what do you think was in the original script, (but not the leaked script) that added to Pug and Gumpas's characters?

Narrowhaven was the most disappointing part. I disliked how they derailed Bern into some doddering old man who was in prison for no apparent reason. The whole part just felt too rushed. And what was the point of Karate Faun?

Oh, that was promotion for the upcoming video game, Everybody Was Kung-Fu Faun Fighting!.

Narrowhaven was almost completely wrong. There were slave traders and people were captured to be sold into slavery. That's about all that was right. Oh and Eustace didn't sell.
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In the book it is stated several times that fighting is pointless. (Apparently that means to film makers "use violence to recapture the islands" )[/*aszta0jr]

I did like the scene where Eustace tries to save himself and accidentally hits Gumpas. That was very Eustace like. I mean I liked it as well as I could for a scene that isn't in the book. I would definitely see it cut if it meant that Narrowhaven could be conquered without force.

*Why on earth did they take the girl and the whiney brat to sell and throw the two stronger guys in the dungeon??? Seems like a waste if you're a slave trader. Doesn't the book say they were most interested in selling Caspian or something like that??? Why would they lock him up instead?

This is what I was wondering too. Surely they would rather get good money for Edmund and Caspian, and save Eustace for the green mist? Or maybe they were afraid it would spit him back? Ha!

I kind of got the idea they put Edmund and Caspian in jail as a sort of punishment because they were the strongest fighters and did the most damage to the slave traders in the fight (or at least I assumed they did).

I saw the movie for a third time last week.... I'm not sure I will ever have the heart to watch the slave market scene again. It is a devastating scene to watch. It feels like a big fat "screw you" to the book and fanbase.

The first part of the Lone Islands is actually kind of good; I like the sense of mystery and slight creepiness. And it's really funny when Caspian gives Ed the knife. But everything after the green mist is introduced is pure cinematic awfulness. So terrible, it's offensive.

Lewis wrote a very smart, unconventional, nuanced scene where Caspian so cleverly manages to abolish the slave trade without fighting or bloodshed. (Imagine that, Hollywood. Solving conflicts without violence).

I would not say the scene was poorly adapted... It was simply not adapted at all! They took that whole chapter and everything it stands for and threw it in the trash.

My thoughts on The Lone Islands:

"Which says it all I suppose."

Although I liked the film in general, there are definitely some parts of it where I'm having a hard time balancing the book fan and the general movie-goer within me. The Lone Islands is one of those parts.

If this movie wasn't Voyage of the Dawn Treader then the fight scenes might have been good. As VDT, the scene is terrible. It is exactly the opposite of the story told in the book. If VDT is the movie they optioned, then why try to make it something else? Serious FAIL on the part of Walden, (and I'm a really big fan of Walden so my negativity about this scene says a lot).

It also really says a lot when I'd rather watch the BBC version of this scene than Walden's. EPIC FAIL.

( I made a pun. )

Nice analysis, gP. I hadn't noticed all of the missing information, some of it I made up my own reasons. Wasn't the sword like that because it had been kept in a cave or something?

It also really says a lot when I'd rather watch the BBC version of this scene than Walden's.

That it does.

Narrowhaven (in the book) is such a defining moment for Caspian. In three years he has proven himself as a king and a warrior, but we only hear about this. On this Voyage he faces new challenges he has never faced before and he grows so much as a result. He faces danger from natural disasters and predators, mutiny of his crew and his own temptations. At Narrowhaven he is put in the position of saving the others. He has to do so without an army behind him and without even the strength of the name of the king of Narnia. He has to count on a dangerous bluff--knowing all the time that it will be his life (and everyone else's life) if his bluff is called before he shows his cards. He is really put to the test in this event from the book. There was so much potential of some great character development for Caspian in this story. Instead, they took screen time that could have been devoted to Caspian's character development and use it to drag out Edmund's character arc from the first movie, (with remnants of Peter's character arc from the second movie) and beat that dead horse to a bloody pulp. Then they fabricated a cliche, yet seriously underdeveloped arc about his father that I couldn't bring myself to care about.

On the plus side, I did like the dialog between Bern and Caspian when Caspian reveals who he is. "You look like a king I once loved." "That man was my father." Even though the rest of Narrowhaven didn't make it into the film, I thought that exchange was a good adaptation of the dialog in the book. It was heartfelt and wonderfully acted.

*Why on earth did they take the girl and the whiney brat to sell and throw the two stronger guys in the dungeon??? Seems like a waste if you're a slave trader. Doesn't the book say they were most interested in selling Caspian or something like that??? Why would they lock him up instead?

This is what I was wondering too. Surely they would rather get good money for Edmund and Caspian, and save Eustace for the green mist? Or maybe they were afraid it would spit him back? Ha!

What I remember of the scene is that Caspian proclaims that he is the king when the slavers overpower them, and so they get Gumpas, who puts Caspian and Edmund in prison. Gumpas, because of what Caspian says, then can't sell them straight out and needs to play for time, and find out a bit more about these strangers. Just what Lord Bern says of Gumpas in the book. The girl and the useless lookout are more disposable.

Narrowhaven was almost completely wrong. There were slave traders and people were captured to be sold into slavery. That's about all that was right. Oh and Eustace didn't sell.
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Reepicheep should have been captured (his treatment of the slave traders in the book is great).[/*2a6e09fe]

In the book it is stated several times that fighting is pointless. (Apparently that means to film makers "use violence to recapture the islands" )[/*2a6e09fe]

Eustace would never have volunteered to guard. [/*2a6e09fe]

Caspian was insistent in the book that he was not to be known as the king. [/*2a6e09fe]

The green mist, sword, sacrifice thing. Pointless. [/*2a6e09fe]

Not to mention there was never any indication in the book that they were selling off their own people. [/*2a6e09fe][/list2a6e09fe]

I did like the scene where Eustace tries to save himself and accidentally hits Gumpas. That was very Eustace like. I mean I liked it as well as I could for a scene that isn't in the book. I would definitely see it cut if it meant that Narrowhaven could be conquered without force.

I sympathise to a degree, especially about Eustace. He would never have volunteered to guard of his own initiative, but I got the impression that it was Edmund who volunteered Eustace for the job. Caspian went back and gave him a dagger to defend himself with. Remember, Eustace got his name from a literary character from around WW2, who was called Eustace the useless.

The problem I have with film Eustace in the slave market is that in the book Eustace was considered useless even as a slave. I suppose they retained this information in the film by not completing Eustace's sale. But whilst the Narrowhaven scenes were the biggest departures from book VDT, I'd like to explore some of the reasons why the film had to be done the way it was.

The book Lord Bern is seen coming out of an inn, wiping his mouth. This implies a couple of things some of which would not be considered very moral or PG today. It could suggest that Lord Bern was spying out the land, instead, as we saw him in the BBC version, on a pathway with a spyglass. But mostly it shows Lord Bern socialising as people do in UK, in a pub where they sell beer and wine, and where he has obviously partaken of the amber fluid.

Now there was nothing wrong with this in most places in UK, in Commonwealth countries and even America up until the last decade or so. We have had to become more sensitive to cultural, national, religious and legal restrictions on drinking alcohol more recently, especially in enforcing under-age drinking bans. Besides, by today's standards of behaviour it doesn't show Lord Bern as the upright leader he should have been if he had been opposing Gumpas' collusion in slavery. But being in prison along with Caspian and Edmund does do that.

Pug and his book buddies also offers the Dawn Trader walking party refreshments, which, even if non-alcoholic, were probably drugged. Not a good look for a PG film.

The third instance of drug and alcohol use in book VDT in the whole Narrowhaven sequence is in Caspian's speech to Gumpas (who by that time well and truly knows who Caspian is) when he frees the slaves. Here Caspian says about slavery (p. 49 VDT):

I do not see that it brings into the islands meat or bread or beer or wine or timber or cabbages or books or instruments of music or horses or armour or anything else worth having. But whether it does or not, it must be stopped.

The film omits this statement altogether, much to my regret. I suppose that to be PG the film can't say that beer and wine are worth having, let alone other things like tobacco that are not universally seen as worth having. Times have changed since C.S.Lewis wrote VDT. Once soldiers returned from battle and those liberated from WW2 prison camps were given cigarettes to calm them down. Nowadays such practices would be frowned on.