Redemptive rendition of Narnia: the Disney/Walden Media adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not only entertaining, but clearly retains the deeper truth of C.S. Lewis's inspirational novel.

Almost 100 million people have read The Lira1, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in a publishing universe where most books sell less than 10,000 copies, according to the publishers. The book is credited with leading many people to know Jesus Christ and is a favorite among Christians, although many readers have said that they have not understood the book's clear Christological allusions. The great news is that the Disney movie, produced in conjunction with Walden Media, is not only very entertaining, but clearly retains the deeper truth and essence of C.S. Lewis's inspirational novel, the first of the seven books he wrote in his great Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series.

In this regard, C.S. Lewis wanted the story to get past the "watchful dragons" of young minds trained by an increasingly secular British culture to help the readers understand the good news of Jesus Christ. He revealed his method in his March 1961 letter to a young girl named Anne:

I think you will probably see that there is a deeper meaning behind it. The whole Narnian story is about Christ. That is to say, I asked myself, "Supposing that there really was a world like Narnia and supposing it had (like our world) gone wrong and supposing Christ wanted to go into that world and save it (as He did ours) what might have happened?" The stories are my answers. Since Narnia is a world of Talking Beasts, I thought He would become a Talking Beast there, as He became a man here. I pictured Him becoming a lion there because (a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts: (b) Christ is called "The Lion of Judah" in the Bible; (c) I'd been having strange dreams about lions when I began writing the work. The whole series works out like this.

The Magician's Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia.

The Lion, etc. the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Prince Caspian restoration of the true religion after corruption.

The Horse and His Boy the calling and conversion of a heathen.

The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" the spiritual life (especially in Reepicbeep).

The Silver Chair the continuing war with the powers of darkness.

The Last Battle the coming of the Antichrist (the Ape), the end of the world and the Last Judgement.

Very, very few people will see the slight divergences that the movie takes from the novel. And even fewer will see the few very subtle theological shifts in the new movie. So the great news is that the movie works well and is a great tool for the Church to help people understand the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The movie itself starts slightly before the book with an air raid in London that puts the four Pevensie children--Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy--in jeopardy. The children are sent out of the city to stay with Professor Kirke in the countryside for protection.

During a game of hide-and-seek, Lucy stumbles on an old wardrobe. The wardrobe leads her to Narnia, a world with talking animals and mythical creatures. There, the evil White Witch has taken control of the land, turning it into a state of forever winter but never Christmas. A prophecy says that four sons and daughters of Adam and Eve will be brought to Narnia to assist the lion Aslan, the son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea, in freeing Narnia from the White Witch. To thwart the prophecy, the White Witch has told the creatures of Narnia that, if they see the sons or daughters of Adam and Eve, they should kidnap the children and bring them to her. Instead, Lucy meets a faun, who thinks better of kidnapping her and puts his own life in jeopardy by letting her return to the world of men.

When Lucy returns to the world of human beings, her brothers Edmund and Peter and her sister Susan do not believe she was in Narnia. Lucy goes to Narnia through the wardrobe a second time. Edmund follows her and becomes a pawn of the White Witch. Like Satan, the White Witch offers Edmund something that he already has, the authority to rule Narnia, and traps him with a counterfeit sacrament of Turkish Delight, a jelly confection dusted with sugar. Edmund's sisters and brother must find Asian to try to set him free. Aslan tells the White Witch that he will die to pay the penalty for Edmund's treachery, but not that his resurrection will once and for all break her control over Narnia.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is very exciting. The excitement is heightened by a compelling sense of Providence leading the children into Narnia and the foreshadowing of the prophetic expectations.

The production quality is much greater than the sum of its parts. The camerawork is superb. The computer-generated images are enchanting. Aslan comes to life in a magnificent way (he is a real lion!), as do all the creatures of Narnia. The four children are very good, especially Lucy, and the only regret is that Peter and Susan are not given meatier lines. Tilda Swinton would have been a better White Witch if she had been allowed to be more seductive, but her costume often cocoons her personality. The music is good, though not great. The direction is very exciting and entertaining, though it lacks nuance and depth. But, aside from critical nitpicking, the movie is spectacular! C.S. Lewis never wanted a movie made of his books, but one can imagine that he would be proud of this production, and so everyone involved deserves high praise.

As noted, the movie has retained its theological foundation, even though the filmmakers have deleted some important scenes that are in the book and added others that seem trivial. Even so, some of the theology has been toned down. These changes are subtle, with a little more emphasis oil the Creation rather than the Creator. There are no direct references to the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea, for instance. Also, the sacramental communion banquet with the coming of Father Christmas and the gifts of the Spirit has been truncated into a very brief scene with Father Christmas. Finally, the resurrection romp with Aslan, Lucy, and Susan has been eliminated, and the movie focuses more on the children being the solution to the evil in Narnia when in fact the victory is Asian's, and the children, just like people in our world, are more than conquerors only because they are heirs to the victory that Aslan wins on the stone table (or, rather, Jesus Christ won on the cross!).

Andrew Adamson said that when he directed the movie, he started from his memory. He felt that the book was too thin, so the movie reflects his memory of the book, not the actual book. He understands the element of sacrifice and redemption, but his concern was for the empowering of the children. Clearly, his perspective helped produce the subtle shift from the great clarity of the book itself, but his love for the original source ultimately keeps the movie on target.

Therefore, you have to be very close to the book and very theologically astute to notice the changes. In fact, the movie is a very clear Christological allusion, or imagining, of the story of Jesus Christ. The minor changes do not take away from that meaning in the book. which lifts up the Son of God, Jesus Christ, as our deliverer from the eternal winter of sin and damnation.

After months of anticipation, those who love Narnia can rejoice that Disney and Walden have given them a wonderful movie that tells the story in an entertaining, exciting, thrilling, and respectful way.

Please note, however, that there are some scenes of action violence and scary creatures that may be too strong for children seven and under, so the PG rating is appropriate. Also, there are a couple of politically correct notions, including a statement dismissive of war, a nod to defining the contents of a healing potion given to Lucy, a modernist view of women in allowing Susan to fire a bow and arrow in war. and a slightly attenuated mention of the Creation, not the Creator, in the coronation of the four children. These discrepancies are all very minor, however, because they are presented in a context where the Christian perspective of the novel dominates). Moreover, there is no foul language and no sexual activity.

Disney and Walden Media have not yet answered the much asked question about whether they intend to continue the Narnia series with sequels of the remaining six books. However, if The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe succeeds as well as expected at the box office, it's difficult to imagine that the business minds at the studios' executive offices will be able to resist the irresistible. And that will mean that we should have many more years of excellent, wholesome Narnia film entertainment to come.

RELATED ARTICLE: Aslan vs. Harry.

by Dr. Ted Baehr

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is going head-to-head at the movie theater box office against Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This is the fourth Harry Potter movie, and like the previous three, it is turning out to be a huge commercial success. Unfortunately, the Harry Potter franchise promotes a decidedly pagan worldview that could lead impressionable young minds, particularly those who have never been given a moral compass, in the direction of the occult. C.S. Lewis's Narnia series, on the other hand, presents a clearly biblical, Christian worldview. Yet, both Narnia and Harry Potter deal with magic. What's the difference?

Some Christians are disturbed by C.S. Lewis's use of the word "magic" in The Chronicles of Narnia. Magic is forbidden in the Bible. Revelation 21:8 makes it clear that "those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur."

C.S. Lewis made it clear in his novels that it is wrong to "use" magic, especially for personal gain, but even when people do such an evil thing, there is a deeper magic (or law) written into the creation by the Creator to right the wrongs.

The Bible teaches that all of "the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). Throughout the centuries, with this principle in mind, the church has redeemed and reinvested ancient ceremonies, holidays, and devices with Christian meaning and content.

Thus, both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien reinvested the word "magic" with redemptive meaning. In The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis uses magic as a synonym for laws that God has written into the universe. Although the stories by Lewis are fantasy, they should not be confused with the world of the occult. The worlds Lewis and Tolkien created are real worlds with real consequences and real hope.

One of the essential building blocks of any theology or philosophy is ontology, which simply means the nature of the ground being, or the very essence of the world in which we live. For a Hindu and most occultists, people live in an imaginary world, a Great Thought, an Illusion. For Christians and Jews, however, we live in a real world with real pain, and real suffering--a world that needs a real God and real salvation.

For a Christian, therefore, things are real, and, as shown in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, actions have consequences. When Edmund succumbs to the temptations of the White Witch, he has to pay the consequences, or Someone has to pay in his stead.

In contrast, with their occult, nominalistic ontology, the Harry Potter books propose that the world can be manipulated through magic. Things change shape; nothing is really real. Therefore, there is no need for a savior since one has merely to have the fight incantations or think the fight thoughts to be saved. Thus, the individual shapes the world and is in that sense: god.

Although The Chronicles of Narnia are not strictly a one-for-one Christian allegory, they do contain a pro-Christian, biblical message with Christian, biblical symbolism where there is a need for a creator God, not man who wants to pretend to be god. As such, they were not meant to be an exact replica of the biblical story of man's relationship to God, but they take place in a physical world with physical and moral consequences.

The witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the villain. Also, the Bible makes it clear that, through Judas and others, Satan engineered Jesus Christ's death on the Cross. Thus, the evil witch in The Lion engineers Aslan's sacrifice, which is a metaphor for Jesus Christ's own sacrifice in our world. As such, the evil witch is a symbol of Satan and, like the Bible, Lewis is saying in his Narnia stories that occult things are evil, not that occult things are good.

Aslan is an incarnation of the Son of God, within the context of the fictional world of the Narnia books. Narnia is a fictional created world with talking animals. In our real world, the Word of God becomes (takes on) human flesh. He becomes a part of human creation.

Dr. Ted Baehr is chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and founder and publisher of MOVIEGUIDE. This review was adapted from MOVIEGUIDE by Dr. Baehr exclusively for THE NEW AMERICAN.