narnia movies – Lee Duigon

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I guess that next blockbuster Chronicles of Narnia movie isn’t coming, after all–even though they made a trailer for it, which is kicking around somewhere in the archives, I haven’t found it yet.

Those movies! I rooted so hard for them to be good, for them to succeed. But they never came close to matching the BBC Chronicles of Narnia from the 1980s.

BBC’s Old ‘Narnia’ Series Was Better Than the Movies

The movies spent a lot of money on special effects, but frittered it all away by cringing from C.S. Lewis’ story as he wrote it, in which “Aslan” clearly represents Our Lord Jesus Christ. Never mind what that bog-hopper Liam Neeson said about Aslan being Mohammed and Buddha, too. Really, sometimes I wonder what actors use for brains. Soggy cereal?

The old BBC series may have relied on unconvincing costumes, but one thing they did get right was the spirit of the enterprise.

It’s why so many of us keep going back to it.

First it was going to be The Silver Chair, but everything got shuffled around and now the next Narnia movie’s going to be The Magician’s Nephew–or so it seems ( http://teaser-trailer.com/the-magicians-nephew-movie/ ). Really, I just can’t keep track of it anymore. But they’ve got a movie poster ready for it, even though they can’t give us a release date. Not this year, and probably not next year, either.

Whoever is actually working on the movie now–guys, could you please get this one right?

(While you’re waiting for them to get it right, sit back and enjoy this rendition of the theme music from the BBC-TV Narnia productions of the 1980s–still the gold standard for bringing Narnia to the screen.)

The first three Chronicles of Narnia movies of the 21st century didn’t do all that well at the box office, and no one in Hollywood seems to know why. Allow me to enlighten them.

Yo, the movies underachieved because:

a) You guys kept messing around with the stories, and the changes you made were never for the better. Never.

b) You’re afraid of C.S. Lewis’ forthrightly Christian message, so you kept soft-pedaling Aslan, which was to miss the whole point of the stories.

c) You don’t seem to think your audience is capable of appreciating the stories as C.S. Lewis wrote them, so you keep trying to shape them to what you think is the taste of a dumbed-down, text-messaging, doofus audience.

Like many, many others, I want these movies to succeed; but so far the movie-makers have been their own worst enemy.

But we should be thankful they haven’t taken the books down with them.