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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a 2005 film based on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first published novel in C.S. Lewis' children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. It is the first of what will be a series of films based on the books. It won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Make Up and various other awards.

The film was released the weekend December 9, 2005 in major markets in both Europe and North America. It was released throughout the rest of the world soon after, with the final major release occurring on March 4, 2006 in Japan.

Tagline: The beloved masterpiece comes to life December 9.

Plot

See also the plot of the book and the differences listed in the next section.

The story begins in 1940 when London is being plagued by air raids (see The Blitz) and the Pevensie children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are evacuated to the country home of Professor Kirke. Mrs. Macready, a servant of Kirke, gives the children a few rules regarding their behavior in the house. One day while they are playing hide and seek, Lucy discovers a wardrobe and enters it. Behind the clothes is a snowy wood in a magical world called Narnia. She spends several hours in the home of the faun Tumnus. Tumnus tells her that, due to a curse, it has been winter in Narnia for the past 100 years, without Christmas. He seems friendly, but, as he later confesses, he planned to hand her over to the evil White Witch, in accordance with her orders that if a human is ever encountered, they must be given to her. However, Tumnus likes Lucy and regrets his plan, so he takes her to a place where she can find her way back to the wardrobe.

When she returns, little time has passed in the normal world during her stay. She thinks that the others have been worried where she was all the time, but instead they complain that when playing hide and seek, one should not immediately reveal where one is. When she tells them what happened, her siblings check out the back side of the wardrobe, but there is no portal to another world. As a result, they don't believe her and claim that it was just her imagination.

On a second occasion, Edmund follows Lucy into Narnia. Lucy visits Tumnus again, while Edmund meets the White Witch. She offers him his favorite sweets, Turkish delight, which she magically creates, and offers him the prospect of becoming king, with his siblings as servants. She asks Edmund to bring his siblings to her. After the White Witch departs, Edmund and Lucy meet again and he admits that he was wrong and that Narnia really exists. He also soon learns that he has inadvertently endangered Tumnus by telling the witch that Tumnus met Lucy. However, he does not tell Lucy that he did this.

On return through the wardrobe, to Lucy's dismay, Edmund does not confirm Narnia's existence to Peter and Susan. Instead he lies and says that he was just playing along.

On a third occasion, the four siblings hide from Mrs. Macready after breaking a window. This time, all four step into Narnia. Peter and Susan apologize for their earlier disbelief.

They soon meet talking beavers who tell them about someone called Aslan. According to them, Aslan is on the move to take the control of Narnia from the White Witch. The four siblings must help Aslan and his followers, as has been prophesied.

Since the others have been informed of the evilness of the White Witch, Edmund realizes he cannot persuade them to go to her. Instead, he sneaks off and visits her alone. When he arrives at her castle, the witch is angry that he did not bring his siblings with him. She wants to kill him, but is deterred when Edmund discloses that Aslan has returned to Narnia. Regardless, Edmund is chained in the dungeon and meets Tumnus in an adjacent cell. Tumnus is soon turned to stone by the witch. The witch then sends a pack of wolves to hunt down the other children, who barely escape with the aid of a fox (whom the witch later turns to stone).

While Peter, Lucy, Susan, and the beavers are travelling to the Stone Table, they see what they believe to be the White Witch in her sleigh chasing after them, so they run. But it is really Father Christmas. He gives Peter a sword and shield, Susan a bow and arrows and a horn, and Lucy a reviving liquid and a dagger.

Soon afterwards, the wolves catch up with the five once more. They manage to escape by crossing a rapidly-thawing river. Arriving at Aslan's army encampment they encounter Aslan, who is revealed to be a huge and noble lion. Aslan is distressed to hear of Edmund's betrayal.

Peter explains to Aslan that they are not heroes. They are also reluctant to participate in a war after fleeing from London. However, they have to save Edmund. For Lucy, another motivation is to save Tumnus. Peter becomes commander of Aslan's army.

A little later, the wolves arrive and attempt to kill Lucy and Susan. When Peter intervenes, the head wolf, Maugrim, attacks him, and Peter soon kills him with his sword. Aslan's troops follow the surviving wolf back to the witch's camp and Edmund is saved.

Aslan has a serious private talk with Edmund. When he is done, Aslan tells the other children to forgive and forget Edmund's previous actions. However, the witch claims that Edmund is her property, based on an old rule that traitors belong to her. Aslan negotiates with the witch, who agrees to leave Edmund alone (redemption). In return, Aslan sacrifices himself and surrenders to the witch. He is humiliated and killed. However, he is resurrected because there was deeper magic than the witch knew of; when any willing victim who had committed no crime or treachery is killed in a traitor's stead, the Stone Table will crack and death itself would be reversed. Aslan takes Susan and Lucy to the witch's house where he frees the witch's stone victims.

Now that Edmund is safe, Peter, considering his promise to their mother that he would take care of his siblings, suggests that his three siblings go back to the normal world; he himself can join the fight without breaking his promise. However, they all want to fight for the good cause.

On the battlefield, Peter's army isn't doing well. Edmund is gravely injured, and Peter is losing his head-to-head battle with the witch. Thankfully, Aslan soon arrives, to everyone's shock, and pounces on the witch and kills her. Lucy revives Edmund and many others with the magical liquid given to her by Father Christmas.

Peter's army and Aslan's reinforcements win the war, and the four siblings become kings and queens of Narnia. Many years later, when they are adults, they are hunting the White Stag that can grant wishes. They return through the wardrobe to the normal world, where only a small amount of time has passed compared to the years that have passed in Narnia. The professor finds them and returns the ball that broke his window earlier that day. He asks what they were doing, and Peter says, "You wouldn't believe us even if we told you." The professor replies, "Try me."

During the credits, Lucy tries to get back into Narnia through the wardrobe, but the professor tells her that she probably won't be able to go back for a long time. When they leave, the wardrobe door opens slightly, the inside glows, and Aslan's roar is heard...

Adaptation changes for the film

  • The actors who portray the children in the movie are all older (some by at least 3 years) than the children in the book.
  • There is a short sequence illustrating the air raids of the Battle of Britain to establish the characters and why they were evacuated out of the city. The scene also establishes Edmund's character flaws which will come into play later in the movie. In the book there is only a paragraph or so that explains why the children went to the professor's estate.
  • The circumstances surrounding each visit to Narnia are slightly altered. Lucy enters the wardrobe for the first time while playing hide and seek; in the book that is the second visit including Edmund. The second visit instead takes place when Lucy is unable to sleep. In the third visit, the children hide in the wardrobe because they have accidentally broken a window, rather than trying to avoid a tour group, although the sequence where Mrs. Macready seems to be coming at them from all directions, forcing them into Narnia, is largely the same.
  • When Lucy visits Tumnus, it is revealed that Mr. Pevensie is fighting in World War II. Tumnus says that his father went away to war as well.
  • At Tumnus' house, during the Narnian lullaby sequence, the flames in the fire show Narnians (various species such as centaurs and fauns) dancing, hunting, and moving around the fire. At the end of the song, a flame shaped like a lion (Aslan) roars loudly, forcing Tumnus to realize what he's doing is wrong. Also, it should be noted that in the book, Mr. Tumnus's song was what made Lucy almost fall asleep. In the film, however, the song, along with the fire, seem to enchant her, causing her to fall asleep.
    • Also, Tumnus doesn't describe how he'll get tortured for not turning Lucy in as he did in the book.
  • Edmund is drawn into the White Witch's fold by his disaffection towards his siblings. Indeed, Queen Jadis is the first one in the film to speak a kind word to him, and no one does again until his long talk with Aslan, after Edmund’s rescue. In the book, Edmund was driven to serve the White Witch by a magical addiction to her food (specifically the Turkish Delight she creates for him in their first encounter). This quality seems to be absent in the movie, as Edmund doesn’t greedily finish the boxful and want more as per the book. Even the Queen's Dwarf partakes of the leftover sweets before discarding the rest, though he does request some more later when he visits her castle.
  • Several visual references have been inserted into scenes around Professor Kirke's mansion to insinuate that he has been to Narnia before in The Magician's Nephew: he retrieves tobacco from a container shaped like a silver apple (the fruit of life Aslan asked him to find) while talking with Peter and Susan, and the wardrobe, itself, has its doors etched with scenes evocative of various locations he had visited using his magic rings, such as Charn, the Wood between Worlds, and Narnia itself. He even admits to Lucy in the film's final scene that he's "already tried" to get back to Narnia via the wardrobe.
  • The Beavers' conversation with the Pevensie children inside the dam is abbreviated, apparently for the purpose of hiding the fact that Aslan is a lion, a reality which is not revealed until he steps out from his tent to address the remaining three children.
  • Susan claims that the Pevensies are from Finchley; in the book, their home is not named.
  • The matter of Mrs. Beaver's sewing machine, in which she confesses she doesn't like "the thought of that Witch fiddlin' with it," is deleted, as are the Beavers' gifts from Father Christmas.
  • A badger is introduced into the film as Mr. Beaver's best friend and is turned to stone by the Witch. Mr. Beaver has a secret tunnel leading from his dam to Badger's house (although he has always told his wife that it led to his Mum's). Mrs. Beaver disapproved of the amount of time Beaver spent with Badger, but she was deeply sympathetic when Beaver found Badger as a stone statue.
  • The children have serious discussions twice in the film about leaving Narnia rather than getting involved in the land's internal problems (at one point, it is discussed that what they are getting involved in is no different than the war they were trying to get away from in the normal world).

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe".

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