Maybe it's an age thing (both people and the film growing older)?

I would have thought the younger we were, the more we would have liked it then, since VDT had a particular atmosphere that seemed more aimed toward children than teens or adults. Liking it more as we get older, though? I certainly can't account for it. Unless C.S. Lewis was right when he referenced someone getting old enough to enjoy fairy tales again. Although... I doubt that he was thinking of a fairy tale like VDT when he said that.

~Riella

Clearly Kat, you are a glass half full type of a person among a group of pessimists and I applaud you for that. However, I choose not to look through rose colored glasses. VDT was terrible and if you were to put it on a scale, the good parts would be far outweighed by horrible parts.

It's not quite rose colored glasses as I don't care for the adaptation attempt overall. And I do call it an attempt on purpose. It's one thing to tweak a movie and have it "based on a true story" like say Secretariat or Rookie. It's another to adapt something where the source material is highly available and so loved. I can see the parts I like because of having read the book.

I will say this... there's one part of the green mist storyline I liked and it's not truly a part of the "story". It's that 3D map. I thought the cg work on that was fabulous! I'm one of those people who tend to dissect and compartmentalize movies into parts I like and parts I fast forward through. It's not unusual for me to hold off watching something in theaters because even though I'll like some of the movie, there will be parts I'd rather fast forward through.

I loved it then and I love it even more now. I just watched The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with my whole family again a few days ago. It had actually been 3 or 4 months since I'd seen it and it was even better than I remembered it being. Even my mom, sister, and dad, who had been skeptical and not as excited about the movie suddenly found themselves enjoying it more than ever maybe it was because we all just sat down to watch it as a family and that just helped. But it was the best time watching that movie to date I just can't get enough of it I don't know how to say it. I just get this big grin on my face through the whole movie and I don't want it to end it's so fantastic

The dialogue's easier to swallow nowadays. I'm looking at it more favorably as time goes on, but I don't think it'll ever be up to PC or LWW standards

I really don't like it now! It just was not the Narnia I loved!
They took what was probably the easiest of the series to adapted and made it something completely different!
Their was just no heart, no sense of adventure! Everything that made the story so loved and memorable, wasn't there!
Its weird because I feel like there is really only two Narnia movies that were made.
At least when they changed stuff in Prince Caspian they gave us a reason! But with Dawn Treader, it seemed they just didn't feel like telling that story, so they took the parts they liked and made the movie they wanted.

I was neutral/negative after my first viewing but after seeing it several times in theaters, I came to like it. I also saw it on Blu-ray, and was excited to see it again, but I haven't seen it since that first month. -And that is probably the most telling statement of all. I find it enjoyable, but it isn't a movie that I'm aching to see very often.

To be honest, I do think it is a bad movie and a terrible adaptation. -And I don't think adapting that film would have been very hard. It would just take courage to trust what Lewis wrote. I think far more time on the filmmaker's part was spent lamenting what VDT wasn't, instead of celebrating what it was. Which leads me to the question, if you didn't like the story, then why were you the ones making it into a film?

So, with that sort of an opinion of the movie, why do I still like it? I'm not sure. I think it is the visuals more than anything. If you put the movie on mute, I think it would resemble the book a lot more. I suppose I've trained myself to enjoy the parts that were like the book and tolerate the rest. -Which is not the sort of response you want from the fan base.

I know the movie-makers have already accepted a long time ago that there will be some fans who will hate the film no matter how small the changes. I wonder if there is any way to respectfully get the idea across to them that this film actually was really sub-par?

So, with that sort of an opinion of the movie, why do I still like it? I'm not sure. I think it is the visuals more than anything. If you put the movie on mute, I think it would resemble the book a lot more.

*Badger's mouth opens and closes in a manner not dissimilar to a fish* ...Huh. Minus the scenes with the green mist, I can see how muting it would help a lot of the film--and it puts into perspective the quality of the dialogue (both in terms of moving the plot and character beats). I seriously want to go watch the movie on mute now.

Watching it on mute might be interesting. I saw it two or three times, so I might remember what was worth remembering of the dialogue - or even what might have been better - so it might be worth trying.

I liked it then - even with all its faults - but I would need to watch it again before I could tell whether I still like it.