A review of Voyage of the Dawn Treader...

(Tim) Here's a teaser from this movie review:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader joins a pantheon of other films in which the redemption motif is found within ourselves. Within such a schema, man is placed at the centre and God – in this case Aslan – becomes an irrelevant fixture. The Aslan of the recent movie is little more than a motivator, certainly not the savior he is within Lewis’s series.

In Lewis’s book, Aslan is terrifying...

When Lucy is tempted to vanity, her sin is overcome by fear of Aslan’s wrath and Lewis doesn’t hesitate to say that Lucy “became horribly afraid”. By contrast, Hollywood’s Aslan helps Lucy to find the source of strength within herself.

Or again, in the book, the salvation of Eustace from a dragon back into a human occurs through an excruciating application of Aslan’s claws – an experience that Eustace described as hurting more than anything in his entire life. By contrast, Hollywood’s Aslan is too tame to even touch Eustace. He does not strike fear into sinners nor does he use suffering to restore them to health. Though Eustace does apparently repent, it happens after being pumped up with motivational psychology from Reepicheep about being an extraordinary person.