THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA is one of those books that I've heard of all my life as this big, sprawling, epic piece of literary wonder. Like LORD OF THE RINGS, it held a place of respect in my mind and I'd always meant to get around to reading it. Finally, when the Lord of the Rings films were announced, I "quickly" devoured the entire dense trilogy in a mere 6 months.

Now, the Narnia movies are coming out. Well, one of them is, and we'll see about the others. Unlike Lord of the Rings, the Narnia books are 7 completely seperate books. They cross characters over within each other and take place in the same general world, but they are less one gigantic narrative story than the Rings trilogy.

I've just begun reading The Chronicles of Narnia all-in-one-volume book. It's roughly the same size as Lord of the Rings, but it's 7 books, not 3.

Ok, why does everyone keep comparing the two books? Well, because JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis were friends, colleagues, and sometimes rivals. Both were distinguished scholars of medieval and early modern literature, both chose fantasy as their primary genre, and both left an indelible mark on every author who attempted to write fantasy and science fiction after them. Tolkien's leanings were toward language and mythology, while Lewis' background was one of Christian scholarship. That's why Tolkien's books are very dense and thorough. He was creating an entire world from scratch as if he was writing a history of it. Lewis' Narnia books are fluffier flights of fancy with a helping of battle, evil witches, and Christian symbolism thrown in. He was writing what he knew.

Anyway, I just finished book 3 of the Narnia septology. It's stunning how short they are! The second one, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is only about 90 pages long! The big battle at the end of that book is roughly a page long, and yet I hear the cinematic version of the fight is over a half hour! Weird. Another thing that distinguished Lewis from Tolkien is Lewis' playfulness and they fact that he's clearly writing for children as his main audience. He says things like, "The creatures were so horrible that if I described them to you, your parents wouldn't let you read any further!" It's cute and fun, but he books are so breezy, I sometimes wished he'd stopped to engage in details a little bit more. That's not to say the books are badly written. They're just fluffier than I expected from a classic piece of epic fantasy.

So you've all heard about the secret Christianity in the books. Oh puh-leez! Yes, alright, the lion is a Jesus figure, so what? The books are not Bible-stories. There are no evil witches in the Bible. No talking animals....oh wait...alright, but still. Millions of books have used Bible-related symbolism. The reason is that the Bible's stories are so univerally known that their reference resonates with the reader. C.S. Lewis was not trying to secretly convert kids to Christianity. That's Veggie-Tales' racket. Lewis has spoken about this in interviews. He has admitted to using Jesus as an inspiration for Aslan the lion, but the Narnia books are not Biblical allegories. So fine, you get inspired by reading the books, fine. You just like the talking lion, fine. I hate how the relious nuts are jumping all over this movie (Disney included) like it's THEIRS. Passion of the Christ? Fine, take it. Narnia? You're silly. What about the Green Mile? John Coffey? J.C.? A man who takes on the pain of others and sacrifices himself so that the innocent won't suffer? Where was Pat Robertson when that one came out, huh? Get a grip you jerks. As I said before, the Narnia books aren't the first, nor will they be the last to use religious imagery outside of Bible stories.

Another thing C.S. Lewis had said was that he never wanted a live-action film made because Aslan would no doubt look silly as a puppeted character. This was back in the 50's when movie effects were much less sophisticated. I think he'd be OK with the current film, as the lion looks very realistic and not at all buffoonish. Aslan would lose all power as a character if he was portrayed as anything but God-like.

My wife had read the books a lot a long time ago and said she had no interest in seeing the film version. This is the woman who couldn't wait to see the Harry Potter movies and Rent. But after reading the books, I can see her point. The books are so thin that htey leave a lot to the imagination. The Harry Potter and LOTR books shower you with details, so that the film version will no doubt be close to how you imagined it. This is different, I think, and I think I agree that the movie version can't be the same as the book so why bother? Eh, maybe I'll rent it when it comes out on DVD.