NARNIA FILM DOWNPLAYS GRACE OF SALVATION

The new Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, significantly alters C.S. Lewis's original portrayal of the salvation of the negative secularist figure, Eustace Scrubb.

In both book and film Eustace is transformed into a dragon and restored to humanity by Aslan. But in the film Eustace is portrayed as earning his salvation by feats of bravery as a dragon, which are entirely absent from the book.

In the original, Eustace as dragon is a pathetic figure who undergoes some moral improvement in his humiliation. He is certainly not the fire-breathing, airborne equivalent of Bruce Willis:

But, of course, what hung over everyone like a cloud was the problem of what to do with their dragon when they were ready to sail. They tried not to talk of it when he was there, but he couldn't help overhearing things...And poor Eustace realized more and more that since the first day he came on board he had been an unmitigated nuisance and that he was now a greater nuisance still.

The book stresses the salvation of the helpless Eustace by the unmerited grace of the Christ figure:

"I think you've seen Aslan," said Edmund.

"Aslan!" said Eustace.

"I've heard that name mentioned several times since we joined the Dawn Treader. And I felt - I don't know what - I hated it. But I was hating everything then. And by the way, I'd like to apologize. I'm afraid I've been pretty beastly."

"That's all right," said Edmund. "Between ourselves, you haven't been as bad as I was on my first trip to Narnia. You were an ass, but I was a traitor."

"Well, don't tell me about it, then," said Eustace. "But who is Aslan? Do you know him?"

"Well - he knows me," said Edmund. "He is the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-over-the-sea, who saved me and saved Narnia..."

That crucial exchange is truncated in the film. Eustace's penitence is downplayed. He apologises for being a 'sop', rendering his previous negativism a sin against the spirit of adventure, which he atoned for by his derring-do as a dragon.

The film's under-emphasis on the grace of salvation is therefore the context for the controversial comment by the actor who provides the voice of Aslan, Liam Neeson:

Aslan symbolises a Christlike figure, but he also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.

Who unlike Jesus Christ taught salvation by works.