Confirmation that actress Meryl Streep will voice Aslan in the upcoming Netflix adaptation of C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew has prompted backlash from some who claim it's an affront to the classic Christian allegory. "I wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness.
Someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight," director Greta Gerwig told Empire of Streep's casting as the Christ-like lion who sacrificed himself to save a sinner in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. "I wanted someone who was older than 70, so there was a wisdom of experience, but who also had the capacity of fresh wonder, like a child.
And also to be one of the greatest actors to ever do it. That list is not a long one," added Gerwig, who also directed Barbie and whose first installment in the multi-film Narnia series is slated for release next February.
Though written later, The Magician's Nephew is chronologically the first of the Narnia books and tells the story of Aslan creating the world of Narnia and an evil witch gaining access to it through the prideful incompetence of an occult dabbler.
The reaction from Christians on social media to news of Aslan's new gender was overwhelmingly negative, with some mocking the character as "Translan" and predicting the film will be another ideological attack from Hollywood against Jesus Christ that will flop.
Lutheran commentator and podcaster Liam McCollum said that Lewis "would’ve hated Gerwig’s deconstruction and subversion of Aslan." He noted the irony that Lewis wrote about an Aslan impostor in the last book of the Narnia series. "[Lewis] literally wrote about a similar moral affront — in Narnia. In The Last Battle, King Tirian expresses fear about a counterfeit Aslan: 'Would it