(2008) With his wife Prunaprismia's giving birth to a son, an heir, Lord Miraz of the Telmarines has no further use for his dead brother's son, Prince Caspian X (Ben Barnes), rightful heir to the throne - a touch of Hamlet here. Informed of intrigue against his life, the Prince heeds his tutor's advice to flee into the Shuddering Woods with Queen Susan's magic horn (admonished not to use it except in extreme circumstances) just before the assassins arrive. Nevertheless, hotly pursued by Lord Miraz's men and in the clutches of Narnian dwarves, Prince Caspian blows upon his bugle.

In the second film of the Walt Disney Studios series, employing a mixture of Christian and Greek mythologies - the Telmarines look and sound like Spanish conquistadors; among the Narnians are centaurs, minotaurs, griffins, and talking animals - director Andrew Adamson with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have adapted C.S. Lewis's allegorical Christian fantasy into a 2½-hour wearisome war epic.

Transported from an underground train station in London during World War II back to Narnia, the four Pevensie siblings - Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley) - rediscover among ruins of Cair Paravel, formerly the citadel and abode for the kings and queens of Narnia, an underground chamber with four chests containing their clothing, armor, and weapons.

After her brothers and sister rescue Trumpkin, a wary but reliable dwarf, Lucy exclaims of this far more savage place than she can recall: "How could Aslan let this happen?" (The story's intention is to provide a window into the imaginations of children trying to cope with the real world: How could a Christian God permit the horrors inflicted upon good people by Nazi Germany?)

Meanwhile, back in the burrow of Trufflehunter the badger, another dwarf Nikabrik desires the death of this Telmarine prince whose people all but exterminated the race of little men (representative of Jews and other undesirables?) with a genocidal purge; but the badger says to Caspian, a Son of Adam ("the most noble contradiction in history"): "You're meant to save us." With his horn he has summoned the kings and queens of old.

In a dream Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) revisits Lucy, who alone possesses the strength of hope and belief to see him, as she tells the others later: "Maybe we're the ones that need to prove ourselves to him."

Upon making acquaintance by way of accidental conflict with the Pevensies (who are supposedly 1300 years older), Prince Caspian says: "You're not exactly what I expected." One of the few characters interjecting humor into this otherwise staid yet often violent movie is Knight Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard), a spunky mouse with a lion's heart and valor. Having single-handedly slaughtered several Telmarine soldiers, Reepicheep confronts Caspian, not realizing the others were attempting to kill the Prince: "Choose your last words carefully, Telmarine!" Caspian replies: "You are a mouse!" To which the minute knight answers with a sigh: "I was hoping for something a little more original."

High-King Peter leads an attack of the Narnians, beginning with stealth, upon the Telmarine castle, but Lord Miraz's soldiers are too powerful, forcing a retreat. Nikabrik shows the Prince a power so great that kept even Aslan at bay for a century, the White Witch (Tilda Swinton), frozen inside a slab of ice, needing only a drop of his blood to set her free to vanquish the Telmarines. But even a choice between the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.

In order to gain time, Peter challenges Lord Miraz to single combat - "What do you think happens back home if you die here," Peter asks Edmund - while Susan and Lucy ride into the woods in hopes of finding Aslan.

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