THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA : THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE (2005)
Tagline : Aslan is on the move…
This book series by C.S. Lewis, one of the greatest authors of all time has been made and re-made several times, but no one has quite approached this material quite like Disney did in 2005. In this one four kids end up having to leave their town because it’s getting the total crap bombed out of it. The end up basically living in a giant boring mansion and discover a wardrobe that ends up being a portal to a land called Narnia. The land is freakishly cold and run by an evil witch (played by Tilda Swinton). The youngest boy Edmund (played by Skandar Keynes who has only done 2 roles outside of this series) is pretty much a sucker for sweets, so he’s pretty easily tempted by the witch who can literally make them out of thin air. This all helps advance a showdown between a lion named Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson), the four children and the witch.
Overall the casting in this movie I felt couldn’t be any better. Each character acts about like what you’d expect for a group having gone through what they did. The contrast in the characters reminds me of the stark differences between me, my brother and my step sister. Since this movie came out actress Georgie Henley (who plays Lucy) would visit Narnia 2 more times and is still getting roles to this day. William Moseley (who plays Peter the older brother) is also still acting and even had a role in ARTEMIS FOWL. Anna Popplewell (who plays Susan) still has a strong career going, but Tilda Swinton and James McAvoy have had the biggest careers of anyone involved in this movie. Swinton has appeared in a few MARVEL flicks and McAvoy has been in X-MEN and SPLIT. All of the performances in this movie are evenly done and strong. Even the voice actors for every animal are pretty great. That’s right, this movie features talking pretty much everything. Horses talk, beavers talk, wolves talk and we can even tell you what the fox says. Not sure why Ylvis didn’t just watch this movie to find out.
Disney produced this thing on a grand scale with amazing CGI effects and amazing scenery. They even mixed in a few real animals. This would have made C.S. Lewis happy I think because he didn’t like live adaptations of his books because the effects of his day could never reach the visual bars needed. This movie does that. Throughout the script we get several heartfelt scenes and moments of humor to break up some of the levity of the story. This makes the film amazingly charming while still conveying the dark magic and deep Christian theme’s being introduced.
I remember walking out of the theater the first time I saw this with my spirits lifted and my heart lightened. I still get that same feeling to this day and parts of the movie even still bring me to tears. I still think Peter should have been King Peter, “The King Who Needs To Be Nicer To His Brother”. The rest of this movie is mind blowing with the slower parts only deepening the movies beauty.
For the epic battle scene alone I give this movie a solid 7 out of 7, but it’s richer in every way than that.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF WALT DISNEY PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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