Dawn Treader Deleted Scenes Analysis | Talking Beasts
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Note: This episode was recorded before the passing of Director Michael Apted.
Ten years ago, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader hit theaters with running time of 105 minutes. In this episode, Glumpuddle and Gymfan take a fresh look at deleted scenes and discuss if their inclusion would have improved the movie.
Bonus: Listen to Gp and Gym reminiscing about Narnia DVD extras.
The mutiny scene could have improved things if it had received some more attention, imo. I may be saying this because it’s vaguely tied to the book (at least insofar as it has the sailors questioning if they even have a hope of getting home again).
Otherwise, the other scenes don’t feel quite as helpful.
I don’t think the Dawn Treader movie was all that bad. It does contain quite a bit of material from the book. I watched the deleted scenes and thought they were okay, but I don’t think they would have made much difference. My main issue with the film was that they left the scene with Ramandu out. Also, I didn’t like it when Lucy actually turned into Susan. She did not do that in the book. The scenes with Eustace as a dragon were actually quite good, and the dragon looked pretty real. You could see that the experience changed Eustace. The deleted scenes added a little to the film but not a whole lot. The green mist should have been taken out (it was not in the book and not really necessary.). The Dark Island would have been enough. In spite of the imperfections I think the movie was worth buying. It’s beautiful on blu-ray. The special effects and the ship were very attractive.
I’m gonna be honest, I really don’t like the Dawn Treader movie, and that’s coming from someone who will defend the Walden Movies from book purists! (I’m looking at you, Glumpuddle) Do I think these deleted scenes could’ve saved the movie? No, what this movie needed to save it was a complete script overhaul before shooting. Go more in-depth with the question of turning back, remove and rewrite some of the more obvious and off-putting dialogue, DEFINITELY get rid of the Green Mist (And the 7 swords while we’re at it), make Aslan and His Country a more integral part of the story, make several other changes to make it more accurate to the book, like the order of the islands, and voila! The perfect Dawn Treader movie! If there was anything I missed, be sure to let me know, cheers!
I actually thought Lucy turning into Susan wasn’t a bad idea. One of the NarniaWeb commentators mentioned this in the VDT commentary podcast that like, since beauty is such a subjective standard, making it so Lucy is jealous of Susan’s looks works because we can see the sort of beauty Lucy wants regardless of what others think. Plus Georgie Henley is already beautiful so I’m not sure how they could show Lucy became prettier unless they did one of those horrible romcom transformations. All in all it’s not ideal, but they did mention in the books how Susan was considered the “pretty one” so I think it’s not out of nowhere either
I’m with you on the movie not being that terrible though. It’s nothing compared to the book but it’s kind of fun and campy and personally more watchable than Walden’s PC for me.
I liked it better than Prince Caspian since it was a little closer to the book. There weren’t any overdone battle scenes and the story was much more simple, although there were some changes. The actor that played King Caspian was the right age in Dawn Treader. He was much too old to be a prince in the previous film. I think the Dawn Treader movie would have been much better if Ramandu had been included in that wonderful scene in the book with the magical birds which brought him food. It seems that the film is incomplete without it. On the whole the film could have been much more enchanting.
I have to hand it to this episode for making these deleted scenes interesting. For example, I hadn’t connected scene#1 with Lucy’s concerns about her appearance before. I just thought it was to acknowledge that it wasn’t normal for her to wear pants and that necessity demanded it.
I approve of scene#2 being cut, which is kind of odd since it shows a small moment from the book (Lucy using her cordial on Eustace) which I normally love. But I just don’t find it very funny. And I’m someone who’ll defend the comedy bits with Eustace as the funniest things in any of the Narnia movies. But this one was badly delivered IMO. The implication that Aunt Alberta is super hairy is pretty hilarious but I didn’t realize that was what they were going for until my second viewing.
I like the idea for scene#3 but it would have felt really random in the context of the movie (right before Dragon Island.) We get this big scene where the crew is about to revolt and then they just…don’t. If they’d found food on Dragon Island, it might have made sense, but they specifically didn’t have them do that. I’d have moved this moment to Ramandu’s Island.
To be fair, a lot of parts of the movie are like that. The Green Mist tempts the characters to do something, it looks like they’re going to do it, then they don’t and the Mist never bothers trying it again. In fact, the only time a character does give into the Mist’s temptation (Eustace taking the enchanted treasure), it ends up helping the good guys (by turning Eustace into a dragon.) Talk about your incompetent villains! But, like Larry W. said, this movie’s not the worst thing ever. I should refrain from carping against it too much.
Speaking of VDT special features, there’s one that’s not on my DVD, but which sounds really good. It’s a featurette in which the character of Caspian explains what’s been happening in Narnia between Prince Caspian and this movie. Apparently, it features the original Narnia illustrations. I remember someone commented on this site that that feature gave him more respect for the VDT movie. While it sounds like a cool featurette, I don’t really understand that. I guess he meant that it showed Michael Apted and the screenwriter had put thought into the world of Narnia. But
(a) this doesn’t really show up in the movie proper,
(b) we don’t know that they thought this background up while they were actually working on the movie rather than afterwards, and
(c) we don’t know if Apted or the writers were actually the ones who wrote this special feature.
I’m now thinking of changing my signature to “don’t let the Green Mist get you down.” 😉
I agree!! I hated Prince Caspian because they changed the character of Peter and Caspian. I hated Dawn Treader because they missed so many parts from the book that you mentioned. It could have been a great adventure story with the plot being looking for the Lords and making it to the end of the earth.