Two of the biggest fantasy stories ever told have Christian roots.  One could argue that the biggest, the Star Wars saga, can be traced to Christianity, but the link is tenuous.  What is more tenable are The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings series.  Interestingly, their respective authors, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien met as faculty members at Oxford University and were close friends.  It was the latter that helped convince the former to believe in Jesus.  Tolkien, by the way, was Catholic.  Lewis practiced Anglicanism, which is pretty close to Catholicism in many respects.  Whatever their confession, they imbued their writing with faith, and it is evident if you know the Faith and their writings.  As I have already covered The Lord of the Rings films, it is time to get to the latest cinematic versions of Lewis’ work, starting with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005).  As that title is a mouthful, it will henceforth be shortened to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

What nobody has a mouthful for at the beginning of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is to voice their terror as the German Luftwaffe bombs London in 1940.  In the northern section known as Finchley lives the Pevensie family.  As they try to make it to their shelter, their youngest son, Edmund Pevensie (Skandar Keynes), runs inside to grab a picture of their father, who is away fighting in World War II.  His older brother, Peter Pevensie (William Moseley), is furious with Edmund for risking his life.  As the oldest, Peter feels the most responsible for him and his two younger sisters, Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Susan Pevensie (Anna Popplewell).  Peter is about to be called upon to take this duty even more seriously as their mother, Helen Pevensie (Judy McIntosh), sends her children into the countryside for safety.  Before you accuse her of bad parenting, know that this was common practice at this time.  The person who is not happy about the arrangement is Edmund, who refuses to kiss his mother goodbye.  His truculent behavior is to cause many problems.  The place where they settle is the expansive estate of Professor Digory Kirke (Jim Broadbent).  As his maid, Mrs. Macready (Elizabeth Hawthorne), shows the kids to their rooms, she makes it seem like none of his stuff is to be touched and he is to be left alone.  Still, children will be children.  During a game of hide and seek, the youngest, Lucy, finds her way into the eponymous storage compartment.  As she pushes farther into the space crowded with fur coats, she is poked by a pine branch and stumbles into a wintry landscape.  She walks about confused, stopping at a gas light in a small clearing.  It is there that she meets a faun, half-man/half deer, named Mr. Tummus (James McAvoy).  He identifies her as a daughter of Eve, which is the first of many Christian references.  He then invites her for some tea.  During their conversation, he offers to play her some music, which causes her to fall asleep.  When she awakens, it is dark and he is hiding in shame and terror.  When pressed for the meaning of this, he admits to having told the White Witch (Tilda Swinton), the usurper queen, the one responsible for 100 years of winter, of Lucy’s presence.  Lucy does not understand why a new friend would betray her, and her innocence leads to him helping her escape.  She steps back into the real world at the moment she left, with Peter finishing his countdown to come find his siblings.  They demand an explanation for the disruption of their day, but do not believe her when she describes where she had been for what she thought was hours.  That night, she goes back, but is followed by Edmund.  Instead of finding his sister, he encounters the White Witch, who immediately recognizes him as a son of Adam.  The White Which wants to know where his brother and sisters are, promising more goodies if he brings them to her.  Not long after she departs, Lucy finds him and they go back through the wardrobe.  Lucy thinks she has the proof she needs to convince the older ones, but Edmund says she is just being an imaginative little girl.  What convinces everyone is when while trying to avoid being caught by Professor Kirke for breaking a window while playing cricket, they all go through the wardrobe.  Lucy takes them to locate Mr. Tummus, but they find his home wrecked with a note from the White Witch.  Instead, they are greeted by Mr. Beaver (voiced by Ray Winstone).  He and his wife, Mrs. Beaver (voiced by Dawn French), inform the children about Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson), a lion who had created Narnia.  Aslan has been expecting the humans as they are destined to rule this world between them.  In the middle of this exposition, Edmund sneaks away to find the White Witch.  However, not even giving away the location of his siblings is enough for him to avoid the cold reception.  The White Witch sends her wolves, forcing the Beavers and the other three Pevensies to flee.  Along the way, they are met by Father Christmas (James Cosmo), who announces that winter’s end is near and gives them all weapons as gifts.  Shortly thereafter, they make it to Aslan’s camp, who has been gathering an army.  He also orders a successful rescue mission of Edmund.  Yet, the White Witch comes to Aslan, demanding the life of the traitor as is ancient Narnian law.  Instead, Aslan offers his life for Edmund’s, and the White Witch accepts.  Lucy and Susan witness Aslan’s death, and hear of her plans to attack despite her triumph.  This leaves Peter to head the army, with Edmund’s support.  Meanwhile, Lucy and Susan witness the miraculous rising of Aslan.  They then help Aslan to unfreeze the White Witch’s torture victims, leading them to the battlefield.  Once there, they turn the tide and defeat the White Witch.  Aslan crowns the brothers and sisters, and they grow up seemingly forgetting about the real world.  Yet, one day while riding through the forest, they encounter the gas lamp and find their way to the wardrobe.  Upon stumbling out, they are met by Professor Kirke, who seems to know what they have endured.

Anytime you have a fantasy story like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it is something that has to be endured, at least for me.  That was my main feeling anyway when I saw it in the theater.  After twenty years of growing in my Faith, I feel a little different about it now.  For example, I knew going into the cinema about the connection between Aslan and Jesus, but it did not register as much with me then as it does today.  Further, having seen as many films as I have in the intervening years, it is accurate to say that no other hits the events of Jesus’ Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension as squarely on the nose as done this one, at least metaphorically.  Lucy and Susan accompany Aslan some of the way through the woods on the way to his death at the White Witch’s hands, a moment that has its echoes in the Garden at Gethsemane.  En route to the stone table, which is basically an altar as is the Cross upon which Jesus was hung, Aslan is harried the entire way by an angry mob.  Once Aslan dies and everyone has gone, Lucy and Susan stay with him until dawn.  There is a divergence in time, but after a certain period, Aslan and Jesus rise from the dead.  One could also make a case for Aslan rousing the people the White Witch has frozen as a version of Jesus’ harrowing of hell, bringing those stuck in limbo to paradise with the coming of the Son of Man.  Finally, once the siblings are crowned, Aslan walks off into the sunset, or ascends, as it were, as Jesus did once His time on Earth had reached its fulfilment.  Lucy and Mr. Tummus witness Aslan’s ascension, and Mr. Tummus comforts the little girl by saying that Aslan will return one day.  Jesus made the same promise to us.  In a broader sense, Aslan, like Our Savior, asks for trust.  If we give it to God as do the Pevensie children, mighty deeds are possible.

The fact that I was able to recognize those Jesus-like traits in Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is not just an indication of my growth in my Faith, but that I enjoyed it more this time.  Since it is fantasy, it will never be my favorite. I am also unsure what the kids learn from their adventures.  Still, it is mostly harmless.