslan is there and he doesn’t do anything. But we had a problem with that cinematically because once you show Aslan, if you don’t have him do something people are going to ask ‘Why is all this happening? Why doesn’t he do something.’ It became really hard to see how this magnificent creature came along and hung out with the kids, and not do anything to stop all this carnage.”

At its core, Prince Caspian is about belief verses doubt, a theme familiar to those who know the work of C.S. Lewis. The Telmarines don’t believe in Aslan and the old Narnians. Lucy sees Aslan but her siblings don’t believe her at first.

“You believe, then you see,” says Will Moseley about Narnia. “The analogy is there that Aslan represents God. People say every day ‘if God is there why can’t I see him.’ Peter, Susan and Edmund say the same thing, ‘why didn’t I see him, he is an unbelievably huge lion why can’t I see him?’ Because they don’t believe. When Peter feels remorse about his sins, then the magic starts to happen. Almost like you open yourself up to believe, then you can see. I don’t think it has anything to do with aging … it's more to do with your strength in belief.”

Starring Peter Dinklage, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Ben Barnes, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Prince Caspian opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, May 16, 2008.  Click here for more information.