Prince Caspian

In light of all the advertising for the new Chronicles of Narnia Movie, Prince Caspian, I looked up what some of the differences were between the popular book and the new movie. These are some differences according to Ben Barnes, the star of Prince Caspian:

"In the book Caspian is evidently a lot younger than me, and blonde. It says he’s got blonde, curly hair. But it also says his race is descended from Pacific islanders and pirates so why you’d have a blond kid from that I’m not quite sure, so they went down that route and decided to make him kind of European and swarthy and piratey, so that is necessarily different. I think also because there was a good period of a few years between making the first and second, the kids have obviously grown up. William Moseley is now 21, and the thing the book says about Caspian’s age is that he’s about the same age as Peter and because of the tension we’ve built into the story between those two characters it’s important they were about the same age. I’m 26, but on screen me and Will look of similar ages.

So that’s obviously different and the characters are that bit older and I think that obviously the main difference in the stories is that in the second one the magic has been drained from the land of Narnia. There’s a human who’s driven by his lust for power and ambition who’s usurped the thrown and become a dictator and he’s a human villain which is more scary than a magic one in that you’re turning people to stone, you’re killing them. And he’s trying to repress the Narnia race which was flourishing to an extent in the first one, there are fewer cute beavery type creatures, Mister Tumnuses and things. You do have Reepicheep but even he’s quite viscious. That’s the main difference between the films, and obviously there are other little necessary changes – the action really does fuel the drama in this second film, more so film than book but the film is a different type of story: the first was a Christmas fairytale, this one is a summer blockbuster. There are no changes that jar with me as a childhood fan of the books so hopefully they won’t jar with too many other people."

There is also a picture of him!