Exclusive: Ben Barnes Talks Prince Caspian

Newcomer Ben Barnes on stepping into the magical world of Disney’s Prince Caspian.

“In Prince Caspian, the magic has gone from Narnia, because it’s been taken over by greedy, ambitious humans, so it’s going to be much darker, and while The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe was almost a fairytale story, this is much more of a summer action movie. The joy of the series is that they’re all, individually, completely different genres of story, and so there’s quite a different tone for this film. It’s balanced by director Andrew Adamson, who has this extraordinary ability to focus on minute details and the vastness of the Narnia story at the same time.

You have to spend the time getting the story right because as amazing as the special effects might be if you don’t care about the characters then your film won’t work. You have to make people care and you have to show all those different sides of the character and Caspian’s fairly well layered, I think. He’s an orphan whose father has been killed by his uncle and he’s ambivalent about being a leader. He really is on the threshold of manhood and it’s quite cathartic; he has to fight his own people.

I’m definitely going to be doing Voyage of the Dawn Treader and we’re lined up to start in November. We were going to start straight away but we had problems with the strike and exam schedules for children and all of that. We’re taking our time with it which I think is sensible. The first one was great but Caspian‘s going to be even better, so we have to take the time to make Dawn Treader even better.”