Last week, I re-watched the first Chronicles of Narnia and reiterated some of my underwhelming thoughts on the movie that became an international success for both Disney and Walden Media. If you read it, then you know what my reservations were/are when it came to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which makes me pleased to say that director/co-writer Andrew Adamson has addressed many of them in order to create a superior sequel. A little darker, with more action and more character development, Prince Caspian is a great addition to fantasy cinema and the Narnia franchise.

Picking up a year after the Pevensie children left Narnia after ruling for decades, Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) find themselves called back, only to discover that a year our time is 1,300 years Narnia time. The person that summoned the Pevensies is Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), the rightful heir to the throne of the Telmarines, who conquered Narnia and subjugated its citizens shortly after the Pevensies departed. Caspian’s evil uncle (Sergio Castellitto) wants the throne for his own son and will do anything to eliminate the rightful heir. So, Caspian and the Pevensies bring the forces of Narnia together again to fight for freedom in their land.

It’s a compelling plot to be sure, and unlike a lot of the action in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, one gets the feeling that there are truly grave consequences to the events here depicted. Adamson skips a lot of preamble and boldly opens with Caspian’s flight from his castle home and we don’t catch up with the Pevensies until at least 15 minutes in. Instead of getting one, big, underwhelming action sequence, in the end saved by the oddly Jesus-like lion Aslan, the tension is ratcheted up with a couple of big action sequences and this time there’s big doubt if Aslan will be back to save the day. Although the action is relatively bloodless, it’s no less intense and occasionally a little frightening.

The young actors playing the Pevensie kids get more to chew on this time, especially Moseley and Popplewell, who I felt got the short end of the stick last time. Peter and Susan are shown having immense difficulty adjust to life being young on Earth again after living and ruling for years in Narnia. For Susan, that means turning inward, but for Peter it means labouring under the delusion that people are constantly testing him. His arc is the most interesting in Prince Caspian because Peter is fighting not just outer foes, but the inner conflict of remembering being a great leader while trying to deny the fact that he’s still really a kid. It leads him to make some poor decision and accept some hard truths.

Barnes has got a lot of flack for his portrayal of Caspian, I’ve heard a few cracks in which the term ‘shampoo commercial’ was kind of implied. I will say that Barnes isn’t going to be the De Niro of his generation, but he’s pretty good as the charismatic and compelling lead. Not so much on his own, but when he’s teamed up with the young actors playing the Pevensies he manages to find a nice balance. Even though Barnes as Caspian, does sometimes tread that fine line between character and impression of Inigo Montoya with his accent.

Aside from the four Pevensie kids and Aslan, all the characters are new and they’re kind of hit and miss; Peter Dinklage and Warwick Davis get the thankless job of playing dwarf sidekicks and there’s really no kind of memorable animal buddy like the Beavers from part one. In the end though, I didn’t mind because I think the story of the human characters is compelling enough without an abundance of talking animals. The fighting tress, I found, were a little much. It’s been done before and we all know where.

Speaking of stuff gone from the first film, I found that Prince Caspian was thankfully lacking in the strong Christian allegory. The appearance of Aslan is limited, which is fine because I’ve always found Liam Neeson’s reading of him to be rather wooden. Instead, the film has a very compelling and timely theme. The script intones that what happened in Narnia was akin to ethnic cleansing, as the Telmarines arrived in the magical land and rounded up and killed all the sorted creatures living there, forcing the survivors, literally, underground.

Another holdover from the first Narnia I liked was the cameo by the White Witch (Tilda Swinton), who beckons Caspian to the dark side in a scene that’s almost purely invention of the filmmakers outside C.S. Lewis’ original text. Although they pushed hard on the Witch’s allegorical connection to the Devil, it was a scene filled with menace and it gave Edmund the chance to stand up to the White Witch after her manipulations of him in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Like all great number twos, Prince Caspian is a wonderful leap forward for the franchise and manages to overcome a number of the weaknesses in the first film. The effects are perfect, the scope is epic and the story is dark, perhaps too dark for a few of Narnia’s younger fans. It’s a good film that makes you look forward to see where the world of Narnia is going in the future. Bring on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.