The third Narnia movie.
Am I the only person who really gets a huge kick out of the religious allegories? Sort of? (Except in the last book, because the Islamic allegories are just mean.) I think that you can look beyond it, and carry it back out of allegory territory and into fantasy again.
BTW, I'll try to stay out of actual interesting spoilers here. I don't think it's a spoiler that Aslan says at the end of the third book/movie that the kids were brought to Narnia to meet him that they may know him in the real world by another name. So yeah, Aslan basically says himself that he is Jesus. It's not heavy-handed inference, it's in-universe canonical fact.
But here's the thing. And no offense meant to Christians here...even if you don't actually believe the stuff, Christianity makes a pretty awesome fantasy story. Historical!Religious fiction is super sweet. Fantasy stories that assume Christian elements are often good, because hey...the religion is successful because it can be pretty compelling at times. Narnia takes those elements and replaces the dude with an even-more-personal lion. Hell I'd fight for awesome lion dude and, when you read it as fiction instead of an allegory, the moralizing is not bad at all.
If you take it one step further in the "religious fantasy" direction, and say "Jesus exists AS an unseen mythological character on the real-world side", it gets even more badass. I mean how cool is that in any fantasy work. You've got a multiverse that has the same God across multiple universes, just different avatars, and he's actively working with an adventuring party across space and time. He sends them to Narnia so he can talk to them IN PERSON, along with bringing them into his fold in the normal world, while training them to be awesome for some personal reason of his. Clearly he wants them to be good people back on Earth...but my personal interpretation is that he wants them to be heroes there, too. And not just in the "All truly moral people are superheroes" way.
It is established that there are quite a few universes in the multiverse, yeah. More than just Earth and Narnia. There's a very wide variety and...well, that's just plain a favorite genre of mine. Some of my other favorite series do it too, like
His Dark Materials, aka The Golden Compass series. If you've only read the first book, go read the others.
A lot of people had...issues...with the last book. It took place in Narnia again, obviously. I think it would have been a lot cooler if it took place entirely in the real world. Like say, the walls of the multiverse start crashing down, Narnia spills over into the real world, or maybe just the Apocalypse happens. Honestly as a pure fantasy novel the last book isn't all that bad, but you have to avoid thinking of it in real-world terms. If you read it as allegory, it's truly horrifying, on the same level as reading Orson Scott Card's editorial writing (hint: DON'T).
Well as you saw in the last Narnia movie, Susan and Peter didn't stick around with everyone else. Eventually Peter rejoins the gang, but Susan keeps being obsessed with being pretty and with things unbefitting of a woman and a heroic follower of Aslan. So, she sits out for this story. Aslan doesn't like her any more. What a fantastic start.
Our remaining heroes are riding a train and then suddenly...tardis noise...They're back in Narnia!
There's this evil desert culture. And they worship this false moon god named Tash who is all into sacrifices and stuff. Let me say that again for you: "Evil desert culture", "false moon god", mortal enemies of the Jesus allegory. C.S.Lewis, I HATE YOU, you fundie bastard. There's a good-guy-hero who follows Tash, but Aslan says that since the guy actually did good works instead of evil ones, he was actually worshipping Aslan instead of Tash. Way to go religious tolerance.
Anyway, this Tash stuff isn't going over too well. But the Tash worshippers want converts. So they craft an even falser god named TASHLAN, and try to get eeeeverybody worshipping him, which kind of works. Then Aslan gets all pissed off and basically sets off Armageddon, and there's a holy war. The world ends, and people cross the border into Aslan's Kingdom, which is basically just Narnia but more so, prettier and stuff. There is much rejoicing and jubilation.
And then both the readers and the characters are scratching their heads going "Wait a sec, that doesn't seem right. Isn't Aslan's Kingdom basically heaven? Like, the place you usually go when you die, Reepicheep notwithstanding?" Then one of our heroes makes the horrifying, all-too-true leap of logic: "I think that when we were riding that train, it must have derailed, and we all died and went to Narnia. What good fortune that we died! What a terrible shame that Susan was interested in boys and school and couldn't be here with us!"
WHAT THE FUUUUUUU--
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Topic: Narnia: Don't think of it as an allegory... (Read 3806 times)