NARNIA BEGINS

The public at large has lost interest in this franchise, and the faith market is not going to come back in Lion Witch Wardrobe numbers. 

For various reasons, I saw Dawn Treader, and was surprised at how inoffensively amusing it was. I mean, it's got a pretty awesome Lovecraftian sea serpent, a dragon, and the two most interesting characters in the series in Eustace and Reepicheep (and having skipped Caspian, I didn't know Reep was voiced by Simon Pegg, who does an excellent job.) I always rooted for Eustace to take the smarmy Narnians (Smarmians?) down a peg or two, no matter how blatantly Lewis stacks the deck against him, and the movie minimizes Eustace's "redemption" by keeping him as a dragon for long stretches. And the kid playing him was pretty damn good, I thought, able to project charisma even saddled with a whiny git of a character. So I kind of enjoyed the movie, as cheap-looking and obvious as it was. The SIlver Chair is probably my favorite of the books, and part of me would be cool with seeing it with this cast (this Eustace, basically) but then, I'm not sure I want to see a story as dark and surreal as that one rendered in ham-fisted, plasticky CGI, so whatever.

I'm perfectly happy having gotten that better than expected Caspian adaptation out of the deal. I can't conjure up anything either way on the rest.