Now comes volume II, “Prince Caspian.” It’s shorter, spiritually darker, and has much more action. All of which means that while “Caspian” may not be a better book (Narnia buffs argue about which book is the best), it is a better movie than “The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe.”

The story itself is straightforward enough: The Pevensie children return to Narnia, but it’s 1,300 years after their first visit.

Aslan has not been seen for many years, and the wicked Telmarines are in charge.

Narnians—the talking animals and creatures of the first book—have gone into hiding.

It’s up to the Pevensie children, and Prince Caspian, to restore the Narnians—as well as peace and order—to Narnia, which they do in a series of battles that keep the last half of the film moving along at a brisk pace.

And even though this movie is violent enough to push the boundaries of its PG rating, there was nonetheless something noble about it. There are absolutely no issues with language. In fact, it is the language that is the most elevated and noble, with everyone from the mouse Reepicheep to the lion king Aslan uttering some of C.S. Lewis’s best lines.

In an age when directors defend their films’ obscenities by saying it’s the way people really talk, this movie’s characters talk the way people would like to talk—if they had C.S. Lewis as their speechwriter. Even the bad guys get off some snappy lines. In that, this careful, precise use of language, we get perhaps our clearest look into the vision and worldview of Lewis himself.

But there are some deviations from the original that purists might find troubling. The battle scenes were indeed violent, more so than the portrayals of the book and likely to be startling to the little girls who will come to this movie to see Lucy and Reepicheep.

Speaking of “poor old Lu,” both Lucy and Susan are a bit more the “liberated women” than Lewis portrayed them. Susan wades into battle with her bow and arrow like a post-modern amazon. And in the end, in a sentimental moment that reportedly caused a bit of tension between director Andy Adamson and executive producer Douglas Gresham (Lewis’s step-son), Susan and Prince Caspian indulge in a bittersweet, parting kiss.

Adamson has spent a good bit of time defending these decisions to the book’s passionate fans and skeptical journalists. In various interviews, when asked about the violence, he would correct his questioner: “I wouldn’t call it violence. I would call it action,” he told a National Public Radio reporter.

He also said that he first read the books when he was a child, and they were “bigger in his mind” than the books he re-read as an adult in preparation for making these movies. So he made a movie that was “bigger than the books” to capture that childhood vision.

Fair enough. But the sexual tension between Susan and Caspian is a bit harder to defend on artistic grounds. Adamson said it would be strange if two attractive teenagers in such a situation were NOT attracted to each other.

Perhaps, but it felt like pandering to a modern audience, motivated by Hollywood accountants who needed a “money shot.”

It may backfire: the mostly teenage and adult crowd who attended the screening I reviewed actually groaned during that scene.

But these are quibbles. All in all, this movie delivers the Narnian goods. And that is a very good thing for fans who want to see the rest of the series produced.

Because—believe it or not—even though “Lion” took in almost $300 million in the U.S. alone, making it one of the 50 top-grossing movies of all time, there was some talk that it didn’t perform well enough to get the rest of the books produced. 

Chalk that up, too, to a bit of Hollywood accounting. In any case, it’s likely that “Prince Caspian” will slay that evil beast, too.