Last Friday, my wife and I were given the gift of going on a date night as a Christmas present from a family in our church. It was wonderful to be able to get out, have someone watch the kids, and see a movie in a theater. Thanks, Dan and Mary!
We went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and I thought I could post a little bit of a review here for those of you who haven’t seen it yet.
A Narnia Lover Am I
I need to start by saying I am a Narnia lover. I have been completely sold on the Narnia stories for as long as I can remember. As a child, I used to imagine that by crawling under my bed, I could enter Narnia, but I was always a little sad that I could never get there for real. I’ve always wanted Narnia to be real.
As a result, I’ve probably read the entire Chronicles of Narnia set about 4 times, and I’ve probably read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe 6 or 7 times on its own. On top of that, I’ve listened to the slightly abridged audio books and seen the old cartoon rendition a number of times.
Combine all that with the fact that LWW is a very short book, and it’s easy to see that I know almost every detail of the story as C.S. Lewis wrote it.
My favorite details from the book
- When Father Christmas (Santa) gives the gifts to the children, he specifically tells the girls that their weapons are only to be used in time of greatest need, and that he does not intend to have them fight. I find something beautiful in the concept of fully equipping a woman for battle and telling her that she isn’t supposed to fight. It’s chivalry. It gives me, as a guy, an incredible sense of responsibility. The woman isn’t helpless, but I am to protect her nonetheless.
- When the White Witch asks Aslan how she can know that he will keep his promise, he responds with a roar so loud and strong that you can almost feel the mountains shake when you read it. I always saw that as the epitome of Aslan’s power. No word, no action, just a sound from his mouth can silence the greatest evil in the land.
- The love the children felt for Aslan in the book is palpable. In fact, from the moment they first heard his name, they knew they had to meet him, and their every encounter with him magically drew them closer to him. Except for Edmund, all the children had a deep love for Aslan and Narnia from early on that seemed to come out of nowhere. The magic in the land, and the magic of Aslan’s name caused them great love. For Edmund, however, it was a disgusting name, and he felt repulsion the first he heard it.
Knowing so much about the book and having favorite details from it have put me in the same camp as all those Lord of the Rings fanatics who were frustrated with Peter Jackson’s movie version, and I found myself somewhat frustrated by the movie version of Narnia.
The Good
Of course, it was a remarkable feat of moviemaking executed with the highest quality, and I was impressed with just about every aspect of the film. I’ll detail some of the things that really stood out.
The Acting
Ever since George Lucas treated us to the mono-emotional acting stylings of Hayden Christiansen, I have been bothered by poor acting. When I saw the age of the actors selected for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I was fearful of discovering the same lack of emotion. On this level, I was greatly surprised. Each of the four Pevensie children did a wonderful job at conveying the complex emotions they must have faced going through their adventure. They went from being children to kings and queens in a very short time. Peter had to become the high king and the victor in battle, and Edmund went through a great transition as well.
The White Witch was exceptional in her role as well. The actress showed great talent in her remarkable shifts between the sugary sweetness of her first meeting with Edmund, and her visciousness at all other times.
The only actor I recognized in the whole movie was the voice of Aslan. They chose Liam Neeson (played Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace) who did a superb job. He has a combination of strength and sensitivity in his voice acting that was perfect for Aslan.
In all of that, I never once thought the acting fell short.
The Special Effects
The computer graphics in this movie were spectacular. When you consider that the only humans in the whole of Narnia are the four children (The White Witch is not technically a human, but she could be played by one), you can understand the depth of importance special effects have for the film. Beavers, horses, lions and other animals need to be able to talk convincingly. Trees need to have spirits that are visible to people. Fanciful creatures like centaurs, fauns, and griffins play a major role as well.
In order to make all those creatures believable, the filmmakers turned to computer graphics, and they succeeded. I have never appreciated talking animals in movies and the artificial mouth movement usually creeps me out, but in this one, I was pleased. when the horse talked, it looked like a horse mouth that was moving. When the beaver talked, it looked like a talking beaver. When Aslan spoke, he looked like a lion. Centaurs looked like real horse-bodied men. All in all, it was remarkable.
The Story
The screenplay made a number of additions to the original story, and I thought one of them was worthwhile. They actually showed the children escaping to a bomb shelter during an air raid over England and leaving their mother on a train to the professor’s house. The book mentions the air raids, but the movie showed them.
The Bad
I had two problems with the movie version of the story. As a movie, it’s really pretty good, and I’m likely to buy the DVD when it comes out, but the way they presented the story removed so much from the book that I felt somehow cheated. Ordinarily, I expect for a screenplay to be an abridgement of a book, but in this case, the book is so short that they could easily have fit nearly 100% of the details in a movie that was already longer than 2 hours. In fact, I felt that more was added to the story than was taken away and things that were changed took longer in their changed form than they would have in their original versions.
The combination of these factors resulted in two major changes to the tone of the story that disturbed me.
They changed the focus away from Aslan.
The greatest focus in the book is the character of Aslan himself. Every time the name of Aslan is mentioned, it’s as if a hush of reverence falls over everyone. The best example of this comes when the children first hear the name of Aslan.
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver spoke these words, everyone felt quite different… At the name of Aslan, each one of the children felt something jump in his inside.
Lewis describes the emotion as if one were remembering a very vivid dream that was either beautiful or horrible.
Now, it’s hard to display emotions like that on the screen, but movies are made on their emotion, and something could certainly have been done to emphasize the mysterious power contained in Aslan’s name.
More clearly, however, Lewis portrays Aslan as having a mysterious, other-worldly power that is unexplainable but visible in the way people respond to him. In the book, two accounts demonstrate this most clearly:
The first account comes immediately after the Witch has struck the deal with Aslan and she asks him her doubtful question.
“But how do I know this promise will be kept?”
“Wow!” roared Aslan half rising from his throne; and his great mouth opened wider and wider and the roar grew louder and louder, and the Witch, after staring for a moment with her lips wide apart, picked up her skirts and fairly ran for her life.”
This scene confronts the reader with the immense power of Aslan’s roar. Lewis does an impressive job of even describing the roar as not a roar at all but as a “Wow.”
This would have been a perfect scene for a movie. I can picture the camera zooming in on Aslan’s face with a little shake as the sound gets louder and louder. I can hear the subwoofers in the theater beginning to vibrate the walls. I wanted that scene to just knock me out of my seat. However, I honestly have to say that the roar Sully does in Monsters, Inc. is at least twice as potent as was the portrayal of Aslan’s roar.
You think that’s something insignificant do you? Well, I have one more example to mention. When Aslan is marching toward the Stone Table for the sacrifice he is about to make, the queen and her minions are terrified.
…for a moment, the Witch herself seemed to be struck with fear….
Four hags, grinning and leering, yet also (at first) hanging back and half afraid of what they had to do, had approached him.
The scene is a remarkable bit of writing. Lewis does a wonderful job at describing the surprise that everyone felt when Aslan failed to resist, and their joy at their “victory” is ironic. It’s almost as if they know they have no right to be joyful at Aslan’s demise.
So why are these scenes significant? They are significant because they demonstrate the immense “magical” power Aslan contains within himself.
The movie version missed the boat on this entirely. As I said, the director picked the perfect voice actor for Aslan in Liam Neeson, but that was the end of Aslan as an impressive figure. The movie version of Aslan inspires no fear more than any ordinary lion might.
These things combine to make for a movie whose primary focus is not on Aslan and his relation to either Narnia or the children but rather on the children by themselves and everyone’s relation to some “deep magic.” Now, “Deep Magic” plays a part in the book too, but in the movie, everyone is a slave to the “prophecy” and the “magic” including Aslan himself.
By moving Aslan out of his central role (even though it was only slightly), the movie misses the point of the book and makes Aslan’s sacrifice seem pointless.
They made Narnia real.
My criticisms up to this point really stem from what I felt was a deep philosophical problem with the movie. It was exactly what I was afraid would happen. They made Narnia real.
I was expecting that to be a problem particularly because I have a mental picture of Narnia that no movie can ever match, and to see it visually represented with real actors was certainly going to bring my picture of Narnia out of pure imagination and into the realm of an experience I’ve had.
The moviemakers made Narnia real in another way, though. The director and screenwriters went out of their way to defend and explain events so that there would be logical rationale for everything. Here are a couple of examples:
| Movie | Book |
|---|---|
| The children were hiding from Mrs. Macready because they had broken a window playing cricket | The children were hiding from her because she was a scary woman and they just didn’t like her |
| The children are reluctant to go to Aslan and the stone table. Susan wants to leave Narnia as soon as they’ve entered it. Lucy criticizes Mr. Beaver’s poetry. | The children are excited about every aspect of Narnia and eager to meet Aslan. Also, the idea to take coats from the wardrobe was actually Susan’s. |
| Peter is hesitant to fight and only fights the wolf when the wolf rushes him after Aslan’s instigation. | “Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do. He rushed straight up to the monster…” |
There are other examples as well. Edmund doesn’t finish the first box of Turkish delight because he is apparently full. No mention is ever made of it being enchanted anyway. The children have to cross a frozen river and Lucy almost dies which prompts Peter to tell her and Susan to return home while he plans to stay in Narnia “to help these people.”
It’s as if the magic of the land, the awareness of Aslan, and the promise of the prophecy are not enough to convince the children they have a job to do. In fact, they don’t really get committed to the whole idea until after the battle is over!
And that’s my final complaint. The battle.
The battle is a highlight.
I’m stating this as a criticism. In the book, the entire battle takes less than one paragraph of text. What’s more the battle ends completely only a few minutes after Aslan arrives. It’s clear from the book that Lewis didn’t really care about the battle. The battle wasn’t really important at all except to show Peter as the real High King who fought the Witch, to show Edmund making good on his redemption by breaking the Witch’s wand.
However, the moviemakers took a page right out of the book of Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings) and created a battle scene that was gigantic, epic, and likewise cliche.
My Conclusion
I’ll simply bullet-point my conclusions from this movie.
- LWW is a very well done, high quality feat of moviemaking that will likely spark sales of C.S. Lewis writings of many sorts.
- LWW misses out on a number of nuances from the book that transforms the movie into a story about the children coming to terms with their own identities and their relationship to each other from a story that emphasizes the discovery of a magical new world with a King (Aslan) who fast becomes their first love.
- LWW is NOT a witnessing tool. However, it may spark some good discussions that a wise believer might be able to use to steer the conversation toward the sacrifice Christ made for us on the cross. However, don’t expect the movie to present the gospel.
Yeah, I think I’ll buy the DVD, and I’m considering returning to the theater to see it again, but I’m planning to read the book a few more times as well.
I’d love to hear your comments!
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