Dawn Treader Trailer

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was, after The Magician's Nephew, in some ways the one I enjoyed most in the series (and Eustace was always my second favorite character, after Digory); but it seems to me that it is also the one that is least easily adaptable to the screen. It's an odyssey, not a unitary adventure. Just judging from the trailer, it looks like it will probably have the weaknesses one would expect -- the 'all Narnia depends on you' part is not promising, and a sign that they are struggling to give the story a more compact organization centered on some easily conveyed problem and culminating in a Spectacle that resolves that problem. And that runs contrary to one of the suggestions of the book, which is that new adventures and problems keep coming until you paddle off into the Light. I'm a bit puzzled as to how Peter and Susan on the screen -- although in practical terms I can see the value of keeping the actors on screen, at least as minor parts, until they need to be brought back for The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle. (It makes perfect sense, though, for Lucy to be face to face with the picture of Susan in the Magician's book.)

In some ways, though, the story probably can survive tinkering better than Prince Caspian did.