News/Review: Greta Gerwig Massacred Narnia

To just give y’all a glimpse of how bad the trailer for this movie is, let’s read some of the comments, shall we?

“What the hell is even that?” C.S Lewis said, calmly.

They stared at the Magician’s Nephew and thought, “retro-eighties style technobabble futurism.”

Aslan the Great Lion will return in Avengers: Doomsday.

This is a movie about two British kids discovering their uncle’s secret LSD lab and I won’t accept any other explanation.

Narnians of the Galaxy.

I like the part where Gandalf says “We are in the endgame now.”

Narnia: Love and Thunder.

Producers be like: let’s give the long time fans of narnia existential crisis.

I’m sure Meryl Streep singing Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin was exactly what C.S. Lewis had in mind when he wrote the scene of Aslan singing Narnia into existence.

Ah yes, nothing like taking a beautiful allegory and making it feel like an acid trip.

And, of course, the best summary of it:

If Screwtape wrote Narnia.

Yeah. This adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia is screwed.

Now, I’m not going to say that I’m the biggest C.S. Lewis fan on Earth and that I’m fuming over this trailer. To say that would be disingenuous, because while I like C.S. Lewis, I haven’t read all of his work and certainly take issue with quite a few things in The Chronicles of Narnia, especially towards the end of the series. However, having read the Narnia series and watched the trailer for Greta Gerwig’s adaptation, I am disturbed. The trailer alone makes the Disney adaptations of Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader look like one-to-one, perfect adaptations of the book, it’s so bad.

That’s not to say that everything in the trailer is terrible. I like how colorful the magician’s workshop and the world of Narnia is, especially in contrast with how gray and sad London looks. It does do a good job of at least making Narnia seem fun and colorful. Other than that, though, everything else is trash.

First of all, why does Narnia or this other world they fall into look like Gerwig just stole it from Kirk Cameron’s Avatar? Are we going to see a crossover there? What’s going on with that?

Secondly, what is wrong with Jadis’ outfit? For those of you who have read The Magician’s Nephew, Jadis is the actual name of the White Witch, and she’s the queen of one of the other worlds that Diggory and Polly explore. She’s described as looking beautiful, regal, and cold, and is extremely powerful, so why does she now look like she just stepped out of the disco? Is the metal dress she wears supposed to be armor? In which case, why does it look like a metal version of a minidress from the 60s?

Then there’s Aslan, who apparently is not only a female lion now – even though he/she/they Aslan has a mane – but isn’t God. Instead, he/she/they Aslan is being described as a “cosmic lion.” I’m not even making this up, but honestly, I’m super surprised. After all, Greta Gerwig is a Unitarian Universalist and seems to be into Gnosticism, which puts great emphasis on secret knowledge and the divine feminine. It’s not a stretch to think that she would do this to a beloved Christian story.

Until next time,

M.J.