Director Greta Gerwig is taking heavy heat after revealing officially that she has cast left-wing Oscar-winner Meryl Streep to voice Aslan the Lion in her upcoming reboot of C.S. Lewis’ classic Chronicles of Narnia.
Author C.S. Lewis wrote his tales of Narnia as an allegory for Christianity. His Aslan lion character was meant to be a direct correlation to Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Therefore, Lewis meant very specifically for his Aslan to be a male character. But Grewig, who last so directed the blockbuster Barbie movie, has now cast a woman to voice the venerable lion.
Gerwig told Empire magazine that she chose Streep because the actress has “gravitas.”
“I wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness. Someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight,” Gerwig said. “I wanted someone who was older than 70, so there was a wisdom of experience, but who also had the capacity of fresh wonder, like a child. And also to be one of the greatest actors to ever do it. That list is not a long one.”
Gerwig also released the first image of how her Aslan will look, as well. The look of the new Aslan has multicolored eyes, feathers and fur both, and red stripes on his face. Indeed, this concoction makes Aslan the “lion” looks more like a mythic griffin than it does a photorealistic lion, as Lewis imagined.
A griffin is a mythic hybrid creature that is an amalgam of a lion and a bird of prey and hails from several ancient cultures including those from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, and Greece. But this creature has no place at all in Christian theology and C.S. Lewis would never have chosen such a fantastic creature for his Narnia tales.
In the end, Gerwig is clearly trying her best to excise the deep Christian roots that C.S. Lewis meant to infuse into his children’s tales. And many fans are speaking out against her vision for Narnia.
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