The battle between faith and reason

I have finally finished The Chronicles of Narnia (all seven books) before 2005 ended. It was a slow read by my standards – even slower than reading Roald Dahl. All seven books are almost of the same length – just give or take a difference of ten to fifteen pages; but the book that probably took me ages to finish was The Silver Chair and I was surprisingly fast when I got to The Last Battle.

I like The Last Battle, aside from the fact that it’s the last book and it gives closure that there won’t be any more visits to Narnia, because of the kind of adversary the heroes faced – it’s all different since it was not magical and simply all about treachery. The ending was long and winding, of course, and can be such a bore to read – even lamer than The Lord of the Rings’ Many Partings chapter.

This C.S. Lewis classic series of books, I hope, shouldn’t be reduced to a mere allegory of the Bible – repackaged Biblical stories or the metaphorical children’s Bible. Though you could clearly see the imprints of the author’s Christian faith in his work, the events in the books are sometimes similar but not exactly the same as what one would read from the Holy Book; Lewis painted a wonderful world in Narnia.

I’ve heard that Disney has optioned this whole series to be made into a movie, but I’d doubt if they’d make all the seven books. Surely they’d follow the Pevensies and up on the list for movie adaptation is Prince Caspian. Boy, am I glad that’d be the last time we’ll get to see Susan, played by Anna Popplewell, (if they wouldn’t make The Horse and His Boy, wherein the kids only made cameos), because her character is so two-dimensional and even stiffly portrayed in the first movie.

So which books are going to look great on film? Prince Caspian on its own is a pretty lame story if told in the language of movies, but it would make one heck of an action-adventure film if combined with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The Magician’s Nephew is important for the viewers to fully understand The Last Battle and give the viewers a few explanations and further understand who the White Witch Jadis is; but I doubt if the size of the book would be enough to make one compelling two-hour long movie. I’m not sure if combining The Silver Chair and The Last Battle would be a good idea, though the main heroes of these two books are Eustace Scrubb (cousin of the Pevensies) and Jill Pole (Eustace’s friend). Going to and out of Narnia causes the timetable to go out of whack, and combining the previous two books I’ve mentioned would further cause confusion with the viewers (though it was convincingly presented in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe). As for The Horse and His Boy, they could simply throw away this book and forget about it; this story didn’t affect much the entire story arc of Narnia.

What would have been better is that C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia should been approached in the same fashion that Peter Jackson and his team approached The Lord of the Rings. They should have taken the whole picture, chopped them into pieces that would make great films and one great movie series. I wouldn’t mind watching three-hours long movies showed with one-year intervals and I’d gladly buy the DVD box set of the extended versions. Now imagine if Disney approached Peter Jackson with this chronicles and Fran Walsh, together with Philippa Boyens, lifted the text from these books and made them into one whole big story. But that’s all we can do, imagine…

Peter Jackson makes film that tells great stories; hell, we even suspended our belief when we watched King Kong be lovey-dovey with Ann Darrow! If he can make us cry for the 25-foot ape, he can make us love Aslan, the lion, more.