Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

December 24, 2005 - With so many movies having been released over the past couple weeks, I decided to try to watch as many movies as possible over the Christmas-New Years break from work. Having watched King Kong on Tuesday, tonight (on Christmas Eve), I had the opportunity to watch The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, adapted from one of the most beloved classics of all times.

I have been preparing to watch this movie for awhile now! Even though I read most of the books in the series when I was in elementary school, I have pretty much forgotten the story. So in an attempt to prepare myself to watch the film, I bought the Narnia book set in the fall, thinking that I could get through at least the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (which is actually book 2 in the series, with the Magician's Nephew being the first) by December.

How wrong I was - by the time I reached the movie theatre, I was only on page 100 of the book - and that was only because I made myself sit down and read the book hours prior to watching the movie.

The movie begins with the bombing of London during World War II, as a mother and her four children run for their lives. Middle child Edmund decided to run back to the house to grab his dad's picture (who was at war), prompting big brother Peter to send out the first message set out by Narnia: thou shall not be selfish.

The children are then sent to live with an old professor out in the country, in a big house full of empty rooms and nothing for kids to do. A game of Hide-and-Seek leads youngest child Lucy to step inside a wardrobe and into Narnia. Narnia is a fantasy world full of dwarfs, fauns, and talking animals. Lucy meets up with a faun named Mr. Tumnus and learns of an evil white witch (Tilda Swinton) who has proclaimed herself as the Queen of Narnia. The Queen devoids Narnia of happiness, warm weather, and most importantly, Christmas.

Eventually, the other children follow Lucy into Narnia, but poor Edmund is unfortunate enough to meet the White Witch. Under magic, Edmund betrays his family to the witch - for something called Turkish Delight (which is apparently some sort of sweet baked good), as the White Witch slowly realizes that these four children could be the ones mentioned in an ancient prophecy, one in which the White Witch's reign would come to an end when these four children are crowned as the Kings and Queens of Narnia. Edmund is then captured by the White Witch and the remaining three children's best hope of rescuing Edmund is with the help of Aslan the Lion...

The movie did a great job in adapting the novel (much better than Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, though to be fair, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a much shorter book) and successfully brought these much loved characters to the screen. C.S. Lewis had famously said he never wanted this Narnia books to be made into movies, for he feared that the animals in the books would be turned into some sort of cartoonish characters. This movie, with the help of CGI technology, not only made the animals as real as the human characters, but also brought style, wit and personality to these creatures.

While there has been no official comment that the other books in the series would be made into film, I have no doubt that all of the books will make great movies. Not sure when the next movie will come out, but hopefully by then, I would have finished all 7 books in the series (ya right..).