Wow! I saw the movie last night (because I won tickets to a preview screening - I saw it with both my sisters & my brother-in-law). I'll start with the negatives. Of course, there were things I rolled my eyes at and I thought were totally unnecessary, and there were in-between things that I didn't particularly like but I was "ok" with, and there was lots that I loved. Ok so here goes:
The things I didn't like, one of them was that infamous kiss. I didn't think it was necessary. That said, I'm glad at how they did it, instead of making a whole soppy romance, presenting it as "just a crush" sort of thing, I can live with that.
Whilst I expect Peter would have struggled after coming back from Narnia the first time, I wasn't taken with the scene of him in the fight at the train station. I think it would have been more book-like to for him to be resigned to the fact that he can't do anything to get back to Narnia - like Peter was portrayed at the beginning of the BBC series, when they were sitting at the station and someone talked about Narnia, Peters said "talk about something else." - that seems more to me like how Peter would have responded.
I wasn't keen on the fact that Susan was involved in the battles either. Yeah, I understand that Adamson doesn't want his daughters to think they have to sit at home doing knitting when they grew up - but Susan the Gentle isn't the female in the Narnia books, and at least two of the others are involved in battles at some stage. So I was a bit disappointed with that, but I can live with it again...
Hmm...okay, the raid. Well, surprise, surprise, I wasn't disappointed at all that the Pevensies met up with Caspian before they met Aslan. And I wasn't disappointed about the night raid. I would have loved it even more if those two aspects had been more in line with the books, but as I said, I was ok with this change. I've always felt that part of the reason for being "too old" to come back to Narnia was because of lacking faith and trust in Aslan. In the book, Susan's fear and lack of faith is very obvious, Peter on the other hand, there's only a couple of very minor hints at - like when they're at the gorge where Lucy sees Aslan and Peter leads them the other way. This movie, and this change, brought that to aspect of Peter in PC to life more and for this reason I really don't have an issue with this scenes. In my opinion, the change of Peter from the book to the screen in this movie is similar to the change of Landon Carter in the book
A Walk to Remember to the Landon Carter of the movie of the same name. I thought it worked very well. My only disappointments about it were how Peter was at the beginning of the movie (in that fight), and secondly, he wasn't repentent enough at the end of the movie, there was no "I'm so glad, and
so sorry, I've been leading them wrongly since we started."
I found the change with the hag and werewolf very powerful, and as others have also said, I'm so glad that it was Edmund who put an end to the scheme to bring back the White Witch - that was powerful! And for the same reasons as I've stated above, I didn't have an issue with Peter being tempted by her also.
Wow! Lucy - what can I say, she was every bit as good as she was in the first movie. Well done, Georgie!
Of course I absolutely loved Aslan in the movie, and I thought that the scenes with him in this movie are even more powerful than the scenes in LW&W (the movie!) - barring only the execution and the resurrection of Aslan scenes.
I feel that Andrew Adamson, Doug Gresham (etc...) did a great job bringing this film to life, and in many regards I felt that they did a great job stealing past those watchful dragons and those stain-glass windows to capture the heart of the story, regardless of the changes from the book.
Now I'm looking forward to the next time I see it, and I'm looking forward to seeing (in two years)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader!