The Strange Case of the Narnia 3 DVD

(This post contains some SPOILERS for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

I am a huge Narnia fan, primarily of the Walden movies. I absolutely adore all three, including The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which, while the weakest in terms of writing and direction, I still love and feel it’s underappreciated. Yet I sometimes have a hard time bringing myself to watch it. The bittersweet ending makes me cry more than any other in cinema, especially since it is sadly the last film in the series. However, after rewatching it a few years ago, I was reminded that there’s always been something off about the DVD.

Going from seeing a film in theaters to on DVD can be an adjustment, especially if you’ve seen it multiple times. The movie theater experience is unique, and cannot be replicated on a TV or computer, but usually at least the film looks the same, just without that magic touch of the projected image and enhanced sound. So whenever I watch a movie that I love multiple times in theaters, I’m going to want to try and replicate that experience as much as I can, something that is never fully possible. However, Voyage is different from the theatrical version. Seeing this movie five times in theaters has left a clear memory of how it was presented.

One of the most obvious differences is the aspect ratio. In theaters, the film appears to have been 2:39:1 while the DVD and Blu-ray are 1.78:1. The most glaring result of this change is most clearly seen when Aslan appears at the end of the world. His shadow appears, but in the DVD, it isn’t attached to his feet, as seen below, since the top of the screen cuts the end of the shadow. For reference, below are screenshots of how looks and how it’s supposed to look, from MovieScreencaps.com and the trailer.

DVD

Moviescreencaps.com

Official Trailer

The color grading is also off. All the night scenes and those on Dark Island look much brighter than they did in theaters. Sure, everything looks slightly darker in theaters, but in early DVD viewings, the change was very apparent as I could make out many more details. I’ve seen Blu-rays lighten scenes compared to how they were presented in theaters, but I’ve never had this problem on a DVD before. One example is that when Edmund first sees the White Witch through the Mist, Lucy calls his name, and she is clearly revealed when the lightning strikes, shining its light. You can see her as soon as she calls out his name on the DVD. However, all five times when watching it in theaters, I did not see Lucy until the lightning illuminated her. Another example includes the scene in the dungeon. Essentially, the DVD has the opposite problem of the night scenes of season eight of Game of Thrones. The frame rate also appears slightly off on the DVD, though I don’t know if that was really changed. It’s as if the film was placed into Adobe Premiere Pro, exported to different settings, then placed on a DVD. It’s strange how from the very first shot, the movie feels like the most HD DVD I have ever seen, especially compared to what was presented on the big screen.

When watching the movie for the first time on a 50-inch TV, the image quality seemed the same as usual for the DVD’s quality until the scene in which the party is sleeping under the stars on Deathwater Island. Caspian and Edmund talk about the constellations, Lucy and Gael talk about their mothers, and Reepicheep comforts a grieving Eustace. It’s one of my favorite scenes, yet I couldn’t enjoy it watching it because I observed some weird lines on the screen, something you’d expect from an old television. This only happened in this instance, but I am utterly confused as to why, especially since it doesn’t appear this way on other TVs or my laptop. Even so, throughout the DVD, a strange look colors the appearance that may come from either too much motion blur or not enough, and I still can’t tell which it is.

So why does the DVD look so different? I honestly don’t know. I bought it at Target the day it was released, getting their exclusive Double DVD Pack which included an Explorer Pack second DVD. Since then, I’ve seen different DVD covers, but I don’t know if they have these issues. I haven’t seen the Blu-Ray since I’ve never been a fan, but based on the above image from Movie Screencaps, it’s possible that it doesn’t have this problem. However, I have heard from people who have the Blu-ray that it has the same problem, at least with the aspect ratio, so it’s possible that Movie Screencaps simply cropped it themselves.

Then in October 2020, a new wrinkle in this whole debacle happened. Disney + put The Voyage of the Dawn Treader on its platform, but in its original theatrical aspect ratio. I was able to access it and watched it to celebrate the film’s tenth anniversary, and was amazed at what a difference the aspect ratio makes. I’m not sure if it was a placebo effect, but the overall visual look of the film was greatly improved. Some things that bug me about the film, such as the use of the handheld camera, specifically in the scene in which Caspian explains their mission to find the lost lords, didn’t bother me as much in this version. I couldn’t tell if the image was changed as well outside of adding bars, affecting the motion blur and resolution, but I don’t think so. The scenes that I mentioned that seemed lighter than in the theatrical version were still that way. But overall, it appeared much better and it was such a joy to see Aslan’s shadow show up without worrying if there was anything attached to it.

Overall, I feel that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a good movie that’s weighed down by some bizarre choices, some from the filmmakers themselves (for instance, what’s with all the handheld camera?), but several from the studio and outside forces, and this is just one of them. I haven’t found a concrete reason for these differences and would love to know the reasoning behind them. Since the film is back in Disney’s hands, it’s too late for them to finish the series, but it’s not too late to re-release the DVD, with adjustments to make it more like how it was originally shown, as presented on Disney +. Just label the DVD “widescreen” as if it were a release from the mid-2000s, and I would buy it the day of its release. Releasing it solely on streaming is unfair to those who either can’t afford it or are uninterested (I would go into more detail of that, but I’ll have to hold that off for another blog post). As the twelfth-highest grossing film of 2010, it found an audience. I love this movie and want all of us to continue seeing it as originally intended without having to subscribe for every viewing.