Thoughts on the Narnia Movies

I haven't read the Narnia books in at least 15 years.  Going by what I remember, this is my ranking of the books from favorite to least favorite.

1.  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
2.  The Horse and His Boy
3.  The Magician's Nephew
4.  Prince Caspian
5.  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
6.  The Silver Chair
7.  The Last Battle

That is the order in which I think I would place them.  If I were to read them again, the order of a few would likely shift.  Even so, I'm about certain that Dawn Treader would remain in first place.  I've always loved it.

I recently watched the movie adaptations of the first three Narnia books.  It seems that my opinion about the movies is a bit different from the majority opinion.  Why does that not surprise me?

I don't judge the movies by how faithful the adaptations are.  My opinion is solely based on how much I enjoyed watching each movie.

I partially enjoyed The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Parts of the movie really interested me, while I forwarded through other parts.

Prince Caspian bored me, as in completely.  The movie is pretty much one huge fight scene.  It is a wonderful movie if you like lengthy fight scenes, but I'm not interested in that sort of thing.  I forwarded through much of the movie.

What I loved about the book is missing from the movie.  Keeping in mind that I haven't read the book in 15 or so years, I do remember what I loved about it.  I loved the parts with Doctor Cornelius and the backstory that he provides.  I love the Pevensies' arrival in Narnia and how they come to be with Trumpkin.  There's some fun stuff where Trumpkin doesn't believe who they are, and this is mostly eliminated in the movie.  The movie bored me.

I knew that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader would certainly fall short of the magic of the book, and I knew that the plot would be changed a lot.  Undaunted, I was eager to watch the movie.  I strongly suspected that I would like it much better than the other two movies.

I was not disappointed.

I watched every second of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and never felt like forwarding through anything.  Nothing drags, and everything is interesting.

The movie does change a lot from the book, but we still see Caspian and his crew traveling to multiple islands to discover the fate of the seven missing Lords of Narnia.  

I always have found the ending of Dawn Treader with Reepicheep to be moving.  The same happened when I watched the movie.  Tears came to my eyes.  Oh, such a valiant talking mouse!

After I finished watching Dawn Treader, I searched online to see what other people think.  Most people like the first movie the best, while others like the second movie the best.  Many people hate the third movie.  It just goes to show that you can't go by other people's opinions.  

On Reddit, I found this comment about the third movie:

I liked it, I found it fun. I guess I just don't view things as seriously as other people. I can actually enjoy things.

Ha.  Of course, this person was downvoted.  How dare anyone like the third movie!  At least someone agrees with me.  Yes, events were left out and the order of the islands was changed, but I greatly enjoyed this adaptation of my favorite Narnia book.