Used to be, any main character who had a rough day had critics crying “Christ figure”: Billy Budd, Charlie Brown–Harry Potter, for the Lord’s sake! But Richard Corliss, writing in this week’s Time magazine, says that Aslan’s similarity to Christ is expertly hidden by Disney in their most recent installment of The Chronicles of Narnia: “Prince Caspian.” Nevermind that in the last “Narnia” movie Aslan was sacrificed on an altar–the same altar that is the navel of the Narnians’ situation room in the current flick.
If Disney “did their darnedest to mute elements of religion,” as Corliss alleges, it’s no more than C.S. Lewis did in the original “Prince Caspian.” As I wrote in my own review of Disney’s movie treatment, Lewis was translating the kind of Christian history you don’t learn in Sunday school, about the struggles of the early church to understand who would bear Christ’s legacy. Aslan’s christology is therefore a bit more obscure, but if you have any inkling that Lewis, or Disney, is conjuring a Christian tale, you don’t have to look too hard for Christ to reveal himself.
posted May 23, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I was thrilled to see how well the book was brought to the screen. I love C.S. Lewis’ works. To see how faithfully Disney captured this second book was thrilling to watch. Hurrah. PS: Definitely not for little children. There was to small kids when I saw it, in the theater. It is so obviously not a picture to take the kiddies too. I just wish parents would become more responsible. I can see those kids having nightmares for years from watching the movie.