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<\/a>THE LION, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/a><\/i> is about four children who discover a magical country while staying in a professor\u2019s house, far from their home, during World War II. They enter this country, called Narnia, through a secret portal in the back of a giant closet. And once they get there, they discover that their arrival is the fulfillment of an old prophecy.<\/p>\nNarnia, the Pevensie children learn, has been shrouded in snow and ice for a full century; it is a land where it is always winter but never Christmas, thanks to an evil would-be queen called the White Witch. But it is prophesied that, one day, two boys and two girls will come to Narnia and take their place as the rightful kings and queens of that land.<\/p>\n
Do the children ever raise any objections to this news? Does one of them ever stop to say, \u201cHold on a minute, what if we don\u2019t want<\/i> to fulfill somebody else\u2019s prophecy?\u201d<\/p>\n
Not in C.S. Lewis\u2019s original story, and not in most of the plays, cartoons, TV shows<\/a> and radio dramas that have been based on it. With fairy tales, it is generally assumed that children want<\/i> to be kings or queens, and the question faced by characters and readers alike is not whether<\/i> they will want to achieve their destiny, but how<\/i> they will go about achieving it.<\/p>\n Alas, fairy tales are not what they once were, and the newest dramatization of Lewis\u2019s story \u2014 the first to be produced for the big screen \u2014 reflects the ambivalence of our age. It also reflects the perceived need for \u201crealism\u201d in film, a \u201crealism\u201d that is more about emphasizing human flaws and epic battles than about recognizing true strength of character.<\/p>\n In this version, directed by Andrew Adamson (Shrek<\/a><\/i>, Shrek 2<\/i>) from a script credited to him and three other writers, the children \u2014 Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) \u2014 often express their desire to return home to England. When Edmund is captured by the White Witch (Tilda Swinton), Peter insists he doesn\u2019t care about the prophecy, he just wants to get his brother back.<\/p>\n The film underscores this connection to their home by beginning with a sequence depicting the air raids over London at the start of the war; in fact, the film basically begins inside a German bomber cockpit. As the Pevensies are herded into a shelter by their mother, Edmund runs back into the house for a photo of their father, who is away with the army. Peter chastises him: \u201cYou\u2019re so selfish! \u2026 Why can\u2019t you just do as you\u2019re told?\u201d<\/p>\n In this and other ways, the new film generates some sympathy for Edmund, and makes his eventual betrayal of his siblings seem less sinister, or less deliberate. And because the film makes such a big deal of Peter\u2019s reluctance to lead the Narnians, it is not quite convincing when he and his siblings finally do take up arms against the Witch\u2019s massive army.<\/p>\n Most of the other characters are revised in subtle but significant ways, too.<\/p>\n Throughout the film, Susan tries to be the \u201csmart\u201d one; she is reluctant to believe that Lucy has found a new world, or that animals can talk, or that Father Christmas (James Cosmo) is real, and \u2014 like many children who have read Lewis\u2019s book \u2014 she points out that the prophetic poem quoted by Mr Beaver (Ray Winstone) doesn\u2019t actually rhyme.<\/p>\n But when Susan and Peter consult with the Professor (Jim Broadbent), after Lucy first reports that she has found a new world, he tells them to stand by Lucy because she is \u201cfamily\u201d \u2014 a statement that affirms our post-modern preference for tribal loyalties more than Lewis\u2019s belief in objective truth. In the book, the Professor gives Peter and Susan a version of Lewis\u2019s famous liar-lunatic-or-Lord argument when he explains why Lucy is probably telling the truth; but in the film, he talks of \u201clogic\u201d only when he gently mocks Susan\u2019s use of the word.<\/p>\n In addition, the film gives the Witch more stature while dialing back the stature of Narnia\u2019s Christ-figure Aslan (a magnificent CGI lion voiced by Liam Neeson) just a notch or so. The Witch instantly knows that Edmund is a \u201cson of Adam\u201d without having to ask, while Aslan loses some of his warmth and ironic humour, especially when the Witch boldly approaches his camp and demands Edmund\u2019s life. Here, it is Aslan, not the Witch, who loses his temper.<\/p>\n The Pevensies, too, steal some of Aslan\u2019s thunder. In the book, Father Christmas declares, \u201cAslan is on the move. The Witch\u2019s magic is weakening.\u201d But in the film, he tells the children, \u201cThe hope brought by Your Majesties is starting to weaken the Witch\u2019s power.\u201d Similarly, Mr Beaver tells the children that Aslan\u2019s arrival in Narnia is one of several things that have happened \u201cbecause of you,\u201d almost as though it was the children who prompted Aslan into action.<\/p>\n Christian fans may also be disappointed that the film makes no reference to Aslan\u2019s father, the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea, or to the Deeper Magic that existed before the dawn of time. Instead, as one of the film\u2019s producers put it, at a press junket attended by my friend and colleague Steven D. Greydanus<\/a>, Aslan simply \u201cfigures out\u201d the Deep Magic in a way that the Witch did not. In these and other ways, the film tones down Aslan\u2019s omnipotence and authority.<\/p>\n Granted, it is no crime if a movie makes changes to the story on which it was based \u2014 and not all the changes here are for the worse. But Christians have a special attachment to the Narnia stories; Aslan not only represents<\/i> Christ, he is<\/i> Christ in Narnian form, and much has been made of the book\u2019s apologetic and evangelistic potential and, therefore, of the film\u2019s as well. But it is precisely on those points that the film is weakest.<\/p>\n Some scenes do work very well. Henley is absolutely adorable as Lucy, and the scenes in which she befriends the faun Mr Tumnus (James McAvoy) are simply enchanting. The children are genuinely believable as siblings (and as the eldest of two boys in a four-child family myself, I know whereof I speak). And Swinton is the first actress in any filmed adaptation I\u2019ve seen to understand that the White Witch\u2019s evil must, at times, be subtle, crafty and seductive.<\/p>\n The film\u2019s special-effects team also does a fine job of bringing Lewis\u2019s imagination to vivid life, though the results are a little iffy in places. The Witch\u2019s castle is like a bouquet of icicles turned upside down, and Aslan\u2019s sacrifice is, appropriately, a dark and foreboding nightmare. The griffins<\/a> \u2014 creatures half-eagle, half-lion \u2014 are nicely rendered, though the Fox (Rupert Everett) is more of a cartoon, and the Beavers and the Wolves fall somewhere in between. (In an interesting twist on the usual Hollywood casting choices, the heroes are all British, while the bad-guy wolves are voiced by Americans.)<\/p>\n But even on the purely technical or cinematic level, the film has its problems. Some of the new dialogue is strictly boilerplate, and Harry Gregson-Williams\u2019s otherwise impressive symphonic score occasionally gives way to an out-of-place pop-vocal arrangement that jars at the very moment when it is supposed to enchant. The battle scenes also come across like a pale imitation of the equivalent scenes from Peter Jackson\u2019s Lord of the Rings<\/a><\/i> trilogy.<\/p>\n Lewis once said the important thing about a myth is not how it is told, but the \u201cpattern of events\u201d it communicates; after that, he wrote, \u201cyou can throw the means of communication away\u201d. By that standard, Adamson\u2019s film is a success; it covers all the basic plot points \u2014 including, yes, Aslan\u2019s death and resurrection. But the nuances surrounding these events have been changed a fair bit, and the script loses much of the flavour of Lewis\u2019s books.<\/p>\n This could have been a fantasy film for the ages, but, as it is, once you have beheld the pattern of events, you may find that the film itself is not so hard to throw away.<\/p>\n Internet Movie Database<\/a> | Movie Review Query Engine<\/a> \u2014 A version of this review was first published at CanadianChristianity.com.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE LION, the Witch and the Wardrobe is about four children who discover a magical country while staying in a professor\u2019s house, far from their home, during World War II. They enter this country, called Narnia, through a secret portal in the back of a giant closet. And once they get there, they discover that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[3298,389,3307,2620,1075,1069,3306],"class_list":["post-38880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bcchristiannews","tag-andrew-adamson","tag-cs-lewis","tag-georgie-henley","tag-harry-gregson-williams","tag-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe","tag-narnia","tag-tilda-swinton"],"yoast_head":"\n
USA: PG<\/a> | BC: PG<\/a> | ON: PG<\/a><\/small><\/font><\/p>\n