At the same time, Adamson says, "I was trying to find the emotional reality" of the movie. If the first "Chronicles of Narnia" was a fable of faith and sacrifice, the second became a parable of loss -- how the passage from childhood to adulthood inevitably means that as you take on something new, you must abandon something else: Innocence is replaced by doubt, trust by suspicion, comfort by insecurity. It's an idea shaped in part by Adamson's experiences in Papau, New Guinea, where he lived as a child. He could never bring himself to revisit it as an adult, he says, "because the place that I grew up in had completely changed and I couldn't confront that loss. . . . But you don't want to create a movie that's a bummer, and our first draft was pretty cynical."
That cynicism has been replaced by mounting (and sometimes made-up) conflict; it's clear from "Prince Caspian's" first frenetic frames the book is more guide than bible. Lewis writes that when Caspian fled Miraz's castle, "All night he rode southward . . .," and that's about as nail-biting as it gets. In Adamson's opening sequence, it's a pounding chase filled with peril. When Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage) later tells the children, "You may find Narnia a more savage place than you remember," he isn't kidding.
