Surprised with Joy: Why The Chronicles of Narnia Succeeded

 

By Constantine Nasr

                                                                                                                                   

Two years ago, the media world enjoyed a distinctive controversy over a small movie directed by a big Hollywood giant. Oddly, the film, The Passion of the Christ, became a reversal of roles for Mel Gibson. Gibson, often considered a Goliath in his own right, became the David in an odd twist of fate that even Hollywood storytelling could not have conjured. Yet Gibson’s constantly-attacked film overcame and went from panned underdog to popular behemoth. Was this merely because a movie audience was eager to watch brutal torture scenes shot in a dead language? Or was it because, at the root of it all, the population at large was hungry for something a little more spiritual?

 

William Goldman, one of cinema’s most respected writers, coined a phrase that could be applied to Gibson’s predicament: “Nobody knows anything.” In Hollywood, where people live on trends, this might be true, but not in real life, where most people have convictions. Could anyone have guessed that Gibson’s Passion would result in a huge boom for the presence of Christians in the secularized movie world? It shouldn’t have been, because Christians do make up a large percentage of the public.

 

At the time, no major studio wanted the movie. 20^th Century Fox agreed to distribute it on home video because they had an existing distribution deal with Gibson’s Icon Productions. Maybe Gibson knew what he had, but regardless of success or failure, he wasn’t swayed. He sunk his own money into a film he needed to make. He was criticized before and after the release. Prior to the release, he told this author that he may or may not star in another film again. Whether this is true or not, this cinematic icon has yet to act in another movie.

 

What does this have to do with C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia? A good deal. In fact, Passion’s success confirmed what the makers of the new Narnia film had hoped: that a mainstream Christian film could make money at a time when saying “Merry Christmas” can cause public outrage. Does anyone really know anything?

 

Christian films are a strange breed, definitely a mixed bag at best. While many in Hollywood found the Biblical epics to be a challenge, both creatively and thematically, they made money for years. In the last couple decades, the television and home video became the primary home to dramatic Christian stories, often to very little success. When Gibson’s film hit, Hollywood again saw money in the name of our Savior, and new TV films were quickly made, without taking any new steps in the direction of storytelling (ABC’s Judas comes to mind). What did make an impact were the unnaturally successful adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

 

With Peter Jackson’s faithful adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and the successful and popular Harry Potter films, it became evident that fantasy stories taken from revered works might be the first major cinematic wave of the 21^st century. Jackson’s dedication to Tolkien’s text and J.K. Rowling’s creative involvement in her own adaptations seemed be elemental in making these translations (for better or worse) work. And at this point, we have Narnia, both grand fantasy and pure Christianity.

 

For years, fans of C.S. Lewis’ imagined world have awaited a big-screen, big budget adaptation. Maybe they are second only to Tolkien’s fans, which got a very big surprise in the respectful way that Jackson handled his material. But even when the dust settled and the rights were handed to the production company, Walden Media, and the distributor, the Walt Disney Company, the question remained: Could Lewis’ vision, a story in which Christian themes were not simply in the background but thrust in the forefront, survive in a major Hollywood movie?

 

I have not studied in detail Narnia’s production history. I am sure that it is a complicated one. But I think that I have, like many, the beginning and end of the story (which sometimes is all that matters): the beginning is Lewis’ book, pure and full of life; the end is the film that has been released, and it is a surprising, wonderful achievement.

 

Before The Return of the King was released in 2003, the rumors became fact in the announcement of a big screen adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to be released by Christmas 2005. Sadly, the belief persisted that much of the Christian themes would be stripped away from the story, to make its appeal broader. This brought great concern to fans of the books and Christians everywhere. How could one remove the Christ-like nature from Aslan, or even alter elements of the narrative which parallel Christian tales and teachings? Would Lewis’ story remain intact, or would it be as stripped of God as Troy was stripped of Homer’s gods?

 

The story seems simple enough. A young girl slips into a fantastical land called Narnia via an old wardrobe, where she discovers that its inhabitants are under the domination of a terrible Witch. When her siblings join her in this new world, they are told that they are part of an age-old prophecy to save the kingdom, but in doing so, they must face their own personal fears and frailties. It is only when Aslan, the great lion and king, gives them hope and strength do they find the courage within themselves to defeat evil and save Narnia.

 

In this quick overview, we see that Lewis, from the outset, decided to work with a story that all people, young and old, could understand. This doesn’t mean to suggest that Lewis was a simple writer. He could write amazingly complex treaties, such as “The Weight of Glory,” and on the other hand find a way to distill the essence of Christian theology in a work like “Mere Christianity.” Yet for many, it is within Narnia where we find his most personal truths.

 

Lewis’ close friend, author Dorothy Sayer, said that “the Narnia stories reveal more about (Lewis’s) personal religion than any of his theological books, because he wrote them more from the heart than from the head.” Many people who write about Narnia will often use the word allegory to describe the author’s true intent. The real truth was that Lewis sat down to tell a good yarn and happened to infuse his tale with his own beliefs. This is the skill of most great writers. He called the supposals, as opposed to allegories, because he disagreed with the accusation that he disguised his faith with fantasy, as if he intentionally tricked his readers. “Let us suppose,” said Lewis, “that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.”

 

Surprisingly, the film’s success stems from its attempt to keep the story pure. The tale is a delicate balance of remaining true to the very dialogue and narrative in the book and the necessity of cinematic translation, in other words, realizing the full filmic breadth of this story. Not only was the script faithful to the very text itself, it was translated in the fundamental spirit of Lewis. This includes adding more dramatic emphasis to the chase by the White Witch, or giving a remarkable romantic dimension to the Beaver couple.

 

These changes are elements that seem to be both appropriate to the film’s dimensions and necessary for an audience’s need to relate to characters and feel the intensity of their emotions. Even Lewis himself would have appreciated the opening sequence, which elaborates on the air raids of London, and specifically enriches Edmund’s pain at the loss of his father. When Aslan utters the phrase “It is finished” at the film’s highpoint (dialogue not from Lewis’ book), these welcome new-yet-familiar words seem appropriate…and good.

 

The finest achievement of the film is, of course, the world of Narnia and the cinematic incarnation of Aslan. I do not use the word “incarnation” lightly, because of its theological implications. The necessity for Aslan to become as real as any character, as was Gollum in the Rings trilogy, was paramount to the film’s success. Aslan, for all intents and purposes, is Narnia and all it embodies. For, as Lewis said himself, Aslan was responsible for pulling the other six books out of him (as much as he was for creating Narnia in the first place).

 

Aslan is majestic. His presence is felt even before he arrives on screen. This is no easy task. Digital artists, like all artists, continuously try to explain the difference, and the greater challenge, of recreating a real animal on film versus conjuring a beast from their imagination. Most people know what a lion should look like and how it should move. But how does a lion speak, show compassion and love, and act majestically? The animated Aslan succeeds in ways the animated Yoda of the Star Wars films does not; ironically, Yoda, the all-wise, is an imaginary character who has no basis in the real world, and his performance should be more forgivable. To fail in realizing the full beauty and awe of Aslan would have been a detriment to the Narnia experience. Thankfully, the untamable great Lion is as real as its human co-stars.

 

The adaptation is, sadly, not without flaws. This lies, perhaps, in some of the weaker performances of the supporting characters. Surely every character is not as complex as the children, and the story itself was never intended to be as thematically complicated as Tolkien’s work. Coupled with some weaker composite effects shots, the film hits a few kinks at times when you think it is on the road to being as effective as one could hope for. But these are minor criticisms at best, considering the original fear of losing Lewis in the mix.

 

I am not attempting to suggest that Andrew Adamson’s adaptation is any substitute for Lewis’ written tales. The imagined world conjured by cinema magic can never create the individual perceptions of each reader. However, the success of the film is that it does stay true to the basic visions that many Narnian fans will find familiar. (At the very least, the performances of the children, particularly Georgie Henley as Lucy Pevenise and Tilda Swinson as the White Witch, are what I envisioned when reading the tale as a child.)

 

It is well-known that Lewis and Tolkien were friends and colleagues, and were part of a small circle of writer/intellectuals informally called the Inkings. These Oxford friends would gather together to share their worldviews, as well as the stories from their imagination. Both men wrote in defense of the fairy story as the honest way to share the most human and “realistic” of fictional tales. Lewis was most likely inspired by Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” which at the time became a very successful book for children. Oddly enough, Hollywood would have to see the success of Middle Earth before making the leap into Narnia.

 

Critics have erroneously compared Tolkien and Lewis, particularly with their fantasy tales. It could be said that their work is rooted in the same universe, but certainly each wrote on different planets using different languages. Both men were Christian – Tolkien having helped convert Lewis from atheism to Catholicism - but each man had different reasons for telling such stories. Again, with regard to Hollywood, the filmmakers saw opportunities to tell stories rooted in deeper traditions than the latest cookie-cutter, safe cinematic sequel.

 

It is also unfair to deem Lewis’ story too simple. Lewis was an advocate of the child within us all, and it is appropriate that he chose children to be main characters in his tales. He was in many ways reminding us of Christ’s teaching that we must be like children to know and enter the Kingdom (Matt. 18:3). He also perhaps was commenting that children understand and have the purest concepts of faith, and when they lose sense of the child within (as the Pevensies did when they grew up), they will lose their way in Narnia (and in the world as we know it).

 

While Lewis also advocated a clear-cut good and evil world, it is not without complexities. This is one area that his critics (and critics of the film) have it wrong. What is more complex than a boy betraying his siblings because of his desire to be loved? Edmund’s descent, in the book and in the film, is, in many ways, more complicated than that of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. Gollum’s actions originated in greed and lust; Edmund, it could be read, acted out of a need for love, acceptance, and a hope of a better life. After all, the White Witch did trick him with good things, as evil often does.

 

Lewis does not preach in his book; his characters act and by their actions we understand that goodness (and therefore, the Right path) is the better choice. In “The Abolition of Man,” Lewis taught that Christ-God, and in this case Aslan, commands certain things because they are right. He is meaning the moral law, and this law naturally springs from God because it is right. For children, this law is hard to grasp, just as the consequences of actions against that law are hard to accept (such as the demanded sacrifice of Edmund to the Witch). But, like all things created, evil (as personified by the Witch) does not know the Deeper Magic (the laws of God written before time created), and we (like the children) can’t comprehend the laws that command even Aslan himself.

 

These are not simple things to consider, even for adults. Edmund’s desire for Turkish Delight is a bit more complicated than a kid cravings sweet things.

 

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The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has done incredible box office business, and the word of a sequel is, much like Aslan, on the move. Walden Media was smart enough to option the entire seven book series, and rumors are that a second and third film will be shot back-to-back (as was done with Rings and the Matrix sequels). Will these popular Christian stories have any effect on the popular attack on Christianity that we see in our world today? Should we as Christians be paying attention to the way popular culture (in the form of “The DaVinci Code” and its host of imitators) or modern scientists, historians and so-called theologians offer revisionist theories about our Savior? There is need for concern. And there is a need for Aslan.

 

There are many possibilities to where this series might go. But unlike the fans of Harry Potter and its impending seventh and final story, Narnia fans know how the stories unfold and how they will end. This series began under the guidance of David Gresham, Lewis’ stepson, and thankfully has not become an auteur’s arena to create his or her alternative vision of Narnia. Lion is a bold beginning, and hopefully with competent filmmakers, performers and craftsmen dedicated to staying faithful to the intent of Lewis’ art, then the forthcoming films may transcend the variables of interpretation and remain a tribute to lasting impact of one of the most influential Christians of the last century.