[movie] Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I onced pwn3d a b****. Then I went to jail where I was befriended by a creepy guy named Tido. I prefer not to talk about that though.

 

did you feel the same way about the Lord of the Rings? Tolken and Lewis were close friends...Lewis talks about the impact that Tolken had on his faith. how about Star Wars? there were tons of Christian overtones in that movie. the Matrix? i don't think one needs to be a Christian to enjoy this series by Lewis.

 

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1593201,00.html


Holy war looms over Disney's Narnia epic

As the UK prepares for a CS Lewis movie blockbuster this Christmas, a row has broken out about its Christian message

by Paul Harris
Sunday October 16, 2005
The Observer


To millions The Chronicles of Narnia are a childhood tale of wonder and triumph now made into a film that could inspire millions of children to read. To others, including the celebrated fantasy author Philip Pullman, they are stories of racism and thinly veiled religious propaganda that will corrupt children rather than inspiring them.
Either way, one thing is certain: this Christmas, and perhaps the next six, depending on sequels, everyone will be talking about Narnia. Disney is already in the middle of one of the biggest marketing campaigns in recent cinematic history. It is trying to lure both mainstream filmgoers and evangelical Christians, who will respond to CS Lewis's parallels between his characters and the Bible. HarperCollins is set to publish 170 Lewis-related books in more than 60 countries, many of them Christian-themed works. Disney has hired Christian marketing groups to handle the film.

For Pullman, who is an avowed atheist and a critic of Lewis, that is bad news. 'If the Disney Corporation wants to market this film as a great Christian story, they'll just have to tell lies about it,' Pullman told The Observer

Pullman believes that Lewis's books portray a version of Christianity that relies on martial combat, outdated fears of sexuality and women, and also portrays a religion that looks a lot like Islam in unashamedly racist terms.

'It's not the presence of Christian doctrine I object to so much as the absence of Christian virtue. The highest virtue, we have on the authority of the New Testament itself, is love, and yet you find not a trace of that in the books,' he said.

The Narnia books, Pullman said, contained '...a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice; but of love, of Christian charity, [there is] not a trace'.

Certainly that is not the view of Disney. Film executives are eagerly anticipating repeating the success last year of Mel Gibson's Jesus biopic The Passion of The Christ, which was shunned by mainstream studios and then picked up by the evangelical churches. The movie then stunned the film world by raking in hundreds of millions of dollars by tapping into the previously ignored Christian market.

Already American evangelicals are planning to use the Narnia film as a preaching tool. A group called Catholic Outreach has advertised for 150 co-ordinators across the country to help promote the film. It is also organising 'sneak peak' events at which trailers will be shown to church audiences and executives from the film will talk about the project.

Other Christian groups and study centres are getting behind the film too. 'We believe that God will speak the gospel of Jesus Christ through this film,' said Lon Allison, director of the Billy Graham Centre at Wheaton College in Illinois.

Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said that the film was an ideal way for a Christian message to be brought to people who would not otherwise go near a church. 'Here is yet another tool that many may find to be effective in communicating the message of Jesus to those who may not respond to other presentations,' he said.

As well as a huge potential force at the box office, the other possible benefit for Disney is to heal its long troubled relationship with America's evangelical community. Many Christian groups have often boycotted the company over such issues as holding special theme days for gays at Disneyland. But in the run-up to the Narnia release date on 9 December, evangelical leaders have been generous in their praise of the company they have often reviled.

But it is not all about God. The Chronicles of Narnia seems to offer a 'perfect storm' combination of factors. As well as having the Passion's appeal to Christians, it has the special effects and fantasy-laden appeal of The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson's box-office hit that also netted numerous Oscars. That film was also seen as a huge risk at the time, but Jackson's achievement confounded the critics and proved that 'swords and sorcery' movies could strike cinematic gold.

Trailers for the first Narnia film, called The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe after the first book in the chronicles, have already drawn comparisons to The Lord of the Rings' style and cinema presentation. It has the same powerful themes of a new world, complete with fantastic creatures and sweeping battle scenes against a beautiful landscape.

The final crucial element in Disney's planning is turning the Narnia films into a money-spinning franchise like the Harry Potter series. Lewis wrote a total of seven Narnia books, and if the first one is a huge hit the sequels will be inevitable. That means a new Narnia film could be released at Christmas, complete with spin-off merchandising and toys, every year until 2012.

But while Disney has bet big on Narnia and now waits with bated breath, there is already one winner in the saga. The film, just like The Lord of the Rings, was shot in New Zealand, which then reaped a tourism windfall. Now local tour companies are already planning to show visitors around the spot where the Narnia film's climactic battle scene was shot.

 

I'll go see it, but I'm really looking forward to the next Harry Potter that comes out Friday (I think).

 

Please tell me the racist aspects?

Rocket River

 

Wow..interesting article. I certainly see love in Lewis' story. Is self-sacrifice charity??? Perhaps. If it is, then I see charity in there as well.

 

honestly, i have no idea what they're talking about. i read the book as a kid. i listened to it on tape recently. i have no idea where they'd be headed with that.

 

I think Pullman is probably just spouting off a bit much with the "racist" remark. I was much more interested in the Evangelical approach to the film in the article. I don't recall that kind of response to Star Wars, LOTR, or The Matrix.

After a google search, there is not alot to add about the racism claim.

Calormen’s are called ‘darkies’ in ‘The Last Battle’ & ‘The Horse and His Boy’ about a slave boy and war horse, seem to be the one's discussed the most.

 

Probably the same group that was protesting LOTR because of its good versus evil theme.

Damn idiots.

It's like every movie has to be like the NOtebook or some other sappy indie flick that noone gives a crap about for these morons to shut the hell up sometimes.

 

It should be noted, and I did not notice mention of this in the aricle other than a vague reference to his being an author, that Pullman has his own children's fantasy franchise of books - soon to be movies-, "His Dark Materials". I have not read them myself, and I may get around to it sooner or later, but he apparently has his own, presumably atheist, doctrine that he promotes in his stories. As far as his contention that Narnia does not showcase Christian charity (love), he fails to notice that the bible says,
"Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13) This Aslan does, which is Christianity in a nut shell.

 

I thought it was me .. . . I guess folx like myself suppose to have our Knees jerk or something

I saw the cartoon back in the day
and
like THE LORD OF THE RINGS
don't remember ANY Minorities in it at all
which is just a thing
something u get use to in movies
esp Fantasy

Rocket River

 

I assume he's talking about the 7th book, The Last Battle, which features a group that strongly resembles war-mongering Islamic Turks of old. I don't know how strongly racist it is, though it is clear they worship a false god. Another in the series, The Horse and His Boy is set completely in this sort of old Middle-Eastern setting with pashas and the rest. Imo, it harkens a nostalgic English colonial wonder for the Orient that is no longer very PC. I couple it in my mind with the way Indiana Jones series in how it sees the Orient.

I don't know, you may object to the portrayals. There is something about it that I find very exhilarating. It captures a boyhood mystique of the East, of the foreign, and adventure. In The Horse and His Boy especially, the story is nothing without this flavor.

In any case, I don't think there's anything in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to object to on racist grounds. If there is, it fell beneath my radar.

 

Otherwise, I am looking forward to the movie, though with some trepidation. I'm fervently hoping they don't screw it up. And, I'm hoping that after not screwing it up, they make all the sequels. My daughter is almost 1 now, so she'll have some cool movies to watch when she gets a little older.

I heard from NPR that they were making a couple of small changes to "correct" for some of Lewis' unPCness. For example, "Battles are ugly when women fight" was changed to "Battles are ugly." A complete butchery, in my opinion, but it should be brief at least. I've also been made to understand that they didn't do anything to augment or mask any Christian elements in the story. I would think it'd shine through anyway (it's not like LOTR where you kinda scratch your head trying to figure out what exactly is Christian about it), but it may depend on what the viewer brings to bear. I talked to a biology grad student who read the book again for the first time since childhood and said he suspected there might be some sort of Christian overtone to it and wondered if the other ones had the same undercurrent. Hello! It's everywhere! It's obvious! I just remind myself he's a science guy and not particularly adept in the arts.

 

I read the complete series of books that Lewis wrote and I hope they don't make his other 6 books. Maybe it was because I was a kid when I read them, but those other books seemed too heavy.

 

I've been waiting for this movie forever. My favorite books as a kid, and what really got me into reading. The clips look fantastic. I never go to opening night on movies, but I will with this. And if it's good, perhaps repeatedly. Hopefully LWW makes up for what has been a crappy year of movies.

 

I'd be lying if I said the lack of minorities in the films didn't bug me. Now I'm not saying they have to alter the work and make a central character another ethnicity just cuz, or throw in a whole other character just cuz, but there's no real excuse not to have at least some of the extras as something other than lily-white.

 

I remember reading The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe as a kid and really liked it, but for the life of me, I can't remember what it was about.

 

I believe it was about a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe, but i'm just guessing

 

My g/f wants to see this so we'll take my kids...It looks cool...I also wanted to see Zathura (msp?), but didn't...