Dear Netflix, Don’t Ruin Narnia
At this point, Greta Gerwig is widely recognized as a rising star in the film industry — not as an actress, but as a screenwriter and director. Responsible for films like Lady Bird, Little Women (2019), and Barbie, she’s clearly aiming to write her name in indelible ink as one of the greats in the filmmaking business.
Netflix has also suffered from the cultural counter revolution against wokeism.
Her next big project? C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. And she’s reportedly on track to totally ruin it.
Early this month, rumors started circulating on the internet that Meryl Streep — who played Aunt March in Gerwig’s Little Women and Donna in Mamma Mia — was in talks with Netflix to voice Aslan in Gerwig’s newest project. Then Deadline did some digging, and now it’s more than a rumor.
Gerwig and Netflix are indeed in cahoots to bring all seven books, beginning with The Magician’s Nephew, to the big screen. Not only that, but it seems Netflix and Gerwig are in fact interested in having Aslan voiced by Streep, although there hasn’t yet been an offer, as far as anyone knows. If that happens, it’s likely to spark plenty of outrage among fans of Lewis’s work.
The very obvious problem with a female Aslan is that such a casting decision would be Hollywood impudently ignoring the very clear messaging its audience has been sending it for quite a while — namely, that woke messaging in films doesn’t make them attractive.
Netflix Has Problems
Just last month, Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White bombed at the box office after the company made the decision to diversify its casting to include a non-white Snow White (although the casting wasn’t diverse enough to include actual people with dwarfism). The film has made $169 million at the box office, compared to its $240 million budget — and it’s just the most recent. Disney has lost millions on TV series like The Acolyte (which had rather blatant LGBTQ themes) and films like The Marvels in the last few years.
Netflix has also suffered from the cultural counter revolution against wokeism. Back in 2022, Elon Musk slammed the company for being infected by the “woke mind virus” after the company lost subscribers for the first time. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the company from featuring any number of shows attempting to normalize the woke agenda.
It’s not just that Netflix, Disney, and the film industry in general haven’t learned their lesson; it’s that they are apparently considering adapting a landmark Christian fable in a way that obscures or even contradicts its original framework while promoting an ideology that is fundamentally opposed to the Christian worldview.
To be perfectly honest, there’s no world where Gerwig’s cinematic version of Narnia doesn’t drive some fans out of the theater in disgust. A good many people either grew up with the series or have since become infatuated with it, its meaning, and the intent of its author. But casting Streep as Aslan isn’t just taking some kind of creative license with the story.
Limits on Artistic License
Screenwriters are not so closely confined by the story that they aren’t allowed some creative license, but that license is limited in much the same way that the reader’s imagination is limited.
Lewis’s readers can’t imagine Aslan as a female because Lewis explicitly describes him as a male lion rather than as a lioness. To imagine otherwise would be to either change the development and therefore the meaning of the plot (Aslan’s shameful shearing and death in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe rather depend on his having male lion characteristics) or to imagine some monstrous amalgamation of lioness and lion.
Imagination only works if we impose limits on it. When he set out to answer the question, “What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?” Lewis imposed specific limits on himself. To effectively answer that question, he intentionally mirrored the structure of the gospels, grounding the story (and Aslan’s character) in Christian theology. That intent places particular constraints on Gerwig as a screenwriter.
If Gerwig wants to retell Lewis’s story, she is confined by the explicit plot of Lewis’s work. If she changes the plot, she is no longer telling the Narnian story, but rather a story bearing only a passing resemblance to Lewis’s fable.
Gerwig and Netflix are, of their own doing, at a crossroads: they can adapt the story in a way that accurately reflects Lewis’ theological and narrative choices, or they can reinterpret key elements of the story — like Aslan’s character — in ways that turn the story into something Lewis never intended.
Her decision will determine the success of the series, but more importantly, it will determine whether Hollywood has enough strength to save itself from the woke suicide it’s in the process of executing.
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