USA Today is reporting that “First-weekend moviegoers gave two lion's paws up to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and found the faith elements of the movie subtly portrayed.” But then again, as Meghan O'Rourke wrote in her slate piece last week:

“Judging the Narnia books solely by their Christianity is an impoverished way of reading them. It is a reflection more of our polarized moment—in which a perceived cultural divide has alienated Christians from secular culture and secular readers from anything that smacks of religious leanings—than of the relative aesthetic merits and weaknesses of Lewis' books."

The truth is the Christian themes are there if you look for them; only I found them rather unimportant in the face of the sense of utter disappointment the film left me with. When Santa Clause shows up, the presence of this Christian symbol isn’t what through me off. The lack of any previous or subsequent connection to the plot did. Similarly Aslan’s Christ-like resurrection didn’t bother me half as much as the fact that there really wasn’t any reason shown to care about his loss, and I was still trying to understand how Peter, who for the first three quarters of the movie could only hold his sword outstretched with trembling arms as though he was a beachcomber with a metal detector looking for buried treasure, could actually fight someone with it, let alone inspire an army to battle. Living in a post – Lord of the Rings world, I would think the filmmakers would understand the importance of character development and story logic (even if the logic follows its own faith-based rules) in translating fantasy epics to the big screen. Maybe it works for kids. I don’t know. I expected to look upon the film with wonder, but ended up watching it wondering why.