Soundtrack Bodes Poorly for Narnia Film

The Winter film season this year is finally catching up with the success of the Lord of the Rings films, and studios are doling out big-budget fantasy epics like peppermints from a Christmas float. The biggest, most anticipated films – LOTR director Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the new Harry Potter and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – are all mammoth budget tales of the fantastic based on beloved properties.

The one that’s causing the most stir recently is Wardrobe, the first entry in a planned seven film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ Christian fantasy allegory Narnia series. There is, of course, the usual furor over the film’s religious symbolism, with the company sticking to a deliberately squirmy line that goes something like, “Those that see religious overtures in the original novels will still see them in the film, but the film is in no way deliberately promoting any religious ideas.” In the next two months, there will undoubtedly be enough ink spilled on this aspect of the film to fill Gulf of Mexico, and every third writer will make clever with The Passion of Harry Potter references (I know I plan to). What I’m interested in is whether or not the film will be any good, whatever the symbolism (or lack thereof).

Initial signs were tentatively positive, starting with the fact that Lewis’ estate was actually willing to release the rights to the property at all. Lewis’ designated rights holders have been notoriously picky about who they let touch any and all ancillary rights to their most precious property, so the fact that Phillip Anschutz’s Walden Media was able to convince them of their commitment to quality says something. The first trailer looked promising, if a bit lacking in a truly original production design (pretty much a make or break factor in these sprawling fantasy epics). And ubergeek Harry Knowles who, despite being unable to write in anything that resembles a coherent fashion, knows his genre films as well or better than any film nut alive, gave a ten minute preview a rave review.

But there are also disturbing signs. Millionaire publisher and theater mogul Phillip Anschutz’s last film was the putrid Around the World in 80 Days, and his company, Walden, hired director Andrew Adamson to helm the project. Adamson’s only directorial credits are the mildly clever but thoroughly uninspiring Shrek films. Not only are the hyperactive, pop-reference-heavy Shrek films the antithesis of what Narnia needs to be, they were entirely CGI, meaning that Adamson has no experience working with actors. Wardrobe, which is brimming over with inexperienced child actors, hardly seems an easy task even for those with a propensity for directing performances.

But the most worrying sign of all came today, in a New York Times article describing (what else?) the difficulties marketing a film to a Christian audience without alienating secular viewers. The worries arrive, though, not because of some conflict in the religious aspects, but because of the choice of music on the soundtrack:

Mitchell Leib, president of music for Disney's Buena Vista film unit, said he still expected to assemble and release a secular soundtrack before the film's Dec. 9 opening. But he cited production snags. He said he was still awaiting a recording by the rock band Evanescence that is intended as the film's closing song.

Putting Evanescence, a terminally cheesy, psuedo-goth, wannabe Christian bar rock band, in a Narnia film is exactly the sort of numbskulled, pop-cult alluding piffle I’d expect from a director like Adamson. The last time Evanescence was featured heavily in a film was in the execrable Daredevil, which was awful on too many levels to even discuss. The Narnia series, like Lord of the Rings, demands a certain level of timelessness and respect. This is along of the lines of setting a film like Gladiator to music by Blink 182 or Britney Spears; it's wholly innapropriate for the tone. C.S. Lewis is certainly rolling in his grave, but it should be fans who complain the loudest: we're the ones who have to see the movie.