It isn’t any coincidence that all of the other past British productions of The Narnia Chronicles never got around to doing an adaptation of the final book in the series: “The Last Battle.” The story is a tricky one to pull off, especially because it’s more obvious in its metaphorical and extremely profound treatment of the biblical Final Days–though depicted through the world of Narnia…with a twist ending that put the whole series through a different prism. A lot of kids today may not have even read “The Last Battle” yet with the thought they don’t want the series to end. In fact, they may not want to, because it places all the stories before it into a different context that might make them a little too profound to be enjoyed on just a fantasy level.
Of course, that’s a tad bit like sticking your head in the sand when you have Armageddon happening in our backyards.
Really, it’s too bad that audiences will have to wait for probably six more years if not more before “The Final Battle” is finally made into a movie. We can’t even assume it will be made, considering there’s no predicting a movie series and if it can be finished due to certain business circumstances. For those who’ve always preferred absorbing C.S. Lewis’s Christian allegory in all his books, it might seem a little ironic that “The Last Battle” would be out in theatres right when what it’s depiction might really be happening. Sure, that’s a controversial thought for some of different beliefs, yet a powerful and ironic juxtaposition of art crossing with spiritual reality.
Lewis always managed to make his books appealing to both those who prefer fantasy or prefer to get something more profound out of the plot. Most of the Narnia books are done that way, but “The Last Battle” was blunter in what the true message is behind the series. In that regard, it may be that a movie adaptation of the book may never be done and that Walden Media (most definitely the best family film production arm going today next to Disney/Pixar) will figure that ending the story at any point before that would be satisfying and keep the mystery and fantasy elements intact.
They obviously can’t say one way or the other whether they’ll make it or not that far in advance. I encourage them to make a note of it, though, and start taking some notes on how they’ll approach it so everybody can extract something meaningful and not make it exclusive for Christian allegory (or a suppositional as Lewis like to call it) fans who still are a major media demographic out there hungry for more.
How “The Last Battle” movie might be depicted…
The key element in the beginning of “Battle” is the depiction of deception by a leader. In the tale, you have reports that Aslan the Lion has returned, but is in the guise of someone else, namely a donkey by the name Puzzle who was persuaded to do it by his puppetmaster, the aptly-named Shift (an ape). All of this happens after a prolonged period of peace and then a portent to dark things on the horizon–much like what Harry Potter has done throughout its series. In Narnia, it’s arguably more powerful, because you have a false leader pretending to have piety and forcing a whole universe to do things it shouldn’t be doing. In “Battle”, Shift orders Puzzle (as Aslan) to convince Narnia to turn over their alliances to the questionable Calormenes who ultimately destroy Narnia’s environments.
Yes, Calormenes sounds like the fictional name of a political party or movement for our world. Even smart kids will get that aspect.
In a good plot twist, the current duped King Tirian realizes this is a deception, despite the Calormenes doing the very modern act of balking at the assertion and tying the King up in a tree as punishment. He’s rescued anyway by some of the children in the previous books arriving back to Narnia and join in battling the Calormenes who basically have usurped Narnia and irreparably corrupted it.
And so goes a final battle that’s akin to the one in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” I just hope that “The Last Battle” can be released before “Deathly Hallows” in theatres so people who (how naively) don’t realize these things came from something called books think that Narnia is copying Potter. It’s actually in reverse in some ways.
That final battle should be fairly spectacular on the big screen with the epilogue of Aslan returning, closing the door on Narnia as he destroys its corrupted grounds and resurrecting all who had died previously in Aslan’s own country. The beauty behind that final segment should be stunning, no matter that it’s quite literal that people who have faith in their personal God will be resurrected after death in a renewed and beautiful world. That’s something “Deathly Hallows” couldn’t get away with, other than depicting widespread death and a hint that everybody good who did die is going to be ok.
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By the time “The Last Battle” comes out, America will probably be at a stage when kids absolutely understand the meaning of death more prominently if not a heightened sense of their faith and what may be happening in their lifetimes.
For many of certain faiths now, it wouldn’t be out of the question in the coming decade to see “The Last Battle” one day, and experience the reality of its epilogue soon after…
