After seeing The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe yesterday I returned home vaugely disappointed. I had a sense that the movie got it wrong somehow, yet the movie was very faithful to the book. It took me a while to figure out what I didn't like. The movie attempted to update Lewis's very dated gender roles but in doing so it turned the story of four children into Peter and Edmund's story. Yes, they take out the line "Battles are ugly when women fight," changing it to "Battle are ugly things." Yes, Susan gets to actually fire her bow and Lucy bravely flashes her knife. But what is lost is Lucy's close relationship with Aslan and her role as the ultimate beliver, a Mary figure, if you will. Now, I am not one to go touting the movie as religious allegory but C.S. Lewis was certainly drawing on the New Testament as a source and that can't really be denied. In the books, Lucy's faith sets her apart from her brothers and sisters and in a way makes Narnia hers more than anyone else. Peter's character is rather wooden in comparison. He's a bossy square and he doesn't change much over the course of the book. Then in the movie, all of a sudden the whole Narnia adventure is a story of Peter's heroic deveopment. The battle scene, which is only recounted after the fact in the book, becomes Peter's shining moment of heroism. He dramatically rushes into battle with the White Witch as the sound stops and everything happens in slow motion. Nope, sorry in the book Peter was just not that important. Yes, the books were dated and traditional gender roles were staunchly adhered to. The White Witch is certainly an example of women with political power gone unchecked. But at least Lewis saw a role for girls as the imaginitive and spritual power of Narnia. I felt that the movie did not even give them that.
